How to Love Your Period

Published by admin on Tagged Body, Beauty & Health menstruation PMS

When lobotomy is not an option, what do you do when feeling cranky, irritable, and bilious one week out of every month? Well, you can take the Pill. You can take an anti-depressant. You can give it up and just be cranky, irritable, and bilious. Or…you can reframe the discussion.

Turn it on its head by stopping the resistance. Resistance is making the whole thing worse than it needs to be. Quit approaching the menses as a hellish period to be endured with the fewest felonies possible and start embracing it. It’s a form of self-deception, yes. Who cares? Think Manchurian Candidate.

Old: I’m psychotic!  

New: I’m letting my Inner Bitch romp and play!

Old: I hate this endless weeping! 

New: I get to feel so wonderfully intensely once a month. What a treat! 

Old: Oy, the water weight! 

New: If I didn’t blimp up now, I won’t feel so thin in about 4 days.

Old: I’m evil for eating that whole carrot cake! 

New: I get to relax my hyper-vigilant weight obsession once a month and actually eat. If I didn’t have hormones, it wouldn’t happen.

Old: Why am I so crazy??!  

New: Wait. I am reading everyone correctly.  It’s the rest of the month I should be worried about.

Periods in Your 30s and 40s

Have you noticed your cycle is changing as you get older? Anecdotal evidence says it does - and often symptoms you already thought couldn’t get worse…get, uh, worse. Common complaints of women in their thirties and forties include the intensifying of previous minor annoyances: like, if you always gain 12 pounds of water-weight, you’ll now gain 20. If you’re already a PMS sufferer, the evil may begin earlier in your cycle and last longer. Crying jags, unhinged sentimentality, touchy paranoia also seem to get a tad more…forceful. It can get so bad you finally enter into the 9-9-9 premise: Nine a-symptomatic, relatively decent days a month. Nine hellish days bloating and hungrily prowling the fridge, awaiting your period. Nine hellish days in full-bore PMS, actual period time, and then recovery - making amends to friends and loved ones.

What Your Gynie Will Recommend

• Exercise
• Lose the caffeine, alcohol, and chocolate
• Avoid salty foods
• Vitamin therapy: the “PMS cocktail”

If That Fails, The Gynie Considers

• Putting you on The Pill
• Prescription diuretics
• Possible Prozac or other anti-depressant
• Sneaking out of the examining room

Essential PMS Goodies

• PMS Cocktail: Vitamins E (400-600 IU, daily) B6 (50-300 mgs, daily), Magnesium (250-500 mgs, only during period), Calcium (1200 mgs, daily)
• Decaf coffee (mix with regular to take it down slooow)
• Mood stabilizing herb tea like Celestial Seasonings® “Sleepytime” or Chinese Dong Quai
• Non salty snack food in bulk

May 5th, 2007