[andread06]

Nicky, the way you described the way you were feeling mimicks exactly how i feel! I quoted you. "I've never felt so out of control of my own thoughts, feelings, actions, behaviour and am so ashamed and shocked that I have turned into this person who is totally nothing like me. Its scary and worrying because of the fact that i have no control over anything and it just feels like my whole life has fallen apart around me.."
I got my period yesterday and i have been kinda moody and emotional all week, but later last night i started getting anxious and sad. It all had to do with my boyfriend. I feel so terrible becuz i was texting him all this crazy stuff assuming things...and then a little later when he called to say goodnight he kept it short and didnt even say 'i love you'. That upset me and made me even more anxious! I think i really freaked him out! I dont know what to do...i hope i dont officially have PMDD.

[bsgcic]

Thank you for your post! Has the condition improved or disappeared over time?

...I never had any bad pms in the past. I was considered probably one of the lucky ones. I decided to breast feed and overall it went well I still felt good, but never had a menstral period. Until Aug of 09' rolled in and I decided to ween and then my life and moods turned up side down.
... all of a sudden I would feel this intense anger like I wanted to punch something ... then I had these intrusive thoughts that were very alarming to me. I got my period 3 times in August and all of the above symptoms were prevalent off and on ending w/ a massive headache, then period and then feeling fine....
... I never had these types of problems in the past. Not before pregnancy or after and I really felt this was a coorelation to my periods coming back and from not breastfeeding anymore....

Dear Kathleen,
Your post very closely matches the symptoms that my wife surfaces at her period. In her case, it is often after she starts menstrating but sometimes before. We have been married for soon to be twelve years with 3 kids 6 yrs (with significant disability), 4 yrs, and 2 yrs. She is so very sweet and such a lovely person to be when she is not in pmdd. Then she changes dramatically. It continues to risk the end of our marriage and that is not by me - I'm actually the one hanging in there for the sake of our children. She won't admit to pmdd though from everything I have now read about it, her symptoms match everyone's descriptions here. But they most match yours. She was pregnant with our children almost continuously (by desire of both of us). We are both 42 now. She breastfed each child for between 1 and 2 years. For our youngest, it was from birth at the end of January 2011 until weaning in the beginning of July 2012. Her first explosion was I think the end of July but at her period at the end of August, it was like Mt. St. Helens. Since then, it is like clockwork timed with her period. She does not just erupt at me but screams at our 3 little kids and there is nothing that I can do to intervene for risk of her filing for divorce and then illegally abducting our 3 children back to her home country of Japan. Does the pmdd start to taper off with time? Does it at least decrease? Disappear at some point? Or does it combine with perimenstrual? I am sincerely hoping (praying) that the answer to it decreasing or stopping is "yes".

[Carol B]

Hi Ladies! I just joined this forum today. I am in perimenopause. I've been in it for two and a half years, my gynecologist says it can last up to five years. Everything that I have been reading is me. I feel like i'm going crazy. Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, oh yeah. I have all these things that I have been reading about. It is really starting to take a negative toll on my life. My poor boyfriend told me to join so I could talk to others going through this or have gone through this. I'm really looking for any ideas or suggestions on what to do to control these symtoms (before I kill him)! All kidding aside. I get so mean, I hate being like this. My moods change instantly without warning. I am always tired. I have bad anxiety. When I started this I was married. I divorced my husband after fifteen years of marriage, he said it was the perimenopause causing me to divorce him. I am very depressed, I cannot concentrate. I get the evening sweats. I tried evening primrose. That did nothing. My GYN put me on several antidepresents which didn't help, I was like a zombie. I start to see a phsychiatrist who put me on Prozac. It helps a little, at least i'm not a zombie. I really need help!!! I just want to be me again! I was always happy, and now i'm sad and miserable! If I don't get help it will probably destroy my current relationship.

[bsgcic]

Interested in what you find out

... I tried evening primrose. That did nothing. My GYN put me on several antidepresents which didn't help, I was like a zombie. I start to see a phsychiatrist who put me on Prozac. It helps a little, ...

Carol - if you find out something that really works, please do post it. My wife tried something this cycle but has been bleeding for 3 weeks. Man, she is much much much much calmer though! But her Gyn said to stop taking it because of the bleeding.
I'd love to know about any insights any folks have on my post directly above yours on whether this ever reduces or corrects itself.
Bless you for progressively working on it!! I wish you well!

[alissafernandes8]

Well for this sort of problem you can use progesteril its a natural hormon balancing cream.

[Brie.Cheese]

I need help

I am 21 years old and I've been suffering from pmdd for 13 years. I have been on effexor for 4 years and birth control for 10 years. at first the medications work and then they stop working and I have severe pmdd symptoms. I have tried the vitamins and the antidepressants and diet and exercise and nothing seems to work. I now have to make the decision of whether or not to have my ovaries removed. I know im young for this but if you are someone that has had this done could you plz message me and explain to me the pros and cons of how this operation helped your pmdd.

[Patti-here]

I didn't read all this, but are you all talking about the same thing as PMS ??

[rescuemama]

Hi I am new to this group. Eighteen months ago I started my cycle and went crazy. Panic attacks, depression, crying all the time and suicide thoughts. Told 4 drs about my symptoms and told them it happens real bad around my period time. I just got asked if I had mental illness in my family. I found a web site on PMDD while looking for a stomach binder for myself for after a hysterectomy, which Im trying to set up with a new GYN 2 otheres said I need it. Heavy bleeding, fibroid tumor, and my utereus is tilting toward my bladder pushing it into my stomach. I am 45 yrs old, married and 2 grown kids in their 20's. I am thankful I found all the sites and groups that I have in these last cpl of days, bc now I know Im not crazy. My new GYN Will be told abt PMDD whether he believes in it or not. It is real, and he wont talk me out of this I can assure you.

[Kate86]

****SORRY FOR THE REALLY LONG POST. IF YOU'RE STRUGGLING WITH PMDD, PLEASE READ THROUGH THIS TO SEE IF ANY OF THESE THINGS WILL WORK FOR YOU.****


I've had PMDD for 13 or 14 years. I'm 28 years old now and I've had it since I was about 14 or 15. However, I wasn't diagnosed with PMDD until 5 years ago when I started going to a women's health doctor and a naturopath doctor. Every month/cycle can still be so different for me, but as discouraged as I've felt countless times, I feel like I've finally found what is going to work for me. I wanted to share my experience in case it can help other women.

With PMDD, I feel like I have 2 sides to me.

When I'm my normal, true and stable self, I am a very calm, passive, friendly, organized and motivated person. I love my life, I'm very secure and happy in my relationship, I'm optimistic about life and grateful for what I have. I have a great work ethic and keep myself very busy with my business, but I don't get stressed. I also don't feel depressed in any way. That's when things are good and I feel like my true self. However, for a good chunk of my life, I infrequently feel that way.

When my PMDD kicks in and my hormones are off, I'm a completely different person. It's so hard to explain to people who haven't been through it, but I'm sure all of you will understand. When this happens, even if I didn't have anything that made me sad or upset, I would cry uncontrollably. It could be for hours at a time. I've had days, even in the last few months, where I've cried almost the entire day and only had about an hour or two of a break. Most of the time I'll cry for an hour straight uncontrollably, a few times a day. I have every symptom you can think of. I turn into a very insecure and jealous girlfriend. I take everything out on my boyfriend even though he is great to me. He does get impatient and frustrated by it sometimes, which is totally understandable, because it stresses him out. I turn into a bear, I'm anxious, irritable, angry, etc. The best way to explain it is I feel like there's a demon inside of me that is making me someone I'm not. I know there's not, and it's only hormonal, but I am not in control of my emotions and that's the best way to explain it. Not that I ever would, but when I feel like that, I feel so frustrated inside that I feel like physically punching someone or something (which is so out of character for me) and throwing or wrecking things. I feel so unorganized and it's the hardest thing to push myself to work. Since I'm normally a motivated person, this is very frustrating. I have to push myself to be able to work an hour in a day. My Naturopath has given me his email address for when I have these episodes, and it takes me over an hour to write even a paragraph. I can't process my thoughts, my memory is really poor, I can't concentrate, lose my train of thought, and can't recall information. I really rely on my boyfriend to help me with this. This makes it really difficult to socialize if I can't put thoughts together, on top of hoping I don't start crying uncontrollably. I feel like my place isn't clean enough if it doesn't look perfect, so it brings out OCD which only makes me more anxious. I also get really frustrated that I'm not accomplishing enough because it's so difficult to work. Everything takes so much longer then usual. The smallest things feel like the hardest things to do. I'm probably still missing a lot of things, but you get the idea that it's really debilitating.

When I feel that way, it's hard to believe that life will ever get better. I know when I'm in my right mind, I am happy with my life. I'm not depressed about anything in my life. There is something internally going on that it making me feel this way. From the outside, I get that it would look I'm depressed if I'm crying. However, I know that it is something out of my control. It's PMDD.

From when I was 14 or 15 to 23 years old was when I hadn't been diagnosed with PMDD. I went to different family doctors throughout the years and they put me on different kinds of antidepressants. I think I've tried at least 5 or 6 different kinds now. A few have worked in terms of making me feel out of it, but I didn't feel normal. I haven't tried Prozac yet, but that will be the next I'll try if things don't get better. I'm currently on Citalopram. I was also on birth control for all my adolescents. However, taking birth control and antidepressants didn't help me. Higher doses of antidepressants didn't help, only made me feel out of it if anything, but didn't solve the problem.

5 years ago when I was around 23, I was referred to a women's health doctor. Finally a doctor who understood what was going on and diagnosed me with PMDD. She put me on Citalopram, I believe around 10mg. I've never really felt anything with Citalopram, but maybe that's a good thing. It's never made me feel weird. She also tried to regulate my hormones by having me take birth control constantly with no breaks. Birth control are either 21 days or if they're 28 days, the last 7 days don't have any medicinal ingredients in them, so not necessary to take. What I did was took 21 days straight and instead of having a period for 5-7 days, I'd start the next pack. From different doctors I've talked to, they've all said that's fine not to have a period. However, you could always let yourself have a period every once in a while so you don't start spotting. The benefit of this is that your hormones aren't supposed to drop before your period, which is what causes the symptoms. It wasn't consistent for me, but I did have quite a few more more "good months" then in the past. She also said I could go up to 20mg of Citalopram if I had days with symptoms, then go back to 10mg. This might be a good starting point for any of you women to bring up to your doctor.

I started seeing my Naturopath doctor a little after that. I stuck with the above plan probably for a few years, then found it wasn't consistent enough for me. I still had some bad months. I even tried an older type of birth control called Demulen. I think it was supposed to have more progesterone and less estrogen then most on the market (I could be wrong about that). However, I didn't see a change.

I knew I wanted to have kids in the next year or two so I wanted to find out the actual cause and deal with it now while I have time. I knew once I was trying to have kids, I'd have to go off of the birth control and antidepressants, so I needed to find another solution. I was also scared that if I didn't get it under control now, how would I ever be able to go through a pregnancy with my hormones this out of whack.

Before I get into that, I thought I had estrogen dominance. Whether it was that my estrogen was high or my progesterone was low. I think now that it was my progesterone that was low. However, I've also heard so many times that people with PMDD may not necessarily have an imbalance of hormones, but that our bodies are sensitive even to minor fluctuations, so it's hard to say. Either way, my Naturopath wanted to put me on Progesterone. To do that, I had to stop taking birth control. I tried going off citalopram (I didn't think it was working) and birth control at the same time, and that was a disaster. So I went back on Citalopram to balance out my mood while I went off the birth control. Once that was out of my system, I could start taking Progesterone.

My Naturopath doctor first put me on progesterone cream and I stayed on Citalopram. I think it worked at first, then I kept having to increase the dose and felt like I kept needing more and more progesterone cream, until I was at the max dose and it didn't feel like enough. I was a wreck and sending emails to my Naturopath several times a week because I couldn't handle feeling this way anymore. I felt so discouraged that nothing was ever going to help.

He was thinking about putting me on estrogen, but him and the pharmacist he spoke with, both agreed I was too young for that (I'm 28). The pharmacist recommended progesterone capsules. It was SOOO bad before I started taking them, and I think the progesterone capsules are the best thing that ever happened to me. In case I didn't mention before, I've increased my Citalopram to 20mg for a few months too. The plan is to get me balanced out for several cycles with my hormones, then I might be able to go off of Citalopram. Once we're trying to have a baby, I'll have to be off of the Citalopram and the progesterone capsules actually support your pregnancy in the first trimester.

I recently had all of my bloodwork done. I had the standard things tested, plus my thyroid, cortisol, estrogen and DHEA. Everything came back perfectly. I was really happy to know my estrogen was normal, as I'd always wondered if it was high. Unfortunately I can't test my progesterone since I've been taking it, and I'd have to go off of it for at least a cycle before testing. I wouldn't be able to handle being that unstable. My Naturopath doctor is very confident that it's low progesterone that is causing this.

I had started tracking my basal temperature every morning probably 4 or 5 months ago. My temperatures were all over the map, which explained why my emotions were all over the place too. From what I understand, and from my experience as well, I think your progesterone levels affect your body temperature. From tracking my temperature over the last several months while taking progesterone cream and then progesterone capsules, I can DEFINITELY see a correlation between my body temperature, progesterone intake and my mood. This has been a HUGE discovery for me.

I feel like if I can get my progesterone levels balanced out from the amount of progesterone I'm taking, I won't need to be on Citalopram. I actually don't feel like Citalopram helps at all with my symptoms and my progesterone levels have everything to do with my PMDD. While I've never heard or read about tracking your temperature throughout the day for PMDD, I've discovered it on my own and feel it works. I feel that my progesterone levels actually affect me more then just the week before my period. The week after my period is usually the best, then from day 10 of my cycle on I feel my levels seem low.

I've found the sweet spot for me is somewhere between 100 to 150mg of progesterone. Mine are 50mg capsules, so if I take 100mg, I end up getting symptoms later in the day. If I take 150mg, I feel symptoms from high progesterone. 125mg would probably be ideal for me. I've been measuring in Fahrenheit, so the "sweet spot" for me seems to be around 98.3 degrees. I know temperatures of 97.6 and below I start getting the anxious, irritable, emotional symptoms. When I've had a temperature of 98.6 degrees, I feel like I've had too much progesterone. I get really tired, unmotivated, bad headache and overheating. I haven't figured out the exact range that works, but I'd imagine between 98-98.3 degrees.

Everyone's temperature changes throughout the day, but I think it's supposed to be lowest in the morning and highest at night. I'm the opposite. So lately I've had a 98.3 degree temperature in the morning, then it's 97.6 at night for example. As soon as I start to feel myself getting any kinds of symptoms of anxiety, irritability, emotional, it's always been from a lower temperature. Yesterday evening I felt those symptoms coming on, then was becoming restless as well so I couldn't sleep. I took my temperature and it was at 97.6 degrees. I took one of my 50mg pills and I felt great. If I hadn't taken one of those pills, I know my temperature would have dropped even lower by morning and would have had another emotional day. Instead, my temperature this morning was 98.3 degrees and I felt great when I woke up.

I feel like I've been through so much with this, so I just wanted to especially bring up your body temperature and progesterone levels in case it can help someone else. Even if you aren't taking progesterone, I'd encourage you to take your basal temperature in the morning before you've gotten out of bed and throughout the day. See if you see a correlation between your body temperature and your mood, because for me, that is the piece of the puzzle I feel like I've been searching for, for so many years. I would really love to hear if anyone else sees this correlation!!!

Sorry for the super long post!!

****FYI, a few other things I've tried are Chaste Tree, Vitamin B6, Calcium/Magnesium, Fish Oils, Evening Primrose Oil, and I'm sure tons of others. The progesterone seems to be the only thing that has worked so far, along with tracking my temperature.

[Kate86]

My top recommendations:

1) Take your temperature every morning and throughout the day. Track the way you're feeling and see if there is a correlation between your body temperature and the way your feel. This likely has to do with your progesterone levels.

2) Get your progesterone levels checked. I really wish I would have had this done before I started taking progesterone as I'm sure they would have been very low.

3) If you can, get your estrogen tested as well to rule that out. For that one, I had the Estradiol test and mine came back fine.