JOIN USRo kyun raha hai...PMS ho raha hai kya?” said 21-year-old Rahul Verma, in a jovial tone to his friend Akshay Arora, who was sitting in dull mood, eyes glaring at his smartphone, on a pleasant Sunday morning.
Premenstrual Syndrome or PMS are the physical and emotional symptoms experienced by women, one or two weeks before their monthly cycle.
Five to seven years back, a woman’s periods or menstrual cycle was a fairly hush-hush topic and discussing about its symptoms wasn’t a common activity. However, with growing awareness and so called ‘openness’ in society about such prevalent realities, people now feel more comfortable discussing and expressing about PMS.
But what makes Verma accuse Arora of undergoing PMS, while the latter was in a sad mood?
While an increasing amount of mood swings and emotional outbursts have now entered the realm of PMS, Metrolife spoke to a few individuals and doctors, to get deeper into the concept of the irritable and highly-experienced syndrome.
Twenty-two-year old Prachi Sharma* says, “I didn’t even know what PMS was, till I was in school. Discussing about my periods, let alone expressing how I felt about it, wasn’t something that I was ‘supposed’ to do that time.”
A graduate in Sociology from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University, Sharma feels, “ever since I gained maturity and entered college three years ago, I started realising and accepting these mood-swings before my periods.”
Sharing how she deals with PMS, she says, “It can be tackled both actively and passively. Back in school, I remember shutting everything out and sleeping off every mood-swing that I experienced. But now, I fight it more actively by adopting some relaxing music therapy or by engaging in physical exercises.”
While Sharma manages to handle her lows during PMS, there are a lot of teenage and adolescent girls who have started using PMS as an ‘excuse’, every time they feel sad or undergo depression. Some complain of experiencing its symptoms after their menstrual cycle, and others experience it way ahead of it.
As Dr Meenakshi Ahuja, director of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Fortis La Femme, Greater Kailash-II, clarifies, “It is onlypremenstrual, and it can never
be experienced post menstrual cycle.”
Surely then, just the way Rahul mocked at Akshay’s sadness as undergoing PMS, the syndrome has now become something of a joke for many.
“Women and young girls now experience more PMS because of increasing
intake of junk food and unhealthy lifestyle,” Dr Ahuja tells Metrolife.
“It is aggravated by the consumption of tea, caffeine and lack of physical activity,” she adds.
“People now have a sedentary lifestyle. Even today, those who eat a balanced diet and have a disciplined and healthy lifestyle, experience comparatively less mood swings because of PMS,” she says.
Here, we get back to Sharma, who recently gave up smoking and alcohol
consumption. “I was in the habit of smoking two-three cigarettes in a day and I remember my PMS was at a worse level back then. But now that I have quit, I feel that the syndrome strikes me less and is more controllable,” elucidates Sharma.
Mood swings can be experienced by both males and females, and one can’t merely blame PMS for the same. The sense of self, taking charge of one’s own life, has become utterly important.
Dr Ahuja suggests, “A healthy change in lifestyle, more consumption of fruits, vegetables and salts”, as measures of overcoming PMS.
Coincidentally, the same suggestions can be used by all those who feel unnecessarily sad or have fallen in the trap of getting depressed by people’s posts on social media!
(*Name changed on request)