Do you exhibit sudden irritability or snapping of late? Are you experiencing increasing variations in your mood of late all of a sudden like you are happy at one instance and the very next instance you feel angry, depressed and sad? Well, you might be experiencing mood swings, a peculiar symptom related to PMS or premenstrual syndrome! Nothing to really panic about, as more than 80% women do experience such PMS symptoms during their periods.
Mood swings – common phenomenon
Undoubtedly, for most of us, menstrual period is indeed a very trying phase of life. Most of us experience varying level of symptoms that are related to our physical, mental and behavioral aspects and mood swings can be a real nightmare if its severity level is high enough. However, most important thing to remember is this is perfectly normal phenomenon.
Varying expressions of diverse emotions in a relatively short span mark these mood swings. As described earlier, the frequency, total time span and severity vary from woman to woman, in some case, the most sever conditions subsequently lead to other psychological disorders and issues. Let us first explore multiple factors that attribute to mood swings.
Factors that trigger mood swings
- Change in Hormone Levels – Just before and during menstruation period, various changes in hormone levels, in particular progesterone and estrogen. This creates hormonal imbalance in body that largely contribute towards mood swings.
- Change in certain Chemical levels – As progesterone and estrogen mainly performs the function of serotonin, norepenephrine, dopamine level regulation in the human brain, hormonal imbalance leads to chemical imbalance. This further triggers short spurts of emotions like fear, depression and happiness.
- Stress – One of the important contributing factors, the elevated levels of stress can trigger mood swings.
- Unhealthy lifestyle – Studies have found out that unhealthful lifestyle habits such as drugs and alcohol consumption, junk diet, smoking too contribute mood swings.
Treatment
As there are diverse causes, treatment part mainly aims at eliminating these causes and make mood swings unnoticed by bringing down their severity.
- Hormone replacement therapy – Aimed at reestablishing the hormonal balance, this therapy includes administrations of particular hormones in body. Among different kinds of HRT, bioidentical hormones are preferred for administration as they are easily absorbed by body receptors.
- Diet – Balanced diet plays significant role that introduces more necessary minerals and vitamins required by the body.
- Herbal treatments – These include consumption of herbal supplements as ginseng, Chasteberry, St. John’s wort and evening primrose oil.
- Other therapies – Certain treatments from Homeopathy, Aromatherapy, Yoga and mediation have been found effective in countering mood swings. Cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy have been found effective in regaining self control.
Healthy lifestyle – This makes very important part of every treatment. Incorporating daily exercises, curbing habits like alcohol consumption, smoking will not be useful in keeping moods swings under control but also go long way in leading healthy life.
