PMDD Quote of the Week - A Doctor's View

April is PMDD Awareness month.  I can't begin to imagine how much further we would be along the path to health and healing if we only had more doctors like this.  This woman "gets" it.

What is PMDD?

"A reproductive disorder whereby women experience transient physical and emotional changes around the time of their period, PMDD is associated with a level of impairment that is similar to major depressive disorder and poorer quality of life compared with community norms, therefore it should be considered a serious health condition. PMDD can have adverse consequences on a woman's social functioning, relationships, work productivity and healthcare use..."

and

"Treatment generally continues for duration of a woman's reproductive life.  If one considers that a female typically menstruates 300 - 500 times during her lifetime, timely identification and initiation of appropriate treatment may prevent impairment.  This, together with support and TLC from loved ones or spouses, can go a long way in improving the quality of life of PMDD sufferers."

~Dr. Eileen Thomas, a specialist psychiatrist at Akeso Clinic, Milnerton (Cape Town, South Africa)

To read the full article, go here.

As Dr. Thomas so rightfully points out, a female can experience up to 500 menstrual cycles during her lifetime. I also mention this in my books, PMDD and Relationships, and PMDD:  A Handbook for Partners.  Below are a couple of sample excerpts:

Let’s do the math. The average age of female puberty is 12; the average age of menopause is 51. Round that off to 40 years of menstruation. Multiply that by 12; that gives you 480 months of periods if you never have children, less if you do. Let’s go with 450 periods for now. That gives you 900 weeks of pre-menstrual issues. Divide that by 52 weeks per year, and you get 17+ years that a woman can spend in the living hell that is PMDD.

Seventeen years, people!

and 

Seventeen years is a long time to feel and/or be out of control. Seventeen years is also a long time to be on medication, especially medication that studies now show doesn’t work more than half the time.

Listen, nobody knows for sure what causes PMDD. All scientists know is it is a biological event that manifests as emotional symptoms. What does that mean? It means PMDD is caused by something that happens in your body and shows/expresses itself in your moods. The closest science has come to defining what happens is that whatever happens, happens in concert with your menstrual cycle, and involves your hormones. The hormones they have looked at the most are estrogen, progesterone, and now a metabolite of progesterone, called allopregnanolone.

Some schools of thought are convinced it has something to do with the levels of these hormones in your body, and whether they are in the right balance or not. But you can’t detect PMDD with a blood test, and every estrogen/progesterone blood test I have taken has shown my levels to be perfectly normal, even when I was in the middle of a PMDD episode.

I think the best science has come up with so far is that yes, PMDD does have to do with your hormonal fluctuations, but it’s more that something goes awry in your brain when processing these normal and natural hormonal fluctuations in your body.

That’s right. Something goes wrong in your brain.

No news to us, right? We’ve known all along something wasn’t right with our brains, with our thinking processes, during an episode of PMDD. Why else would we say and do the things we say and do during an episode, but not during the rest of the month?

As part of PMDD Awareness month, I invite you to share in the comments section below any adverse consequences YOU have experienced in your social functioning, relationships, work productivity and/or healthcare use due to your PMDD.  Share to help make aware!