Premenstrual syndrome (PMS)

Dear women, you all know that it’s not necessary to suffer so much from premenstrual syndrome, but I think most of you just don’t know how to fight it. So I think you will appreciate my hints on natural remedies able to relieve the feeling of discomfort.

1. Try to eat several small portions of meal during the day instead of usual three meals. Make sure you don’t spend more than 3 hours a day without a meal in order to keep your blood sugar even.

2. Avoid any caffeine-containing drinks, because caffeine causes the increase of nervous tension, accompanying PMS.

3. Avoid eating much salt, as it increases retention of fluid and bloating.

4. For the same reason drink lots of water. It will help to lower retention and bloating as it’ll dilute the salt concentration in your body.

5. Also avoid sugars. Sweets usually deplete your body because Vitamin B together with other nutrients are being wasted to digest them.

6. Make sure you eat lots of fiber and complex carbohydrates, as they are considered a source of energy lasting over long time. Many foods that are high in carbohydrates also contain fiber, and that one is very important for your overall health.

7. Take 400 to 600 IU of Vitamin E daily. This has been reported to lower cysts within the breasts and the breast tenderness. But please make sure you take good Vitamin E, as it might be rancid. I’ll give you a hint how to choose it right – cut a liquid gel cap open and try. If it tastes sour, it’s not of the high quality.

8. Also take Vitamin B-6 (Pyridoxine) 50 to 300 mg per day. It can help to ease the symptoms of PMS.

9. Do regular exercise, as it can reduce the stress that women felt before menstruation being caused by regulating levels of hormone.

10. Sleep enough. If you don’t, you’ll feel tired and overstrained and this might increase stress levels and PMS symptoms.

I got to know about Sarafem from my gynecologist. I had constant complains associated with pain during the first days of my periods and frequent mood swings in the course of PMS, that is why my doctor recommended to start pharmaceutical treatment, which would help me to restore and normalize menstrual cycle.

According to the doctor, Sarafem medication has complex effect on the body and not only help to cope with mood swings and depression, but also regulates pain during menstruation. At first I had doubts about this medication, because they write almost nothing about it. But, considering doctor’s recommendations I decided to try it out.

Sarafem medication did not in the least take away the pain, which I always have in the first days of menstrual cycle. However, it really helped me with my depression, apathy, irritation, and aggression taking turns within several days before my periods begin. Before that I could burst crying at the slightest pretext and become cheerful again in few minutes without any particular reason. PMS had some kind of magical effect on me – I could be active and gay or, on the contrary, feeling abandoned and castaway. After I started taking Sarafem, my disposition became more stable. It would seem to me that I had found perfect pills from the unpleasant syndrome, but eventually I had to give up on taking this medication. The thing is that Sarafem did not take away the pain, which kept torturing me every 1 to 2 days of the cycle. In order to get rid of the pain, I took aspirin or similar pain killers. Together these medications provoked large hemorrhage, due to which I had to stop taking Sarafem. By the way, alcohol also mismatches this medication.

PMS has always been a problem for me. Mood swings, apathy, depression, severe pain during the first days of the cycle – all this constantly repeated every month. Discovery of medication from the severe syndrome was a surprise. It was Yaz oral contraceptive, which was recommended by my gynecologist as a contraceptive.

At the beginning I could not even believe that Yaz can bring my woman’s health to norm. But the medication really works! The best thing in it is that Yaz normalizes the length of menstrual cycle, so from now on my periods always begin in time. Besides, as any hormonal agent, this medication wields positive influence on condition of my skin. Since my early days I had problems with butterfly patch. Today, there is almost no problem with that, but after taking Yaz I totally forgot about acne and unpleasant pimples. Another particularity of this medication is that it can influence your weight and your breast. From my experience I see that if one takes Yaz regularly, breasts really somewhat grow, and the overall weight becomes bigger as well. So, in few months my weight got two kilograms larger. Also after I had taken this medication, in the first days of the periods pain became not that severe, but it did not entirely disappear. Now I combine regular taking of Yaz wil pain killers, which I still have to take in the first days of my periods.

Along with all the evident advantages Yaz also has a number of disadvantages. It is extremely important to take the medication at the same time every day; otherwise you will not get any positive effect. Yaz also has considerable side effects, which often show themselves at the beginning. Thus, when I took this medication, for few days I had head ache and slight nausea, whereas in the instruction it says it might provoke diarrhea and a number of other unpleasant symptoms.

PMS is the eternal “curse” of women, which makes us suffer virtually each month. The nature of this phenomenon has not been completely studied yet, but the symptoms are evident: few days before the cycle begins we face problems of psychological and physical nature. The worst thing is that perfect PMS medication has not been discovered yet. The thing is that PMS somewhat resembles the very nature of women – it is extremely unstable and each time it can show itself differently. In my case PMS is mostly connected with mood swings. Sometimes my head aches, sometimes it can be stomach pain, and at times the pain can be so intolerable, that it provokes nausea, apathy, and faintness. So what is the best way to fight it, and what PMS medication really works?

I have tried great many of things to get rid of pain. The first thing I started from was strong painkillers I had taken a couple of days before the cycle began. Those were traditional pills known to everyone since childhood, such as no-spa or baralgin, as well as more recent strong PMS medication. This is how I started to take Midol. In these pills combination of aspirin and caffeine helps to kill the pain, but it does not improve my mental condition. In order to get rid of mood swings, I took two medications: Sarafem and Vitamin B6. In the instruction it said that these PMS medications both killed pain and improved overall health. They did not help me to get rid of pain, but my disposition actually became more stable. However, in combination with Midol these medications really help.

Another good PMS medication is Yaz. Actually, Yaz is an oral contraceptive, but is so good at normalizing hormonal bursts, that it also helps to normalize menstrual cycle and reduce PMS symptoms.