Fear and Loathing: Why PMS is not a joke
I SUNSET ON A FLOOR, ATTEMPTING TO KEEP THE FLOOR FLOW, seriously thinking that she was born an ugly and bad person and will never be better. I can easily cry for three days in a row. The dishes not washed by my neighbors can make me critical-level aggression and a desire for revenge. Once I pulled a cupboard from the fourth floor onto a medium-sized street and smashed it with a hammer. It lasts exactly a week, and then I turn back into an ordinary person.
No, I’m not a Comedy Central sitcom or a Hulk Woman. Just against the background of stress and increased anxiety, I clearly manifest premenstrual syndrome. It took a year and a half to confirm the tendency to PMS, which ended with a meeting with a good endocrinologist. I haven’t found effective prevention for myself so far. Chamomile tea and attachment of plantain occupy only hands, but folk remedies are not able to cope with what is going on in the head. This is not to mention the fact that physiological symptoms also require attention and proper treatment.
Different doctors will have a different approach to diagnosis. Someone does not distinguish between degrees of severity and without looking prescribes antidepressants, someone advises to start taking oral contraceptives, and someone will give an impressive list of tests that need to pass to determine what exactly happens to your body. More difficult than the rest of those who have the so-called PMDD - premenstrual dysphoric disorder - which can be accompanied by such serious reactions as panic attacks. On the basis of the rapid experience of premenstrual syndrome, severe neurosis can occur. Many women admit that for them PMS is not just a pain or swelling tolerable, but a painful experience that they have to cope with month after month.
"PMS is a complex of pathological symptoms that occur cyclically 2-10 days before menstruation and spontaneously disappear within a few days after it," explains gynecologist and endocrinologist Valentina Yavnyuk. "There are about one hundred and fifty different symptoms that occur in 80-90 % of women of reproductive age, about 25% of women experience a whole complex of PMS symptoms, however, about 4% of women suffer from PMDD - a severe form of PMS, which has the same destructive effect on a woman’s life as the clinical department essiya ".
Of course, this is not the case at all. However, this does not mean that the ICP does not exist. The view that premenstrual syndrome is simply a lack of self-control severely stigmatizes the phenomenon itself. Instead of learning to listen to your body and treat your psyche with respect, we push the need to honestly deal with PMS to hell. Women develop a fear of being blamed for what is happening.
About a year ago, psychologist Robin Stein Deluca delivered a lecture on ICP at TED Talks, which has been watched by over a million people. She explains everything related to the difficulties in researching the question of the danger of medicalization of reproductive health, as well as something about social myths related to ICP. Our and Western cultures are very similar in this: women are not supposed to be aggressive, depressive and upset, so the expression of all the repressed emotions is postponed until the “resolved” moment, which is the same week before the beginning of the cycle in public consciousness. This point of view, widespread in scientific circles, is in fact only one of many and does not at all mean that the ICP should be written off only as a social construct.
There are dozens of versions of the origin of premenstrual syndrome, but there are very few large and detailed studies on this topic. Why? And just no one wants to do this. In the UK, scientists who understand the problem of erectile dysfunction, five times more than those who are looking for treatment of PMS. Surveys conducted in different countries in different years show that premenstrual syndrome in one form or another suffers from 25 to, think, 90% of women (at least, this number of those who confirm the presence of at least one symptom).
PMS was first described by an English doctor Robert Frank in 1931: he linked the instability of the emotional and psychological state of a woman and the occurrence of specific pains with the onset of the second (lutein) phase of the premenstrual cycle. In order to get rid of the disease, the "good doctor", by the way, recommended removing the ovaries. In general, to be honest, the discovery of Frank has not gone further than the discovery: there are theories of the onset of PMS, but none of them have been proven. What we have as a result of this is understandable: carelessness in diagnosis, the absence of clearly identified links between causes and effects, and the selection of suitable preventive means and procedures is performed almost blindly. And even hysterectomy does not guarantee the complete healing of premenstrual syndrome.
Gynecologist Valentina Yavnyuk confirms that there is no single and unambiguous opinion about the cause of premenstrual syndrome: “The most“ working ”position for endocrinologists lies in the idea of the so-called ecological and reproductive dissonance. The life of a modern woman goes against her reproductive program , which has not changed for thousands of years. Nature has not provided for monthly hormonal changes. Until recently, in the precontraceptive epoch, the hormonal cycle of a woman looked very different than today me: ovulation - pregnancy - childbirth - prolonged breastfeeding (up to three years) - and a new ovulatory cycle.Thus, the cycle, which used to take about four years, is repeated today by a woman every month (i.e., the oscillation itself is justified, but too often. Paradoxically, but physiological, the natural process of reproductive activity causes the disease due to the non-physiological "mode of operation" of the female body. "
The first attempts to thoroughly standardize the diagnosis of ICP appeared quite recently, but a consensus on this issue has not been reached so far. At the same time, for an average person who is not burdened with knowledge about the functioning of the female body, premenstrual syndrome does not appear to be a disease that requires careful study. For most, this is primarily a set of behavioral characteristics, lying in the common pot of stereotypes along with "female logic" and "female friendship." Such ignorant perceptions can not only dare women from doctors' offices for many years, but truly destroy relationships and well-being - and not for one week at all.
Professional help with this can help alleviate the situation. The fluctuation of hormones takes a lot of manpower and resources from the body, so why not help it? Most often, doctors resort to hormone therapy, prescribing, if there are indications, oral contraceptives. In case of confirmed dysphoric disorder, antidepressants may be prescribed. However, in milder cases, you can try to change lifestyle in order to facilitate the flow of PMS, says Valentina Yavnyuk: "Hormonal activity greatly affects the processes occurring in the central nervous system, but there is also feedback. Constant stress, work and emotional overload, lack of mobility and, in general, an irregular lifestyle can aggravate the course of PMS. Proper nutrition, moderate exercise, emotional comfort and satisfaction with one’s sexual and social life are positive. affect the stress resistance of the body, and thus help to relieve and PMS easier. "
Whatever the reason, in the first place, it is worthwhile to abandon the misogynical perception of this peculiarity, which throws us away at a time when a woman during her period was considered unclean. Most likely, this is a reason to take time off (quite acceptable practice in developed countries), sit at home in shorts and a T-shirt and read a book, disassemble the debris of letters, or just finally sleep. Not so long ago, it was considered indecent to inform anyone that you had a period, and we know many examples of the activist struggle for the appearance of such a normal phenomenon as menstruation. It is important to understand: do not hide everything that accompanies it. It is silence that gives rise to myths and conjectures about natural processes and phenomena, as a result of which they move into the category of taboo subjects. A woman may have PMS or it may not be - and this is normal.
Perhaps, we will see the first sane studies in the near future, and along with them there will be much more understandable explanations and preventive schemes. The most important tasks today are to set up an open conversation about the problem, not to hush up its importance and to send forces to study it. So we will leave in the past legends about the mandatory uncontrollable tantrums and the complete dependence of women on the biological factors that someone uses for self-justification, and that - for discrimination. It would be nice to be in a world where the phrase "I have PMS" will not cause horror or ridicule, but the understanding of others.
The photo: Sanrio