Understanding and managing PMS with Semaine
If you find yourself experiencing PMS, you're not alone: Three of every four menstruating women experience it.
To get a better understanding, we're chatting with Catherine Lee of Semaine Health.
Defining PMS
It stands for premenstrual syndrome and encompasses a wide variety of physical and mental symptoms we can experience before our period.
Colloquially it's also used for the same symptoms that happen during your period, but the majority of people with periods experience the worst symptoms before bleeding begins.
Who experiences PMS
Most people with periods will experience PMS at some point in the lives, but not everyone. Once in a while I meet a lucky person that has never experienced PMS, but I find that it's rare. Also as you age, your hormones change and even if you don't experience PMS now, you might later on in life — the opposite can be true too.
Hormonal changes that lead to PMS symptoms
Your hormones are constantly fluctuating throughout your cycle, which starts with your period and ends with the day before your next period. It can be confusing because we're all constantly talking about "balancing your hormones," when hormones levels are actually supposed to change frequently throughout your cycle.
Most of us are familiar with estrogen and progesterone, so I'll oversimplify the cycle changes of those hormones to explain what happens. Estrogen and progesterone are low the week of our period then estrogen levels increase and peak around ovulation, helping to maintain the hormonal cycle. Progesterone peaks about a week afterwards to help maintain a pregnancy. And both hormones thicken the uterine lining to prepare the body for a possible pregnancy. After peaking, estrogen and progesterone levels start declining and that change in hormones contributes to a lot of PMS symptoms.
Most common physical symptoms of PMS
The most common physical symptoms are:
Cramps
Digestive upset
Migraines/headaches
Bloating
Mood swings are very common as well even though they might not be as obvious as the physical discomfort and pain. People who have PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) experience extreme mood swings the week before their period.
How Semaine Health products help manage PMS symptoms
We have our PMS Relief capsules and PMS Relief gummies. They both help with PMS symptoms by acting as an all natural anti-inflammatory. Just like our hormones that fluctuate throughout the month, our immunity and inflammation levels fluctuate as well.
For fertilization reasons, your immunity and inflammation are relatively low during and after ovulation, but as you head towards your period, they both increase. This increase in inflammation triggers a lot of PMS symptoms including bloating. So our products reduce that inflammation, which helps to reduce PMS symptoms.
What makes Semaine Health products different
Other PMS supplements on the market focus on hormonal changes or just treating the symptoms instead of cause. With their anti-inflammatory ingredients our supplements can be taken by almost anyone experiencing pain and discomfort before or during their period.
You also don't have to take our supplements all month long — just take them when your PMS symptoms start.
And last but not least, we use a third party to clinically test our supplements. Supplements and vitamins sold in the United States are not required by the FDA to be clinically tested. So, most supplement companies don't run tests because they're expensive and might prove their products to be ineffective. And a lot of supplement companies say they are clinically tested, but they're only referring to the individual ingredients being clinically tested — not the final product. We want to be the change in the industry and build customer trust through our high-quality ingredients and product efficacy.
Our utmost priority is to offer products that work and help as many people as possible.
You can save 15% on your Semaine Health order using code MICHAELALEUNG__ or you can find them in-person at Walmart and other stores.