Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From how Supports
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline and Caroline. I have a feeling that
Speaker 1: some listeners probably saw the title of this episode is
Speaker 1: p MS a myth? And thought what I see and
Speaker 1: see off their rockers could possibly be a myth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I mean, I know that I definitely experience
Speaker 1: various symptoms every month depending I mean, it depends, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot more than just are you crampy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: crampy and cranky? Yeah, that's actually what CNC stands for.
Speaker 1: Crampy and cranky some days, you know, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: it happens. We have our scenes, the kinds of days,
Speaker 1: just like the next gal or guy or guy. Yeah. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: before we get into the potential mythology of p MS,
Speaker 1: which I know people are probably on the edge of
Speaker 1: their seats right to find out about, let's start with
Speaker 1: some basic facts about what p M S is. For starters,
Speaker 1: it stands for pre menstrul syndrome, right, and this whole
Speaker 1: syndrome deal refers to a wide range of symptoms that
Speaker 1: start during the second half of your menstrreul cycle. That's
Speaker 1: fourteen days or more after the first day of your
Speaker 1: last menstrual period, and they tend to go away a
Speaker 1: day or two after your period starts. And it comes
Speaker 1: with all sorts of delightful symptoms, And National Institutes of
Speaker 1: Health has such a long, long list of potential symptoms
Speaker 1: associated with it, including common things such as mood swings,
Speaker 1: breast tenderness, food cravings, fatigue, here to ability, depression, just
Speaker 1: general C and C kinds of feelings, right, and in
Speaker 1: severe cases, the levels of mood disruption are similar to
Speaker 1: those of people with major depression. Actually, and women with
Speaker 1: pre menstrual dysphoric disorder or pmd D appeared to be
Speaker 1: at a greater risk of developing major depression. And we
Speaker 1: will dive a little bit deeper into pm d D
Speaker 1: later on in the episode. But just talking about PMS
Speaker 1: in general, how many women does it affect? Pretty much
Speaker 1: all people who have periods, including women and trans men.
Speaker 1: But even the stats for that can be all over
Speaker 1: the place, because by some estimates, three of every four
Speaker 1: men's training person experiences some form of PMS. But then
Speaker 1: when it comes to the types of symptoms, the intensity,
Speaker 1: the frequency, things really start to vary. For instance, there's
Speaker 1: a paper trying to quantify p MS and it found that, uh,
Speaker 1: some degree of temporary quote mental or physical incapacitation is
Speaker 1: experienced by women while experience were current prementional symptoms. So
Speaker 1: who knows where you might fall in that right and
Speaker 1: breaking it down further, the American Congress of Obstetricians and
Speaker 1: Kynecologists says that probably somewhere around of women experience at
Speaker 1: least one symptom, and we listed a bunch of them,
Speaker 1: and there are a whole bunch more. I mean, everything
Speaker 1: from mood stuff to physical pain to acne. There's like
Speaker 1: a ton of stuff as a lot of you might
Speaker 1: guess associated with PMF. But again, the symptoms experience will
Speaker 1: vary from person to person and from cycle to cycle,
Speaker 1: which is partially why the National Institutes of Health and
Speaker 1: plenty of other sources explicitly state that the exact cause
Speaker 1: of PMS has not been identified, which is kind of
Speaker 1: mind blowing. I mean, I you know, I mean like
Speaker 1: I'm a woman with a uterus and ovaries, and I
Speaker 1: have a period, and so I have experienced pre menstrual symptoms. Um,
Speaker 1: but I thought for sure I thought for sure there
Speaker 1: would be more, because you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: talk about hormones and this and that it's not you know,
Speaker 1: it's obviously not that hormones don't play a role in
Speaker 1: pre menstrual symptoms, but the fact that nobody has nailed
Speaker 1: this sucker down as far as like this, this is why,
Speaker 1: this is what causes it, and this is what makes
Speaker 1: it bad or not as bad or whatever. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like, I just felt doubly disappointed because it's kind
Speaker 1: of the same thing with my migraines, Like doctors are,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people get migraines, we're not really
Speaker 1: sure well. And it's also PMS is also such almost
Speaker 1: an indoctrinated part of the menstrual cycle that we learn
Speaker 1: about as young girls, probably even before we get our
Speaker 1: first period. We know that there's also this other set
Speaker 1: of things that might come with it, even before the
Speaker 1: bleeding begins, and it's called p MS. And yet, yeah,
Speaker 1: doctors are still kind of scratching their heads because I
Speaker 1: mean they have some decent guesses. Obviously, it has to
Speaker 1: do with hormonal fluctuations, particularly varying levels of progesterone and
Speaker 1: estrogen over our cycles, which you know you hear the
Speaker 1: average twenty eight days, although again not everybody's mentional cycle
Speaker 1: is twenty eight days. Um. It might also have to
Speaker 1: do with levels of serotonin, changing, depression, stress, dietary habits, exercise,
Speaker 1: so many environmental and biological factors that could maybe contribute
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, and not to mention that your hormones
Speaker 1: and your serotonine are connected, because researchers show that falling
Speaker 1: levels of hormones, mainly estrogen during the luvial phase or
Speaker 1: the pre menstrual phase might effect the activity of central
Speaker 1: serotonin in people who are susceptible to experiencing these symptoms.
Speaker 1: And seratonin is often referred to as the happy hormone,
Speaker 1: you know, the hormone that makes us feel great. So
Speaker 1: maybe if the serotonin drops, then you get a case
Speaker 1: of the se and seas, which I really I realized
Speaker 1: that maybe I shouldn't stop just referring to PMS as
Speaker 1: the se and c s because it could possibly sour
Speaker 1: people toward us. Yeah, we don't want to be maybe
Speaker 1: too closely aligned with p MS. Well, although that could
Speaker 1: make for a funny T shirt, that's true. This is true.
Speaker 1: Lots of lots of ideas happening here. Um. But in
Speaker 1: the meantime, back to PMS and the science of it.
Speaker 1: It is so widespread though, some wonder whether there is
Speaker 1: an evolutionary explanation to this, And we read a paper
Speaker 1: about this called were there evolutionary Advantages to p MS?
Speaker 1: By Michael R. Gilling's published in twenty fourteen in a
Speaker 1: journal Evolutionary Applications, and Gilling suspects that, yes, there has
Speaker 1: to have been some kind of advantage to this, right
Speaker 1: because after all, as he points out, PMS does have
Speaker 1: certain important attributes to it, which include a high heritability.
Speaker 1: So he's saying that you know, if people in your family,
Speaker 1: specifically women, if women and your family had, you know,
Speaker 1: terrible PMS, for instance, then you might be more likely
Speaker 1: to suffer those symptoms. He also talks about gene variants
Speaker 1: associated with PMS being identified, but his main point that
Speaker 1: he gets to is this whole issue of animosity during
Speaker 1: PMS being preferentially directed at a woman's current partner that
Speaker 1: may lend itself to increasing the chances of finding a
Speaker 1: new partner. And it's like, huh, what your period makes
Speaker 1: you go search for a new partner? Not exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: so he thinks that perhaps PMS is a vehicle that
Speaker 1: was used to help women dissolve in fertile relationships because obviously,
Speaker 1: if you get your period usually usually means you aren't pregnant,
Speaker 1: and so if a relationship is not resulting in pregnancy,
Speaker 1: especially we were talking about way back when, when there's
Speaker 1: so much more focused simply on procreation, that if that
Speaker 1: wasn't happening, then perhaps PMS sort of prompts this hostility
Speaker 1: towards your current partner and to then drive a wedge
Speaker 1: between this relationship and send you off searching for someone else.
Speaker 1: So there's that. Yeah, but I mean, you know, they're
Speaker 1: a bajillion women out there on birth control who are
Speaker 1: controlling their reproductive path and choices, and you know, still
Speaker 1: having periods on their birth control. So well, that's something
Speaker 1: that he points out in terms of the possible theoretical
Speaker 1: prior function of PMS us in the days long before
Speaker 1: birth control, and how today without that possible function at work,
Speaker 1: because we have birth control and more control over our
Speaker 1: reproductive cycles, that it's not it's not as applicable obviously today. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: also under this hypothesis, PMS is not a syndrome per se,
Speaker 1: but quote a normal consequence of adaptive strategies developed during
Speaker 1: our evolutionary history. So, in other words, the next time
Speaker 1: someone maybe uh makes a makes a joke at you
Speaker 1: about being all pmss e, you can come back with, hey, listen, buster,
Speaker 1: this is just a normal consequence of adaptive strategies developed
Speaker 1: during our evolutionary history. All right, then back off, drop
Speaker 1: your imaginary microphone or your tampon, use the tampon as
Speaker 1: a standoff like a tampon his or her face, and
Speaker 1: walk away, right and then apologize because that might be rude.
Speaker 1: But so we've established, Caroline, that p MS exists. They're
Speaker 1: clearly symptoms. You and I have both experienced them. A
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners have probably experienced them. So why
Speaker 1: is the title of this episode? Is PMS a myth?
Speaker 1: Why are we calling it a myth? Perhaps, Well, it's
Speaker 1: that whole keyword pre menstrul that has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with it. There was a literature review from researchers
Speaker 1: at the University of Toronto called Mood and the Minstrel
Speaker 1: Cycle Review of Perspective Data Studies, which called the whole
Speaker 1: mood aspect of PMS into question, and it actually got
Speaker 1: a lot of people riled up because basically they looked
Speaker 1: at a ton of studies and did not find a
Speaker 1: whole huge amount of evidence supporting that just in the
Speaker 1: pre menstrual period you're more likely to definitely have mood disorders.
Speaker 1: This was then interpreted by a lot of people, bloggers, journalists,
Speaker 1: whatever to mean that it doesn't exist, and you're all crazy, right,
Speaker 1: So a lot of as happens a lot these days,
Speaker 1: actually when it comes to reporting on study findings, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of misinterpretation. So one of the authors
Speaker 1: speaking to The Atlantic clarified that the whole point of
Speaker 1: this analysis of the forty one studies they looked at.
Speaker 1: The whole point was not to show that menstrual mood
Speaker 1: shifts don't exist at all, or that the physical symptoms
Speaker 1: don't says, they actually weren't even looking at the physical symptoms,
Speaker 1: but rather to examine that connection, like you said, between
Speaker 1: menstruation and mood, because she said, the author speaking to
Speaker 1: The Atlantic said, quote, the whole p MS notion serves
Speaker 1: to keep women non irritable, sweet and compliant the rest
Speaker 1: of the time, because out of those forty one studies
Speaker 1: that they looked at, only seven found any sort of
Speaker 1: link between negative moods and the pre menstrul phase, and
Speaker 1: so the study authors concluded that the body of research
Speaker 1: so far has failed to provide clear evidence in support
Speaker 1: of the existence of a specific pre menstrual negative mood syndrome.
Speaker 1: And yet we have this widespread belief that, of course
Speaker 1: during in the days leading up to your period, you
Speaker 1: will be completely emotionally unstable and cry a lot, right,
Speaker 1: which is going to lead us eventually in this episode
Speaker 1: to talk a lot more about how those assumptions and
Speaker 1: stereotypes have been used against women. And this particular study
Speaker 1: is just one that questions the validity of PMS as
Speaker 1: we think about it today. So let's take a look
Speaker 1: kind of through history at how our perception of menstruation
Speaker 1: in general and pre minstrel symptoms in particular have evolved.
Speaker 1: So for a little p MS history, let us star
Speaker 1: in one the year of PMS sounds amazing. Not only
Speaker 1: was the Great Depression on, but this one also the
Speaker 1: year the PMS first happened. So the term pre menstrual
Speaker 1: tension as opposed to pre menstrual syndrome, was first coined
Speaker 1: by Dr Robert T. Frank in a paper he presented
Speaker 1: to the New York Academy of Medicine in which he
Speaker 1: described this pre menstrual tension as intense personal suffering that
Speaker 1: goes along with varying degrees of discomfort and women having
Speaker 1: a feeling like jumping out of our skin. Yeah. He definitely,
Speaker 1: he and several other researchers in this era, I wanted
Speaker 1: to look at what was going on. And it is
Speaker 1: interesting to keep in mind the context of all of
Speaker 1: these things happening, because one major thing that a lot
Speaker 1: of people have focused on when it comes to looking
Speaker 1: at PMS and talking about menstruation and reproductive health is
Speaker 1: sort of the pairing of the way we talk about
Speaker 1: it and the way we think about it and also
Speaker 1: what's going on in the world at the time. And
Speaker 1: so Frank was writing after the Depression, when a lot
Speaker 1: of women's post World War One gains leaving the home,
Speaker 1: getting jobs, etcetera. Were slipping and things were kind of
Speaker 1: going back to quote unquote normal, and so it was
Speaker 1: a time of a lot of social anxiety. And it
Speaker 1: seems like a lot of scholarship about women tends to
Speaker 1: come out in periods of social anxiety. But Frank's prescription
Speaker 1: for severe cases of this pre menstrual tension was either
Speaker 1: complete removal or radiation therapy of the ovaries to decrease
Speaker 1: estrogen production and therefore restore order in the woman's life
Speaker 1: and then therefore in her environment. Well, what's interesting too
Speaker 1: is that in the same year in ne psychoanalyst Karen
Speaker 1: Horny publishes a paper about quote pre menstrual mood swings
Speaker 1: linked to strongly rejected fantasies of motherhood. So talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, these kinds of social anxieties and the background
Speaker 1: of that and how this is influencing research on women, because,
Speaker 1: as Michael Solberg points out in the paper he wrote
Speaker 1: about this, called the Monthly Malady, A History of pre
Speaker 1: menstrul Suffering. Uh, some of the background to these discussions
Speaker 1: that Horny and Frank were initiating about this pre menstrul tension,
Speaker 1: these pre menstrual mood swings, or the fact that there
Speaker 1: were more women entering the workforce, and along with that
Speaker 1: there was growing concern over the potentially negative effects of
Speaker 1: menstruation on productivity. And fast forward to today and you
Speaker 1: hear similar things in terms of oh, well, if a
Speaker 1: female is in the White House, then what happens if
Speaker 1: chigezlberiod and all hell breaks loose? That's right, I know, well,
Speaker 1: but I mean that's the same thing that's been going
Speaker 1: on forever. I mean, you know, sure, now we're worried
Speaker 1: about a female president getting her period and will she
Speaker 1: get all hormonal and whatever, But you know, hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of years ago, people were still freaking
Speaker 1: out about women's reproductive systems having some crazy effect on
Speaker 1: their mental stability. And if we talk about the wandering
Speaker 1: womb and hysteria and everything. But we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: But in this era, in the thirties, there is an
Speaker 1: increasing focus on psychology, and women are starting to complain
Speaker 1: to their doctors more than just about physical pain and
Speaker 1: physical discomfort and fatigue. They're also starting to complain to
Speaker 1: their doctors about psychological symptoms. And that leads us to
Speaker 1: Dr Katerina Dalton, who in nineteen fifty three coins pre
Speaker 1: menstrual syndrome, which has the same symptoms as what Robert
Speaker 1: Frank described earlier, but with the whole incorporation of the
Speaker 1: words syndrome, it basically suggests an underlying disease. It tells
Speaker 1: women in whoever else is listening, that you don't have
Speaker 1: to accept the comfort that you're going through and that
Speaker 1: medicine can help out. Kind of seems like a positive,
Speaker 1: but it's also pathologizing something natural that happens to women
Speaker 1: every month. And what's ironic is that by the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: this same doctor Karine and Dalton is I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about how she really considers PMS a misnomer because
Speaker 1: symptoms aren't restricted to that period right before menstruation. It's
Speaker 1: not just limited to the luteal phase. But you mentioned, Caroline,
Speaker 1: that pathologizing menstruation in this way, it's clearly it's not
Speaker 1: something that that started in nineteen thirty one. And we've
Speaker 1: talked many times on the podcast about hysteria and the
Speaker 1: wandering womb and all of these more ancient theories about
Speaker 1: menstruation because before the twentieth century, doctors really did not
Speaker 1: understand the hormonal influences, partially because the medical technology wasn't there,
Speaker 1: and so we have all of these different phases that
Speaker 1: the concept of menstruation goes through, starting of course with
Speaker 1: Hippocrates and hysteria and the wandering womb and Hippocrates Um
Speaker 1: he alludes actually two p ms. He refers to these
Speaker 1: what we would think of today as menstrual related mood swings,
Speaker 1: but attributed to them to hysteria and uteral movement, that
Speaker 1: wandering womb, which was supposed to correspond to the phases
Speaker 1: of the moon. So this is all tying into why,
Speaker 1: for instance, we call menstruation your moon cycle. Well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also talked about how a woman with a uterus
Speaker 1: containing retained menstrual blood, which pressed on the heart and diaphragm,
Speaker 1: was inclined to various mental derangements. But it's not like
Speaker 1: Hippocrates was alone this. I mean, the ancient Egyptians thought that,
Speaker 1: like the control center of your body was not your brain,
Speaker 1: but your heart. And so if you had a bunch
Speaker 1: of menstrual blood stored up in there and it's pressing
Speaker 1: on your heart, then of course you're going to act
Speaker 1: like a crazy person. Yeah, And once we get into
Speaker 1: the Renaissance, menstruation is thought of as this cathartic process
Speaker 1: of women getting rid of that build up of excrement
Speaker 1: semen in what they called peckant matter. And this idea
Speaker 1: lasts until the mid seventeenth century, and that kind of
Speaker 1: idea in a similar way still persists today in the
Speaker 1: idea of oh, you need to have your period because
Speaker 1: it's cleansing, it's cleaning you out of all of that
Speaker 1: and demetrial tissue that is building up just ties into
Speaker 1: people thinking that women's reproductive organs are gross and dirty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But also in the Renaissance, PMS syndromes were attributed to
Speaker 1: a backup of quote a gross seculent, condensed and clotted,
Speaker 1: and at the same time also sharp blood. Those sharp bloods.
Speaker 1: What does I mean, what does that mean? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but carolina is not good. Does not sound good at all,
Speaker 1: not sound good. Well, So, in the seventeenth century, there
Speaker 1: was a slightly different perspective. It was the plethora model
Speaker 1: of menstruation. Basically, the women bleed to prevent plethora, which
Speaker 1: was defined as an overloading and excessive dilation of the
Speaker 1: vessels and the body in general with blood. So not
Speaker 1: necessarily like cleansing yourself, but just flushing yourself out, getting
Speaker 1: rid of all that blood that's been building up and
Speaker 1: causing pressure in your body. I'm just imagining it's like
Speaker 1: a monthly toilet flushing. That's delightful. Well. Moving into the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, the plethora model is replaced by what's called
Speaker 1: the fermentation model. So things are still things are still
Speaker 1: sharp and gross in there. But the fermentation model explained
Speaker 1: menstrual leading as a result of a quote fermentation or
Speaker 1: fivescence hello by a menstrual ferment or a female semen.
Speaker 1: Is also when they think that that women have um
Speaker 1: a semen that contributes to reproduction as well. But I
Speaker 1: just want to stay on a side note that reading
Speaker 1: about the effervescence just makes me think about us having
Speaker 1: It's really just like a belly full of lacroix building up.
Speaker 1: It's gonna say fresco, Yeah, clearly Canadian um. But this
Speaker 1: fermentation model, though, also explains more of the sudden onset
Speaker 1: of PMS symptoms coming on or right before your menstruation.
Speaker 1: You're bleeding, as opposed to plethora, which by that theory
Speaker 1: would have been a gradual build up of discomfort over
Speaker 1: the entire month. Interesting, and this theory also does its
Speaker 1: part to explain breast swelling and tenderness because they figured
Speaker 1: that it was involved in the sympathetic influence of the uterus,
Speaker 1: causing said breast swelling. But by far my most favorite
Speaker 1: menstrual theory of the seventeen hundreds came when they were
Speaker 1: trying to figure out this connection between menstruation and mood.
Speaker 1: And of course they assumed that with this whole fermentation,
Speaker 1: the the lacroix in your belly and whatnot, that it
Speaker 1: would lead to women's psychological instability for a period of time.
Speaker 1: Um and they referred to it as nervous over excitation,
Speaker 1: mood changes, getting the vapors and it worse though, And
Speaker 1: this was probably like ye old pmd D. Those women
Speaker 1: experienced what was called menstrul folly. Oh, menstrel folly. That
Speaker 1: just sounds like you're making like it's causing you to
Speaker 1: make terrible life decisions, not that you're necessarily experiencing pain
Speaker 1: or anything. I mean, I would vote for calling it
Speaker 1: your menstrual folly to be the new period, because I
Speaker 1: mean there's also a bit of whimsy in that too. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm just going through my menstrual folly like you're skipping
Speaker 1: with ribbons. And in the nineteenth century, menstruation was described
Speaker 1: as an orgasm of the uterus, and Stolberg, citing a
Speaker 1: physician of the time, talks about how the uterus, due
Speaker 1: to its overwhelming sympathetic influence on the nervous system, subjected
Speaker 1: women to its unrelenting tyranny. That sounds awful, the unrelenting
Speaker 1: tyranny of your floating, hysterical uterus. Yeah, I mean with
Speaker 1: things like peckant matter and menstrual folly and vapor and
Speaker 1: lacroix and plethora good, all mixed drink in there. The
Speaker 1: uterus is quite a tyrant by this point. But it
Speaker 1: was also too in the nineteenth century, as Stolberg talks about,
Speaker 1: where you have the development of lifestyle theories associated with
Speaker 1: UM the aggressiveness or intensity of PMS symptoms. Particularly wealthy
Speaker 1: urban women who ate lots of food, did not have children,
Speaker 1: and indulged in quote lascivious novels, music, theater, and painting
Speaker 1: were assumed to be the most susceptible to PMS like symptoms.
Speaker 1: And I have a feeling that it's really though, that
Speaker 1: delay of motherhood and possibly marriage that would cast the
Speaker 1: brightest spotlight on you. Well, right, because the Greeks thought,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is it's so interesting to see the
Speaker 1: direct correlation here. But like, I mean, the Greeks thought
Speaker 1: that if you were experiencing terrible PMS or what we
Speaker 1: would think of as PMDD symptoms, then you needed to
Speaker 1: have sex and get yourself pregnant. But before that you
Speaker 1: would obviously have to get married. And so that kind
Speaker 1: of fixed, you know, that was two birds with one stone, right,
Speaker 1: and their in their view at the time that yes,
Speaker 1: the sexual intercourse would help ease your symptoms and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be quite so moody and crazy, but you would
Speaker 1: also be happily married with children, and society would all
Speaker 1: be as it should well. And then if you fast
Speaker 1: forward to one you have psycho analysts Karen Horney linking
Speaker 1: prementional mood swings to motherhood constructs and essentially us acting
Speaker 1: out against that all of those social anxieties. Kristen, that's right.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean along with this lifestyle theory that
Speaker 1: developed in the nineteenth century, I mean people were really
Speaker 1: concerned not just about women, not just in general, but like,
Speaker 1: people were really concerned about the effect that cities, modernization
Speaker 1: and overpopulation we're having on people. They really thought that
Speaker 1: living in cities was interfering with our animal natures, and
Speaker 1: it just so happened that they assumed that the effects
Speaker 1: of this were worse for women, because of course our
Speaker 1: sanity was consistently linked to reproductive system. So if we're
Speaker 1: having any sort of pre menstrual symptoms and things like that,
Speaker 1: then obviously we're just feeling the effects of the city's
Speaker 1: overpopulation worse than men are. And then moving into the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, things do start to get a little more scientific, because,
Speaker 1: for instance, in the nineteen twenties, scientists isolate sex hormones,
Speaker 1: which then allows for deeper understanding of at least how
Speaker 1: menstruation works and all of the different phases and how
Speaker 1: that's linked to reproduction and pregnancy. But nonetheless, by this
Speaker 1: time we have a centuries worth of this build up
Speaker 1: of this association between menstruation and women's psychological instability and
Speaker 1: moodiness and irritability. And in writing about this, Michael Stolberg
Speaker 1: points out how this whole time women have been describing
Speaker 1: these symptoms, or at least wealthy women who could afford
Speaker 1: to go to doctors, they had been describing these kinds
Speaker 1: of PMS symptoms, but like in terms of the physical
Speaker 1: stuff and even some of the psychological symptoms. But the
Speaker 1: question then is how much of it though, is sort
Speaker 1: of it's the chicken in the egg of how much
Speaker 1: is it just assumed that we're going to feel awful
Speaker 1: and we automatically link irritability and moodiness to menstruation, and
Speaker 1: how much of that might just be irritability and moodiness
Speaker 1: possibly brought on by other things. Yeah, just like life, life,
Speaker 1: my life making us moody. Well, we're going to get
Speaker 1: way more into basically modern psychology and different groups take
Speaker 1: on the constructs of PMS and we get right back
Speaker 1: from a quick break. So when we left off, we
Speaker 1: had just walked through a pretty pretty long medical history
Speaker 1: of the concepts of menstruation and PMS like symptoms, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it explains why for so long women
Speaker 1: have considered periods both a blessing and a curse, because
Speaker 1: on the one hand, there's always been that idea that
Speaker 1: we need to have one because it is cathartic, it's cleansing,
Speaker 1: our bodies need to get rid of that excess fluid
Speaker 1: excess and quotes fluid and endometrial tissue. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, the other side of that coin is a
Speaker 1: curse because of the assumed physical um discomforts along with it.
Speaker 1: But also this question of the psychological instability that that
Speaker 1: purging process might bring along with it. So when we
Speaker 1: get into like the social constructs of what PMS means
Speaker 1: to people, women in particular have cons rude PMS as
Speaker 1: both a positive construct in a negative one, because, Hey,
Speaker 1: now that we know more about the indo chronology, about
Speaker 1: our hormones, about the science of it, it's a good
Speaker 1: thing and it should be taken seriously. This is a
Speaker 1: thing that women experience and we need to learn more
Speaker 1: about it. On the flip side of that, however, the
Speaker 1: more we know about PMS, and the more it's tied
Speaker 1: to mood in some people's minds, the more it is
Speaker 1: used to discount women and what we say and oh,
Speaker 1: she's just p ms NG, she's moody, she's out of
Speaker 1: her mind. We shouldn't listen to her. Well, and also
Speaker 1: think about how we euphemistically refer to our periods. It is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the curse, it's your monthly malady. It's
Speaker 1: all we we tend to describe it in negative terms.
Speaker 1: It's your uninvited guests, it's aunt flow. And does anyone
Speaker 1: ever like ask her to stay? Now? She probably brings
Speaker 1: a fruitcake, she probably does bring a fruitcake. And because
Speaker 1: of this background of path apologizing PMS in the sense
Speaker 1: of assuming making those assumptions about how it renders women
Speaker 1: unstable and unreliable, some cultural anthropologists have called it a
Speaker 1: Western construct, which quote get ready for this legitimizes the
Speaker 1: temporary and politically ineffective expression of suppressed irritation, rage, or
Speaker 1: similarly negative unfeminine feelings, which result in particular from the
Speaker 1: status and condition of women in late industrial society. Wow. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so basically a lot of people have claimed that women
Speaker 1: and men have claimed that PMS is kind of an
Speaker 1: excuse to let women kind of let loose in terms
Speaker 1: of not being that prim and proper, quiet, well behaved
Speaker 1: woman anymore. That it's a monthly excuse to actually feel feelings.
Speaker 1: And you know, like I said, that's been used in
Speaker 1: both a positive and a negative direction, right, because on
Speaker 1: the positive end, when it comes to feminist critiques of
Speaker 1: PMS research and this potential uh sort of cultural construct,
Speaker 1: that part of it might have become. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: particularly in the seventies and eighties, feminists were among the
Speaker 1: biggest champions of conducting more research to find out that
Speaker 1: question of what's actually going on, why does it happen
Speaker 1: in particularly for women who have more PMDD like symptoms,
Speaker 1: what is going on? And hey, well we're at it,
Speaker 1: let's reduce this stigma, and yet calling into question that
Speaker 1: possible side of it too. That's kind of the most
Speaker 1: public facing side of menstruation. That the side that we
Speaker 1: talk about the most, not the actual biological part that
Speaker 1: includes bleeding and how it affects our bodies, but more
Speaker 1: just making jokes about bms. That's what's okay to talk
Speaker 1: about this whole potential, socially constructed part of it, right exactly.
Speaker 1: I remember in middle school one of my science teachers
Speaker 1: making the joke so like not many kids had gotten
Speaker 1: their periods yet, but making the joke in talking about
Speaker 1: biology of never trust anything that bleeds for four days
Speaker 1: and doesn't die. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that was my
Speaker 1: seventh grade science teacher. But yeah, basically, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of feminists in this period called into question the
Speaker 1: construct that allowed something biological happening to women to be
Speaker 1: linked to a dismissal of their emotions, especially anger, by
Speaker 1: attributing them to this thing that happens every month, and
Speaker 1: just the idea that, um, well, she must not be
Speaker 1: angry most of the time. This is just like a
Speaker 1: problem she's having this week, or if you encounter a
Speaker 1: woman who is upset, irritable, whatever other synonymy you would
Speaker 1: like to fill in that blank, and the first question is, oh,
Speaker 1: are you on your period? So it allows people to
Speaker 1: totally discount a legitimate issue or claim or problem um
Speaker 1: at the same time that it kind of makes the
Speaker 1: indirect assumption that men never have either hormonal shifts or
Speaker 1: problems with it yeah or if there yeah, But and
Speaker 1: by the same token that if they are expressing anger irritability,
Speaker 1: that it's valid in a way that ours is irrational.
Speaker 1: And this was something that Mari Roden talked about in
Speaker 1: paper that she wrote, the Social Construction of pre Menstrual Syndrome,
Speaker 1: and she points out how, going back to that history
Speaker 1: that we went through in it was thought that the
Speaker 1: quote madness of the female lunatic becomes more pronounced at
Speaker 1: the time of menstruation. She also notes how Dr pattering A.
Speaker 1: Dalton attributed the stereotype of women as poor drivers to
Speaker 1: p MS thank you very much way after Dalton's yeah,
Speaker 1: way to not help a sister out and she describes
Speaker 1: PMS as a Western quote unquote safety valve. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Rodin also cites sociologist Karen Pugliessi who says that this
Speaker 1: is like when the pressure to quote have it all
Speaker 1: gets symbolically released once a month, so another excuse to
Speaker 1: let your you know, irritation flag fly or an excuse.
Speaker 1: And also that that permissible window and it might have
Speaker 1: jumped out of some listeners that we've been describing this
Speaker 1: as a Western construct, because when I was reading this,
Speaker 1: the question did come to mind of well, is this universal?
Speaker 1: Is this really exclusive to Western cultures, because there are
Speaker 1: menstrual taboos all around the world in all different sorts
Speaker 1: of cultures, But it does seem like this particular pathologizing
Speaker 1: of PMS is fairly Western, especially when when it comes
Speaker 1: to that sort of moodiness where a lot of times
Speaker 1: menstrual taboos are more focused on cleanliness or the absence
Speaker 1: thereof associated with the actual bleeding. Like in some cultures,
Speaker 1: for instance, you know, women aren't allowed to bathe in
Speaker 1: the same water they might interfere with the luck of fishermen,
Speaker 1: you know, every day. But you know, it seems like
Speaker 1: in our culture, a woman who is either on her
Speaker 1: period or experiencing pre menstrual symptoms is a cathy comic. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's also it widens the window of instability in
Speaker 1: terms of, you know, kind of makes women even more
Speaker 1: unreliable because it's pre menstrual and when could that come?
Speaker 1: Oh well, I don't know, two weeks before your period,
Speaker 1: who knows. Katerina Dalton went back and revised her first
Speaker 1: of all in the nineties. She said that, you know,
Speaker 1: PMS isn't even a correct term because this kind of
Speaker 1: moodiness construct at any point, and so we really believe
Speaker 1: that then that means that women are really like never
Speaker 1: reliable because at any point this switch could be flipped
Speaker 1: and our menstrual effortvencence could start to bubble over into
Speaker 1: insanity and tears and chocolate eating. Well yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mean I think that leads us into talking about pm
Speaker 1: d D because that's I think an even bigger example
Speaker 1: of the good and the bad in terms of legit
Speaker 1: quote unquote legitimizing pre menstrual symptoms and what menstruation does
Speaker 1: to women. Because uh, pm d D pre minstrual dysphoric
Speaker 1: disorder was listed in the DSM five, but there was
Speaker 1: a lot of controversy around it because it doesn't affect
Speaker 1: that many women, but it does give a basis to
Speaker 1: diagnose women who are experiencing these symptoms with a mental disorder.
Speaker 1: And writing about that, Dr Paula Kaplan, who wrote the
Speaker 1: book They Say You're Crazy, talks about how including pm
Speaker 1: d D in the diagnostic Statistical Manual means that emotional
Speaker 1: display is considered normal or fine or whatever, and men
Speaker 1: are seen as mental disorders and women, and she wonders
Speaker 1: why people aren't calling men's hormonal changes mental illness. Well.
Speaker 1: Menstruation in of itself makes it easier to draw that
Speaker 1: link between your biological functioning and your psychological functioning because
Speaker 1: you have physical evidence of this change going on inside
Speaker 1: of you. I e. Menstrual blood, I eat your period panties, Caroline,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, um, And we don't want to discount
Speaker 1: the fact that these kinds of PMDD symptoms do happen. Statistically,
Speaker 1: two to three percent of women experience pre menstrual dysphoric
Speaker 1: disorder and the way it is described UM. In one
Speaker 1: of the articles we were reading about it, from one
Speaker 1: woman who has been diagnosed with PMDD is that she
Speaker 1: literally becomes another person leading up to her period. Now,
Speaker 1: once menstruation happens, the symptoms tend to go away. Um.
Speaker 1: But there was an issue with this drug that was
Speaker 1: on the market, seraph m uh in. The FDA actually
Speaker 1: had to pull ads for seraphim because it did not
Speaker 1: disambiguate PMDD from PMS. Essentially, it just was a commercial
Speaker 1: of a woman, say like pushing a grocery cart and
Speaker 1: having a little difficulty and then going cozily and I
Speaker 1: being like, maybe you need seraphim. Yes. So basically the
Speaker 1: FDA took issue with Eli Lily, the drug manufacturer, saying like,
Speaker 1: are you having a bad day? Well, maybe you're crazy
Speaker 1: and need medicine. Because the whole thing is that the
Speaker 1: FDA Okay, seraph I'm in two thousand, but it's identical
Speaker 1: to Prozac, which is an S S R I and adepressant,
Speaker 1: and it was about to go generic and Eli Lily
Speaker 1: wanted to keep making money so they rebranded it, painted
Speaker 1: it pink and called it a p M d D drug. Well,
Speaker 1: and clearly in this case too, more research is needed,
Speaker 1: and a lot of doctors acknowledge that the more research
Speaker 1: is needed on this because there is that question of
Speaker 1: how how to untangle the clinical depression from the menstrual
Speaker 1: related influencers that seemed to aggravate those symptoms of depression.
Speaker 1: So the question is which comes first a PMDD or
Speaker 1: the depression, and researchers still aren't entirely sure. And then
Speaker 1: taking it a few steps back, like you said, it's
Speaker 1: inclusion in the d s M five. I've got a
Speaker 1: lot of people nervous that, oh, we're just pathologizing this
Speaker 1: even more, we're pathologizing PMS even more, even though what
Speaker 1: we do need is clearly more research on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And one thing that Kristen and I were talking about
Speaker 1: when we were researching this stuff is how interesting it
Speaker 1: is that it is sort of a chicken or the
Speaker 1: egg situation when it comes to PMDD and to a
Speaker 1: lesser extent, PMS and depression, because researchers have found that
Speaker 1: the symptoms of PMDD are usually alleviated by S S
Speaker 1: R I drugs UM, although it does differ from woman
Speaker 1: to woman, and other studies have shown that PMDD symptoms
Speaker 1: respond well to calcium carbonate a K A TOMS. But
Speaker 1: it is interesting because I mean, here are these terrible
Speaker 1: symptoms that a number of women experience every month that
Speaker 1: are aggravated every month, but it's so closely tied to
Speaker 1: depression for these PMDD stuffers. So the fact that we
Speaker 1: don't know more about what causes it and that we're
Speaker 1: still having to have the conversation of don't call me
Speaker 1: crazy just because I have this thing that happens once
Speaker 1: a month, I mean, I feel like it's we should
Speaker 1: know more well, and that goes for pretty much anyone
Speaker 1: who has a period. Don't call me crazy because I
Speaker 1: have this thing that happens once a month. And so,
Speaker 1: and that's why we wanted to do this episode as well,
Speaker 1: because I know that it made me really think twice
Speaker 1: about how what I think about periods and how it's framed,
Speaker 1: and how we're taught about menstruation and this assumption of PMS,
Speaker 1: specifically with the mood aspect of that, and how that
Speaker 1: impacts women all together, because it's not the last thing
Speaker 1: we need is to say, oh, women, you know this
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. Just just buck up. It's just a little
Speaker 1: bloating No, clearly, I I know I know some women
Speaker 1: who get really regular and very aggressive PMS symptoms yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I went to high school with a girl
Speaker 1: who had to be out of school once a month,
Speaker 1: like for a day because she felt so ill. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the cramping, bloating, fatigue, all that kind of stuff. That
Speaker 1: stuff is very real and it does not need to
Speaker 1: be legitimized. But the question is where do we how
Speaker 1: do we disentangle that stuff from the stuff that we
Speaker 1: actually are okay talking about. I just think that that's
Speaker 1: the strangest thing is that we are the least comfortable
Speaker 1: talking about the physical symptoms, and yet we're fine making
Speaker 1: so many jokes about the psychological symptoms. But now we
Speaker 1: want to hear from listeners what are your experiences with PMS,
Speaker 1: and also how do we address this question of disentangling
Speaker 1: the symptoms of PMS that we do experience and are
Speaker 1: very real and valid from the more social, really constructed
Speaker 1: aspects of it that might do women more harm than good.
Speaker 1: Let us know Mom Stuff at how Stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: Com is our email address. You can also message us
Speaker 1: on Facebook or tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast, and
Speaker 1: we've got a couple of messages to share with you
Speaker 1: right now. Black I'll let her hear from Scott me
Speaker 1: about her episode a little while ago on black Hair,
Speaker 1: and she writes, I was so excited to hear the
Speaker 1: curly hair conundrums and black hair episodes because I have both,
Speaker 1: and not only did you all offer so many great
Speaker 1: resources on the topic, it was just so nice to
Speaker 1: hear it being talked about. It's easy even for me
Speaker 1: to wonder if I'm just being oversensitive about my hair
Speaker 1: and all my preoccupations about it. I often have to
Speaker 1: remind myself that it really is more of a complex
Speaker 1: issue than simple fashion trends, especially when it comes to
Speaker 1: my professional image, not to mention the dating world. I'm
Speaker 1: what I like to call Blaxican Latina mom, black dad,
Speaker 1: and through my childhood, my curly, frizzy, and seemingly unruly
Speaker 1: hair was always a huge topic of concerned conversation and altercations.
Speaker 1: One of my most vivid memories growing up was the
Speaker 1: first time I had my hair straighten at a black
Speaker 1: beauty shop and went to school the next day. I
Speaker 1: was a sophomore in high school, and I remember everything
Speaker 1: what I was wearing, and I remember walking across the
Speaker 1: campus holding my books, looking demurely down because I was
Speaker 1: sure everyone would be staring at me because finally I
Speaker 1: thought my hair was beautiful. It was actually blowing in
Speaker 1: the wind, and strands of it would blow across my face,
Speaker 1: and I was so excited to sweep it behind my
Speaker 1: ear like all the other girls always did. That was
Speaker 1: the first day I heard someone tell me your hair
Speaker 1: looks so much better straight, and I didn't have a
Speaker 1: boyfriend or significant other to tell me otherwise until I
Speaker 1: was out of grad school. Recently, my little sister asked
Speaker 1: if I thought she should go all natural, and I
Speaker 1: was so eager to send her videos like I Love
Speaker 1: my Hair and links to the Curly Girl Collective to
Speaker 1: help pursuit for herself that going all natural is not
Speaker 1: the social suicide it once used to be. Thanks for
Speaker 1: all you do. I love the program and recommend it
Speaker 1: to all the other Peace Score volunteers I work with.
Speaker 1: So thanks Scott. Me okay, and I have a letter
Speaker 1: here from Megan in response to our vegetarian conversation. Uh.
Speaker 1: She says, I went vegetarian ten years ago and then
Speaker 1: vegan five years ago. I did so for ethical reasons,
Speaker 1: but also gained health benefits, which probably really helped. I
Speaker 1: also was introduced to feminism through veganism. As I met
Speaker 1: many feminist vegans who were more than happy to share
Speaker 1: feminist books and websites with me. I was so inspired
Speaker 1: I actually ended up with a gender studies minor. When
Speaker 1: I went back to university and met even more vegetarians
Speaker 1: and vegans through feminist activism, the two communities always overlapped
Speaker 1: for me. But it is also a challenge, as you
Speaker 1: pointed out in your podcast, with issues such as Peter
Speaker 1: using sexism to try and gain male membership and vegetarianism
Speaker 1: used as a diet and pushing unhelp the body ideals.
Speaker 1: I also noticed when a new vegan cookbook comes out,
Speaker 1: there's often bad reviews left more and more often about
Speaker 1: how unhealthy it is if it isn't completely fat free
Speaker 1: or uses any sugar at all. Recently, a review on
Speaker 1: Amazon even shame the author of a favorite vegan cookbook
Speaker 1: for not being thin and looking quote unhealthy. So I've
Speaker 1: noticed increasing amounts of fleck towards ethical vegans and vegetarians
Speaker 1: from the more health and diet focused ones for failing
Speaker 1: to live up to a pretty high standard from meat eaters.
Speaker 1: I've gotten a lot of hostility in the past from boyfriends,
Speaker 1: so the statistic about singles being more likely to be
Speaker 1: vegetarian makes a lot of sense to me. I've even
Speaker 1: been asked if my current boyfriend is okay with it,
Speaker 1: and once if he allows it. I found the statistic
Speaker 1: that women under report meat eating to be interesting because
Speaker 1: I've had female friends bring up my vegetarianism to brag
Speaker 1: about how much meat they eat so they can bond
Speaker 1: over that with any men in our company, but definitely
Speaker 1: have noted in my feminist groups, at least most are
Speaker 1: happy to bond over vegetarian food. Okay, So Megan closes
Speaker 1: her letter was sayings, sorry for making this such a
Speaker 1: long letter. I enjoyed the podcast very much, and your
Speaker 1: apology she's writing to me for bringing up bacon so
Speaker 1: much is accepted Smiley Faith. So thank you for writing in, Megan,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad you know that I'm joking about all
Speaker 1: the bacon, although I do love it. But thanks for
Speaker 1: writing in, and thanks everybody who's written into us. Mom
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
Speaker 1: address and to find links to all of our social
Speaker 1: media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
Speaker 1: including this one with links to our sources. So you
Speaker 1: can read along. It's all found over It's stuff Mom
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