Not All Premenstrual Symptoms Indicate Good Menstrual Health

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Premenstrual symptoms are not normal for all women but are for many. However, not all types of premenstrual symptoms are normal or indicate good menstrual health. The purpose of this article is to explore the different types of premenstrual symptoms and provide tips on how to manage them.

The menstrual cycle is a physical and emotional rollercoaster for many women. It can be a time of extreme highs and lows, with some days feeling like you have nothing to worry about and other days feeling as if the period pain is too much to bear.

We all know that women’s moods and emotions can change before and during menstruation (premenstrual and menstrual phases). Sometimes it may be hard to tell if these are normal premenstrual symptoms. The mood changes that happen before menstruation aren’t always a sign of good menstrual health. There are many other causes for these symptoms, so it’s important to learn about the different types and how they can affect you.

Premenstrual symptoms can sometimes be a symptom of other things going on in your life, but if you’re experiencing the following symptoms, this article will give you a few tips to help relieve them.

What is Premenstrual Syndrome?

Women may experience a wide range of symptoms that can be annoying, frustrating, and painful. The most common symptom is menstrual cramps, which can be mild to severe. Symptoms can also include nausea, headaches, back pain, sleep disturbances, bloating, breast tenderness, pain, fatigue, irritability, anxiety, and depression. Women who experience certain symptoms could have premenstrual syndrome or PMS.

Identifying the different types of PMS

Premenstrual symptoms can cause a number of different problems. The most common symptom is bloating, which is simply due to the accumulation of gas and fluid in the body. Some women experience mood swings and irritability, which can be related to changes in hormone levels and stress levels in the body. Other symptoms include breast tenderness, headaches, fatigue, appetite changes, constipation, food cravings, back pain, and joint pain. There are also other symptoms that are more serious such as depression or anxiety.

How does PMS affect different people?

Premenstrual Syndrome is a disorder that affects many women and can cause a variety of symptoms. The severity of PMS differs from woman to woman and may range from mild to extreme.

Premenstrual mood changes are not normal for all women but are for many. However, not all types of premenstrual mood changes are normal or indicate good health. typically mild and do not really disrupt your daily activities, it is best to describe them as ‘normal (pre)menstrual changes’ (rather than ‘symptoms’ or ‘PMS’).

Altered moods and increased irritability

Menstrual health is often defined by the frequency, duration, and intensity of premenstrual symptoms. Some women experience no premenstrual symptoms at all. These women are said to have “good menstrual health.”

It can have many different symptoms, including mood swings, fatigue, headaches, vomiting, and tender breasts. Other signs of PMS are irritability or anger, depression, trouble sleeping, difficulty concentrating, bloating in the abdomen area, and breast swelling.

The assertion that all pre-menstrual symptoms demonstrate good or normal menstrual health is false. Certain symptoms, such as mood swings, may not be indicative of anything other than a bad day.

Premenstrual mood changes that are very severe and accompanied by severe bouts of crying or depressive suicidal thoughts may be a sign that you’re experiencing premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), one of the most common causes of severe emotional and physical symptoms during menstruation. So if you’re experiencing them and they last for more than a day or two, it’s worth talking to your doctor about it. Read more about it here – Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder- A Depression Caused Hormonally in Women

What are some other warning signs for unhealthy or abnormal premenstrual symptoms?

severe abdominal (period) pain
severe muscle/ joint pain
excessive loss of appetite
insomnia
decreased energy levels
bouts of fainting
heavy bleeding, and blood loss of more than 80ml (approx. 160ml total fluid is lost per period)
a cycle that lasts for more than 10 days
painful excessive acne breakout

How to manage certain symptoms like period pain and cramps

1. Taking anti-inflammatory medications or analgesics can help with the pain

2. Omega 3 oils every day is very beneficial for good menstrual health

3. Dietary supplements like seeds and iron-rich foods and a good fiber-rich diet can help.

4. Exercising regularly and moving your body with light cardio workouts like walking and low-intensity workouts or body stretching can help alleviate symptoms.

These are some coping mechanisms that may show improvement in overall health and wellbeing during a menstrual cycle. But if these approaches do not help with the symptoms, it is better to seek medical intervention.

For more on Menstrual Health by Infano, click here.

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Did you know that November 19 is International Men’s Day? We may keep harping on women’s rights and equal opportunities for all genders, keep discussing gender-based violence and atrocities all the time on social media as keyboard warriors, as we should call out any injustice. But when we think of how we can create solutions or change society for the better good, we are always at a loss for answers. However one argument has always been on how we could raise better children, better boys who grow up to be better men, sensitive, caring and strong. Men, who see women as equal, men who are emotional, men who are not bound by gender constructs set by society, and who will grow up to be better role models.

We cannot achieve a society devoid of gender-based crimes unless we involve all genders in creating “Awareness”. And with this thought in mind, an ex-engineer and IT Employee started a campaign that has now spiraled into an NGO called AWARE India. Today, AWARE India, Chennai is a volunteer-driven not-for-profit organization run with the efforts of 8 trustees and volunteers from different backgrounds.

What particularly caught my eye was their initiative MENding Boys to engage boys and men about gender inequality and discrimination by interrogating the existing dominant model of Masculinity and helping eliminate all forms of gender-based violence.

So this International Men’s Day, we decided to shift our focus from Women’s Health and pass the mic to one such man who is doing his part in bettering the society and making an effort in this sphere- Meet Sandhiyan Thilagavathy, the President and Founder of the NGO AWARE India in conversation with Infano on International Men’s day 2021.

What is AWARE India all about? The backstory.

The 2012 Nirbhaya incident and a series of other gender-based crimes triggered me to understand how it perpetuates and influences all strata of life. As someone who was raised hearing the stories of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) from my mother and sisters, I wanted to enable society to create safe spaces for all vulnerable groups starting from Children and Women. The Nirbhaya incident has been a driving force towards it.

I started a Facebook page AWARE – Awareness for Wo+Men to Advocate their Rights through Equality and started sharing articles, creating online campaigns to create awareness on how Gender-Based Violence (GBV) could be addressed and in which way an individual can help reduce it. This was a huge hit and I started getting a lot more messages and responses to my posts. Following that, I along with some friends and likeminded people in my social circle started working on ground curating different programs and campaigns, adopting a slum clearance housing board community in Chemmenchery as a sustained effort, and have been working with the children and their families in spaces like Schools, Colleges, Workspaces, and Residential Communities across Chennai and outside Chennai for six years now, and have been expanding our work and reach every year.

What is the mission and vision of your NGO?

The mission is to create a safe space through the constant engagement of stakeholders irrespective of age, gender, class, caste, beliefs, attitudes, etc., making self-empowered and proactive citizens to

Safe public spaces for living, leisure, and work
Safe environment for children to grow up both at their homes and in society
Safe and open attitudes to promote knowledge of our bodies and body positivity
Safe attitudes to be extended to communities irrespective of whether they are rural, urban, periurban etc

Our vision is to create thoughts and attitudes to ensure safety for people, especially those who feel more vulnerable, through active involvement and by engaging all stakeholders to ensure safe spaces, travel, and the environment.

What is ‘MENding Boys’ program all about?

This is a program where boys at schools, children’s homes, colleges, and communities will be intervened on a weekly basis. This is a holistic approach in which boys are taught about themselves and aspects that contribute to personality development in order to instill confidence in them. The main aim of this initiative is to break the cycle of toxicity associated with boys that exist in our society and pave a way for them to redefine masculinity by themselves. It is tailored as a 25-weeks module. Through this program, young boys will be empowered and made aware of all the sensitive and basic things required to face the reality. They will be enlightened and made to reflect upon their own behaviors and attitude thereby rebuilding themselves as a safe person for everyone around them as well as for themselves creating safe spaces.

Why did you feel the need to start this kind of program?

In the wake of #MeToo, this might be a program that all of us can start to think about. And we should see this as an exciting opportunity rather than a challenge. There’s a lot of need to change the narratives like “Boys will be boys”. Culturally, our boys have had more leeway to get away with problematic conduct and that must change. We need a shift in mass consciousness about how we deal with this stuff. Hopefully, we are in that moment and hopefully, the next generation of boys will be more gender-inclusive, ethical, emotionally aware, and won’t use power and control to get status.

What do you think is lacking when it comes to raising responsible boys to men?

We are raising our boys with conditioning to be within the “Man Box” with constant pressure and phrases like “Be a Man”, “Man up”, “Not Man Enough”, etc. And that’s a short form for the collective socialization of men that we’ve all been taught on some level- not asking for help, always feeling like we have to be in control, dominating and having power over others, not expressing any emotion except for anger.

All these are rigid stereotypical notions of manhood that we have to control things that are rigid because they shouldn’t bend. This is the way that most of the boys, when raised as men, believe that they should use violence to get respect, if necessary.

Where do you think the gap lies?

The attitudes embodied in the Man Box are seriously harming both boys and men. Those guys in that Man Box are the most unhappy, the most anxious, the most vulnerable to both being bullies and being bullied, the most often perpetrators of sexual assault and sexual harassment, and most often prone to mental health issues to the extreme that they are suicidal.

We tell girls, ‘Don’t be angry. Be a lady.’ We tell boys, ‘Don’t be scared. Don’t be vulnerable. Don’t cry. Don’t be weak. Be strong. Be stoic. Keep it inside.’ It’s not the experience of these emotions that’s different between boys and girls, it’s the expression of emotion that is so profoundly damaging to how we actually keep our minds present.

What can be achieved through these types of sessions and dialogues?

We are the ones who condition them to be in that manhood, not the boys. If we want to change the outcomes that boyhood produces, we actually have to look at ourselves and the message that we give them. So these sessions are aimed at involving more men as role models of positive masculinity to inspire and nurture the boys around them.

As these sessions are driven as a volunteering program, more men can make use of this opportunity to reimagine their own masculinity in processing their own emotions and internal bias towards patriarchy and misogyny by educating and empowering the boys in different spaces. As an organization working with curated conversations, we strongly believe such conversations are instilling a change deep in their thoughts and actions.

How many programs have you done involving boys and what is the feedback you have received from participants and parents?

Since 2018 we have been working on this particular program as experiential learning with boys in different schools and communities under different names like Gender Sensitization, Men Talk Consent, The Guy Talk through different activities including Arts, Conversations, and Training Sessions.

As it is something done for a bigger objective to drive it as an initiative, we were so conscious to listen and see through the changes from the participants and other stakeholders including their parents, school and college staff, and community heads at times. It was a totally new experience for most of the participants to someone asking them to express the way they wanted to be, reassuring their emotions, addressing their insecurities and peer pressure, issues of rejection and addictions – so it was healthy conversations for them to be a cooperative participant and trying their best to change their knowledge, attitude and practices and unlearning all the conditioning they received growing up.

What do you think parents should incorporate in their upbringing when raising responsible kids in terms of sexuality and building healthy relationships?

We often hear from parents that they’re frightened of having girls in this world. We know what violence can be done towards daughters, and people seem desperate to find a solution to this. Curiously, this search for solutions has yet to include looking at ways to change the behaviours of boys.

Parents should talk about a child’s body, boundaries, and consent in everyday activities. If they are playing with another kid and that kid says they want to stop, then they have to stop. If they don’t want to give someone a hug, they don’t have to. Teach them that they have autonomy. They should make their child believe that they have agency over their own body and important choices over their gender identity, sexuality, relationships, and many other things.

What can be the role of schools and educators in this?

The role of Schools and Educators is so important in this essential conversation as parents tend to feel uncomfortable talking about it or they don’t find time to talk about it or they lack the right knowledge, skills, and tools to talk about it. And considering the issue in the Indian context, taking these conversations across different intersections of our society, we need a robust mechanism and strategic interventions that suit different communities based on their culture, traditional and religious beliefs.

So we look upon Schools and Educators to distribute much-needed education and awareness on these topics to own up and deliver it effectively with ease. They can educate both the children and their families and also communities and create a huge difference in many lives.

The answers may have been edited for brevity.

AWARE India’s MENDing Boys program will be running over a span of 15-25 weeks of sustained efforts towards building a movement that explores the role of boys and men as ‘partners’ and ‘stakeholders’ – addressing gender issues through cultural advocacy, direct intervention, and youth education initiatives. If you feel like contributing your time and efforts to this program – you can sign up here bit.ly/Vol4AWARE