PMS~

[Deleted]

Femme, I used to be similar to you. I went to the DR for help and was given Celexa. It absolutely killed my sex drive. That was a NO WAY for me.

Have you tried Yoga? That is the other thing I started to do. Yoga is/was a God send for me. It not only helped with the severe PMS it also helped with my migraines. I will be starting yoga again here now that I am settled and have the class schedule. I try to do it at least 3 times a week. If you are interested, look for a gentle flow yoga. It really helps to relax your body and destress you.

[Jaguar]

I used to get violent leg cramps every night. I used to wake up screaming and crying in pain. It was freaking awful. I changed my Respirologist Doctor and got a new one. He was a God send to me. I found out my violent leg cramps were caused by my asthma medication. So new Doctor changed my meds. Now another thing that helped me hugely was my friend showing me acupressure techniques that her Haifa yoga teacher taught her for leg cramps.

[femmefatale]

Aug 14, 2012 2:14:09 GMT -5 @angel33 said:

Femme, I used to be similar to you. I went to the DR for help and was given Celexa. It absolutely killed my sex drive. That was a NO WAY for me.

Have you tried Yoga? That is the other thing I started to do. Yoga is/was a God send for me. It not only helped with the severe PMS it also helped with my migraines. I will be starting yoga again here now that I am settled and have the class schedule. I try to do it at least 3 times a week. If you are interested, look for a gentle flow yoga. It really helps to relax your body and destress you.

Thanks for the tip, Angel. I've always heard that yoga is very relaxing. I will check into that and appreciate your thoughts and experiences with this. I have started back with my biking so hopefully, too, that will help.

[redracerris]

The exercise will definitely help. Make sure you drink a lot of water. I used to get bad cramps (not as bad as yours, but it had the possibility of knocking me out for a day). They lessened when I started to change how I thought about my period. When I was younger my father told me that it was a punishment to women from God because of eating the forbidden fruit first. I think that really ruined it for me, but I started telling myself that it is a normal process that pain is only for when something is wrong. Then my naturopathic doctor put me on fish oil and evening primrose oil to balance my hormones because I had ovarian cysts. That helped even a little bit more. But I was still getting the cramps and mood swings. This last month I started taking yarrow tea for seasonal affective disorder (I live in Alaska) in addition to light therapy and vitamin D supplementation. For the first time since middle school, I started my period without knowing.

Now everyone is going to react to different things. In the past I have used mint, lemonbalm, and spearmint tea, which did help a little. You may want to try St. Johns wort. The problem with St. Johns wort is that it can cause sun sensitivity. So you can try balancing your hormones with fish oil and evening primrose oil, peppermint/spearmint/mint/lemonbalm (they are all in the same family) tea, St. Joh.ns wort which can be taken in pill form or as a tea, or yarrow tea. I have used a powdered form of yarrow and also crushed the herb that I dried myself. It is all about experimenting, CAREFULLY, to find what works for you. Unfortunately that is how it is with regular medicines too, but those have worse side effects. The worst reaction was when I took St. Johns wort as a tea vs. a pill, I got hives with the tea, which is why I switched to yarrow.