Which of the following PMS symptoms do you experience on a regular basis??

Sometimes I get headaches and I get a little sensitive and just a little bit irritable but I don't think it shows though.

Other:
I want to stab people

All but headaches. Mostly not severely, though. I also get very clumsy around the time I ovulate.

The moodiness and irritability is what bothers me when my S\O is on the rag

Watch out! On the rare occasion that I have pms, I'll eat you alive.

My ex would tease me and say PMS = Pack My Suitcase... to which I would reply... Keep it up and you will have DSB ...Dreaded Sperm Build-up smile

not nessasaily.

he'll always have the option of diy.

DIY?

cramps at times, backaches most times, emotional/crying/moodiness everytime, bloating sometimes.
it always sounds so much worse to me when i write it down! i guess because it has been going on for so long you just sort of go with it!

Everything on the list except headaches, depression, and anxiety. I get very moody and irritable. Now that I recognize the cause I can keep it in check a bit better, but I still get awfully cranky. I take ibuprofen for the cramps, so I don't put up with them for long before it kicks in.

I also get really cold, especially when I have bad cramps. Does anyone else experience this? I sometimes feel like I have an ice pack tied around my waste. A heating pad or electric blanket helps a lot, or at work I'll sit right in front of the heater whenever I get the chance.

Several of these, plus another symptom that I prefer not to go into detail about. It's kinda nasty.

Ahh, go ahead... we can handle it.

Well, to be blunt, the hormonal changes generally cause a flair-up with my IBS about a week before my period is due and I get several days of diarrhea no matter what I eat or don't eat. The worse the diarrhea is, the heavier the period will be. It's not a pleasant subject.

What a bummer. I think I suffer from that to a lesser degree, and it does often seem worse around my period.

The good news is that,according to the last doctor I saw, it's supposed to lessen and go away once I'm into menopause. I'm peri-menopausal right now.

I don't suffer from this much but if I do it would be "Headaches" slight moodiness.

Kate, it's funny you say that. I don't get "Diarrhea" but it's like the only time that I can have a normal movement. How weird. How are you? Miss you.

That's me, Miss Weirdo! I'm doing as good as possible considering my living situation. How are you doing?

That is a very normal thing.. I read somewhere once that there is a hormone released that causes the stomach to upset. It makes sense that hormones could do that if you consider morning sickness.

I'm a little of both actually. Did you move?

I am male and I do not experience PMS. I'm sure I experience moon-related mood swings though.

Cramps,Moodiness,Crying,Depression,Anxiety,sometimes headache.I also become more hyper which is a VERY good thing!! So it's not all bad.I have more problems when I'm actually menstruating....when I have all these things and I just want to sleep.This goes on for the first day,then I feel very good.Sometimes more than when I'm not menstruating.The first day (and the day before) is pretty bad though.

I also have diarrhea,vomit and can't eat meat products or any other proteins aside from maybe butter.This goes on until the cycle starts again (I mean I also have this problem during my period.)as soon as my period ends I have to eat raw red bloody meat.Butter.Fish.Seafood.BLOOD!

I read recently that there was a study done on the moon's effect on people. The study showed that the moon did not have any part in it. As someone who works in the customer service field, I can tell you that the study is complete bull crap. Some people go absolutely batty during a full moon. I'm pretty sure our call volume even goes up during that time.

what!?, you mean you've never heard of the acromon diy!

BTW: it stands for do-it-yourself.

southernyankee.... felt foolish..it finally came to me during the night... thanks smile

hym, what else where you thinking during that night. >

That's true. The hormones that are released when you are pregnant are basically the same as those released before your period. A doctor once told me that when you have your period it's much like being a little bit pregnant.

Last March, but once I find a full time job that pays enough (more than minimum wage), I'm planning on finding a place of my own. It's getting almost to the point of intolerable here.

clots the size of afrika, but that was a while ago now, photo-sensitivity, serotnin overflow, sense of over-meaningfulness, psychic experiance, coincidences, heightened sense of smell, clear or rust brown stuff before and after

Well, that's something to look forward to. I thought I was having some peri-menopausal symptoms (hot flashes and a few anxiety attacks) a year or so ago, even though I'm at the young end of the scale, but they seem to have subsided. *sigh* I was hoping to get it over with early!

How interesting. I get an instant upset stomach if something stressful happens. Like when I realized I left my business checkbook in the grocery cart as I was driving out of the parking lot, or that sort of thing. I always thought it was weird how I could go from feeling fine to being physically ill because if something emotional like that.

Oh, and the moon thing... after years of working with the public I can tell you without a doubt that the weirdos come out during or near a full moon, and "normal" people have more of a tendency to act a bit odd. That study must not have been very thorough. But then, how do you measure something like that scientifically?

It mentioned that that there were many reports from police and hospitals that there was increase in weirdos... but still said that it was unfounded.

"a little bit pregnant"

Going out on Full moon nights too is guaranteed to be a crazy time as well. And I read a report once about behaviour in Mental Institutions at different moon phases and there was a distinct increase in incidents during Full Moon.

I am male and I suffer from the mood swings and illogical emotional outbursts of women who suffer PMS.

About 1 day before my period begins, I find myself so shy I can't even look at people in the eye.....I feel like hiding....it's so weird and not very much like me, usually....

I don't feel cold when I have cramps, but I get much worse cramps in cold weather. I'm glad that I at least don't get such bad cramps in hot weather, because a heating pad is the best cure for cramps!

A doctor recommended to me that I eat these yummy little calcium supplements called Viactive, because getting more calcium has been linked to alleviating PMS. I've noticed an improvement when I take them--especially in feeling less emotional and blue.

Most of these, but I get spots rather than acne. I doubt many people with PMS get acne - that's different.

Only other people? I generally want to stab myself

I often get bowel problems after or towards the end of my period. Sometimes diarrhoea, sometimes constipation - sometimes both! Ah, the joys of being female!!!

I hope you realise it's really not our fault! I think I'm generally a pretty logical person, but PMS does things to my mental health that would get me institutionalised if I was always like that!

How "young" are you?

Since I go through similar miseries (except for constipation), you have my utmost sympathies!

I don't do that anymore. Yippeeee! But as a young girl I had bad cramps, bad complexion, long duration. Then I got on birth control pills and that helped a great deal. Later, I developed endometrosis. That's when I had the most problems with bloating, pain, cramps, constipation, etc., etc., etc. Blah!

cramps, moodiness, head and backaches, depression, anxiety and irritability. Good thing I have a husband that was raised by a single mom...he totally understands!

I must be careful when wielding sharp objects that I turn them away from myself. It's been too easy in the past to harm my little self.

I have my moments. All avoided so far, but who knows...

Thanks for the tip. I'll have to look for those, especially if they're tasty! I'm sure I could use more calcium in my diet anyway.

41

I love you

They're very tasty--I've tried the chocolate and the caramel flavors, although I prefer the chocolate. I think there's a vanilla flavor or something as well.

I love you too
I do
I do

How sad Kate, I hope things get better for you. I've been there.

My skin gets really bad, I'll get slight backache and my mood swings will be very savage. Thankfully I only seem to get my period every 10 weeks.

I turned 50 last September. It is better if you don't go into menopause too early. You'll be there soon enough.

Thank you! I can use all the moral support I can get.

I would just like to comment that a few years ago I learned in health class that guys also experience mood swings every month, just like girls do, so now they can't blame every damn thing a girl does on PMS. I would also like to add that only about 15-20% of girls actually experience PMS. Unfortunately I am one of them. Oh the mood swings, best bet is to not cross my path because I can be scary, but at least I can admit it.

I totally agree with the stabbing thing, I get so mad that I just have to be by myself otherwise I'll kill someone

why?why?why? arrrrrggggggg!!!!! I HATE feeling this way!!!! yep...irritability~or in other words "one mean b*tch"! :)

Hey, testosterone makes men do a lot of things too, only we get prison time for most of our outbursts!

It's strange that PMS can be seen as a mitigating circumstance in a murder case but testosterone isn't

My little gurl became a woman today. Damn, she was just a baby. Now she has to deal with the frustration of working and playing around her cycle.

Yeah, there's that old double standard again.

I do wonder if it has to do with most judges being male and not understanding the effect of a woman's hormone cycle but ubderstanding very well the effect of his own hormones. Personally, I know that the only time that I could kill someone in anger would be if my hormone levels were screwy. I still don't think it's a fair defence though - we should be able to resist such urges however strong or else all rapists would end up free.

I once walked to my girlfriend's house (13km) for sex when my car broke down. There are things I jave done when horny that I couldn't be blowed doing otherwise. I guess there would be about 2 billion people on Earth if there wasn't a male sex drive. Hormones are just chemicals. It's chemical imbalances that are also responsable for a great deal of depression and psychosis. The mind is a strange thing. It's weird to think your ersonality can be changed with chemicals. It makes me wonder who I *really* am sometimes.

Not always good thoughts to have I'd like to think I was more than instincts pushed by hormones!

Not just hormones. What you think is your personality can be changed by drinking water in a different place or eating food grown in soil high in certain minerals.

I would hope that there would be limits though - but then I suppose that those limits might be set by our genes in which case it's chemicals again.

I tend to see PMS in a very different way that most people - not in the interest of denying women their experiences or anything like that. I tend to believe that many of these things that are related to this concept of "PMS" are caused by something else - and that menstruation is far more complicated than we now understand it.

Care to expand on that at all? It sounds like quite an interesting theory.

My own thinking on this is that our understanding of menstruation determines what we experience in many ways - although, again, I don't and wouldn't discount any woman's experience in this matter. It seems to me that as I have changed my understanding of menstruation for myself, these symptoms and problems have lessened if not ended altogether for me. Now, to get quite personal, the whole process is very simple for me and I have very few effects or symptoms of what we are calling here PMS. I did have these kinds of things for many, many years, however, and - during this time - a rather different understanding of what it meant to menstruate as well as the impact of meanings that were placed on it culturally and otherwise that were affecting my experience of it.

Well, I think I'd have to disagree with you completely there! I only have knowledge of my own experiences so it's hardly conclusive, but I don't misunderstand what a period is. I'm comfortable discussing it with friends and family. I don't regard them as dirty or shameful. In fact I regard them as a symbol of my femininity and while I may not be a girly girl, I have a strong maternal instinct and I'm proud to be a woman. So periods ought to just be periods.

But mine aren't. I spend huge lengths of my cycle feeling as though they are killing me. No exaggeration. They feel like I have a terminal illness at times.

I wish that I could just change my attitudes and everything would be solved, but I really don't believe that is going to happen. Menstrual problems and PMS both have proven physical causes. To a certain extent, thinking positively and all that can help with illnesses, etc. but they won't cure you if the underlying problem is still there.