Website Transition In Progress - Please Excuse the Construction
by Dr. Daniel J. Heller
The medical headlines have been full of proclamations recently claiming that PMS is a myth, because of a recent study that was published in the journal “Gender Medicine” and came from a research group based at the University of Toronto.
Well, PMS is not a myth. The researchers say that the emotions women experience around the time of their period may just be tiredness or stress, but these researchers apparently haven’t studied the basics of women’s physiology. Of course women are tired and stressed when they have PMS or PMDD! That doesn’t mean that the fatigue and stress are the cause of the PMS: it could be that the PMS is causing the tiredness and stress.
What’s more important is that, because research is almost always an attempt to nail down a single cause, this study ignores the holistic truth that hormones are affected by fatigue and stress, and vice versa. You can’t really isolate them from each other, and when you try to—as these researchers did—you end up ignoring common sense.
Journalists and the media usually have minimal knowledge of medicine, medical research, and human physiology, so they often tend to trumpet the latest research as the last word on a subject, even when that single headline-grabbing study contradicts hundreds of high quality studies that came before. Unfortunately, most of us have to get our medical news from sources that are simply not qualified to pass judgment on research, and shouldn’t be the ones making the decisions about what stories deserve headlines, and which deserve to be ignored.
Still, this story about “PMS is a myth” shouldn’t be ignored, because it keeps raising its ugly head, year after year.
PMS and PMDD are not a myth. They are real, physical conditions, caused by a combination of hormones, genetics, diet, stress, and psychological conditions (psychology has a physical-chemical component, of course.) And in case you’re wondering if there is any research to prove that PMS is not a myth, here’s some proof of the existence and seriousness of PMS and PMDD:
Just because some medical research makes the front page of the news or of your favorite website, that doesn’t mean it’s true. PMS and PMDD are real, and they have very real impacts in women’s lives.
Ju
J
by Dr. Daniel J. Heller
Two of the most common questions we hear, both in the doctor’s office and here on the PMS Comfort website is “Should I get my hormone levels checked?” or “Do I need a saliva test to check for a hormone imbalance?” If your concern is PMS or PMDD or another premenstrual symptom like breast tenderness or cramps, then you don’t need any hormone tests. This is because hormone levels in your blood or saliva don’t determine whether or not you’ll have premenstrual dysphoric disorder or premenstrual syndrome. Hormone levels, including estrogen, estradiol level, and fsh levels are normal in almost all women when these tests are performed.
However, if you do a saliva hormone test, there’s a good chance you’ll be told that saliva tests are more accurate and are more sensitive for detecting hormone imbalance. In fact, these tests rarely tell you more than what your symptoms are already telling you: that your hormones are out of balance.
We understand how confusing this can be. Your medical doctor may very well have done a blood test for hormones, perhaps at your insistence, and told you that you’re fine, everything is normal, and that your premenstrual symptoms aren’t being caused by a hormonal imbalance. Then you get a saliva hormone test, and it says that you do have a hormone imbalance, and that is what is causing your PMS symptoms or PMDD symptoms. Now we’re telling you that they’re both wrong? How can that be?
The problem is, hormones in your blood stream or your saliva don’t cause PMS or PMDD symptoms. It’s the specific way your individual hormones interact with the cells all over your body (not just your uterus or ovaries or brain) that determine how your hormones affect you—and there is no way to test for this cell-hormone interaction other than your symptoms. You could have very high estrogen levels, but that might not cause cramps or mood swings or fatigue in your case. Your friend may have low estrogen levels and have PMS cramps or premenstrual mood swings or PMDD fatigue. And this isn’t surprising, because it’s how the cells of your brain and your muscles and your whole body react to hormones that determines how you feel. And there is no test for that. Or, to put it another way, your body and feelings themselves are the most sensitive test there could ever be, meaning your symptoms tell you pretty much all you need to know.
This is why we created the PMS Comfort PMS & PMDD Symptom Quiz, the quickest and easiest way to find out if your symptoms may add up to PMS or PMDD. Unless you’ve already decided that you want to take hormonal drugs (even bioidentical hormones are drugs), we suggest you steer clear of hormone tests.
by Dr. Daniel J. Heller
by Dr. Daniel J. Heller