PMS affects 70 to 90 percent of menstruating women. It is more than just the humorous “mood swing” joked about. PMS has serious symptoms including headaches, back pain, swollen and tender breasts, increased anxiety, bloating, acne breakouts, fatigue, food cravings, and more.

Things that Make PMS Worse

• Caffeine
• Salt
• Artificial sweeteners
• Processed foods
• Hydrogenated fats

Helps for PMS

• A veggie based diet…especially dark green ones.
• Exercise
• For cramps try, Aleve.
• Massage
• B vitamins
• Get your daily dose of iron
• Drink  Cranberry juice
• Calcium supplements

There are no set cures for the PMS curse. However, we can, as women, fight them PMS monster the best we can!

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Once a month, the people around me get really stupid and obnoxious. Some people might think that’s PMS. I just think that I tend to be more observant than normal a few days out of the month. (I’m certainly more aware of how really annoying my husband can be.)

A few of my friends think of PMS as something negative. On the contrary, I see it as a chance to take charge. I’m normally an easy-going person but when I have PMS, I turn into Super PMS Woman. I feel I must right all wrongs, no matter how trivial. I imagine I go into a phone booth like Superman to change into my Super PMS Woman outfit. (No leotards and tights though I’m retaining a lot of water and I feel rather puffy.) Then Im ready to take on the injustices of the world, whether they exist or not. And believe me, when I have PMS, I can find plenty of injustices to complain about.

Normally, a mild-mannered mom, Super PMS Woman gets cranky faster than a speeding bullet, argues with friends and family more powerfully than a locomotive and is able to jump to conclusions in a single bound.

I know that if I wait until that certain week of the month Ill have that extra bit of, lets just say energy, to deal with incompetence. So when I need to fight with my insurance company about their most recent mess-up or when I have to call and complain to the catalog company that they sent the wrong order again, I wait until I have PMS. Why should I only share it with my friends and family?

That’s only one of the many positives of PMS. Really. Think about it, once a month, I have a built in excuse to be crabby. If I feel like eating a whole container of cookie dough ice cream or even raw cookie dough, I can do it without having to answer any questions. If my husband opens his mouth, I just snarl at him and point to the calendar and he gets the hint. As a matter of fact, he sometimes leaves skid marks as he runs out of the room to safety.

And cramps are a great way to get out of doing work. My husband thinks that I can still do housework when I’m running a 102 degree fever but cramps are a mysterious disease that make it impossible for me to do anything. Last month cramps got me out of going to a kids birthday party. Okay, okay, the cramps weren’t that bad but I didn’t want my husband to miss the fun of yet another princess fairy butterfly party.

And then there’s the intense craving for chocolate. Its true, I always have a craving for chocolate, however, it definitely gets worse when I have PMS. I’m prone to throwing open the cupboards while loudly accusing my family members of eating the last bits of candy left over from Valentines Day.

My friends tell me that the craving for chocolate I feel is psychological. It has nothing to do with PMS. And I tell them, Hey, get your grubby hands off my chocolate bar and you wont get hurt

So if you see me in my Super PMS Woman cape, just do what my husband does: give me some chocolate and back away slowly. Don’t worry, Ill change back to my mild-mannered self soon.

Laura Browne is the author of a serious but practical & easy-to-use book for women, Why Cant You Communicate Like Me? How Smart Women Get Results At Work available at Barnes & Noble online, www.bn.com Laura offers free teleconferences on How To Deal With Difficult People At Work. For more information, email her at laura4b@earthlink.net or go to http://www.inyourfaceink.com

When Laura isnt writing, she helps women be more successful through WOMEN Unlimited, a nationally recognized resource for cultivating leadership excellence, http://www.women-unlimited.com

(This article was originally printed in Cranberry Magazine.)

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