solving pms through diet?

[Cheappinkfizz]

Has anyone managed to do this successfully?

My pms is taking up 2 weeks of every month, it starts the day I ovulate and I can't cope with it any more (drama emoticon)! Unfortunately neither can dp who has said that if I don't get it sorted he's not sure how much more he can take.

I went to the drs yesterday and she says I'm extremely sensitive to progesterone so she can't try anything hormonal. Before she gives me fluoxetine she wants me to adjust my diet but I'm sceptical.

Will I have to give up all coffee, wine, any form of stodgy food until I reach menopause? Will it make that much difference and if I have one relapse (a night out say) what effect will it have? Sorry this is long, am thinking out loud.

No idea about most of your post I'm afraid, but I did find that evening primrose oil in quite high doses helped me a lot. However, I think it is debatable why (or even if) this really works; I was desperate though and was happy with the results.

I would really recommend you get hold of a book by Jennie Brand-Miller entitled 'The Low GI Guide to managing PCOS'. Also one by Rick Gallop called 'The Low GI Diet'. The hormonal imbalances that lead to PCOS and PMS are related to insulin production in the body.... and this can be positively influenced by diet.

A Low GI diet is essentially the type of diet that a Type II diabetic would follow and it's extremely easy to adapt to & very health. The foodstuffs to really cut back on are sugar and refined starches, which lets out a lot of processed foods and other junk. However, if you replace these foods with less processed, wholegrains and other wholefoods you can eat really well and really stabilise your blood-sugar levels and insulin production.

A simple example would be swapping white sliced bread for wholegrain loaves, or basic white pasta for wholemeal pasta... in each case replacing a refined starch with a much less processed food. Vegetables, beans, eggs, lean meat, fish etc. are good examples of wholefoods. You will find you need to cook more meals from scratch.... that's because you're starting with unprocessed foods.

Coffee isn't a problem in moderation. Alcohol - being converted sugar - is something you should probably cut out for a while, get used to drinking other things and then see if you want to reintroduce it in a much smaller way. It's pretty bad for your health in other ways anyway and if it means you don't turn into a monster on a monthly basis, it has to be a sacrifice worth making.

The only thing that helped with my pms, is ginseng, it seems to have put my body in hormonal balance. I tried the pms diet book , gave up sugar and dairy and that didn't help me , other than losing a bit of weight.

You aren't meant to take ginseng permanently though and I've had a break from it for a couple of weeks, my period's gone haywire , currently on day 7 of heavy bleeding and I'm very weepy and over sensitive. I don't see how that's a coincidence.
I take ginseng and gingko biloba from healthspan , they are a high dosage, far higher than supermarket supplements but Morrisons and Asda both do a ginseng + multi vit.

when i went to gp recently for same thing, she said that recent research found that white bread was good for combatting pms.

I was surprised by this but would certainly explain why i crave it so much at some times.

She also recommended raw foods as much as poss. I was also prescribed fluoxetine (sp)
but so far have been too scared to take it.

Bugger totally forgot about this, shows where my head was when I posted it!

Thanks for the replies. That's interesting about white bread JB, it goes against other recommendations that I've read about 'whole' vs processed foods. Good luck with the fluoxetine, have you taken them yet?

the dr told me to take a high dose of calcium and magnesium, which I started at the end of last week and to try adjusting my diet for a couple of months to see if it makes any difference. I'll give it a go, but am not convinced it will work. I'm not very organised at the best of times and she suggested planning all my meals for the second half of my cycle, but I'm not the road or in London for a lot of the time.

cycle diet website look s interesting and I'll have a look at the GI book for some suggestions.

Bugger totally forgot about this, shows where my head was when I posted it!

Thanks for the replies. That's interesting about white bread JB, it goes against other recommendations that I've read about 'whole' vs processed foods. Good luck with the fluoxetine, have you taken them yet?

the dr told me to take a high dose of calcium and magnesium, which I started at the end of last week and to try adjusting my diet for a couple of months to see if it makes any difference. I'll give it a go, but am not convinced it will work. I'm not very organised at the best of times and she suggested planning all my meals for the second half of my cycle, but I'm not the road or in London for a lot of the time.

cycle diet website look s interesting and I'll have a look at the GI book for some suggestions.

I'm with malificence on this; though some people are not too good with ginseng I used dong quoi ( I think the spelling's right!!)and gingko for short term memory loss.

Cheappink..yr. doc. sounds amazing she actually mentioned diet!!! It definitely does affect PMS and most other things!!