PMS still a major health
problem
PMS? Who cares you ask? No body talks about PMS any more why
should we care?
While it seems we hear less about PMS from the media and on the
news today, we can assure you that it is neither dead, buried nor gone
from the lives of women. Although PMS no longer seems to be in
the news, it is a reality that millions of women still face on a monthly basis. PMS, or premenstrual syndrome, is a medical problem which of often mistreated or under treated. While more physicians recognize the term today and even accept it as a medical problem, this does not mean that we have made much of a headway in solving this problem. The usual way most physicians deal with women who suffer from PMS is to prescribe one or another of the many drugs or hormones already on the market to eliminate PMS symptoms.
The problem however, is that PMS is really the tip of a nutritional iceberg. It is a symptom of an underlying nutritional deficiency syndrom which is more and more prevalent in America and throughout the Western world. PMS, coronary artery disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure all have a common basis. While each outwardly looks and acts differently they all have the common thread of having nutritional deficiencies at their root. In women, PMS is often a forerunner to many of these conditions. When discovered early and treated correctly, through dietary and lifestyle changes, PMS can be a life saver as it allow the woman to modify her diet so they nutritional deficiencies which are causing it are corrected and hence break the cycle which can lead to the more serious consequences listed above.
The culprit in PMS is not "bad" hormones, nor is it a deficiency or excess of brain chemicals, as it is often described by well meaning but unsophisticated physicians, nor even genetics or a deficiency of Prozac or other tranquilizers or diuretics. Rather it is a product of the Standard American Diet or SAD as we like to refer to it, which is a diet high in refined and processed foods, refined sugars, fat but deficient in many essential vitamins, minerals and other nutrients necessary for our body work in the way it is supposed to work, healthfully. PMS, is one of the symptoms as well as long term consequences of eating a diet which is deficient in essential nutrients.
While PMS on it own is neither lethal nor dangerous, it can lead to years of misery, emotional conflict, marital and sexual problems. It has been the underlying problem in many failed marriages, divorces, lost jobs, failure in school, business and in a host of other relationship problems. PMS not only affects the woman, but her partner, her children, her family, her friends and her coworkers.
PMS not only affects adult women, but more and more teenaged girls. It often plays a significant role in early sexual acting out, unwanted pregnancies, runaway behavior, poor grades in school, suicidal acts and attempts and a host of other problems teen age girls with PMS may be faced with. Both teenage girls and adult women often face issues of reduced self confidence, poor self image, depression, extreme dieting, and other destructive acting out that seem to occur for no apparent reason.
If it were not enough to have to face all of this those women, mothers
