Brain Fitness for Women. Sondra Kornblatt
60% of the women with PMDD may have sexual- or physical-abuse histories. That is much greater than the 20 to 25% expected of women in the general population. Your PMS may indicate that you could use support about something that happened a long while ago—something your body has not forgotten.
Grow as a person. Even if your PMS is not from trauma, what sets you off is still likely a problem even during the ordinary days. Noticing what you react to can help you better understand yourself and make changes in how you experience your life.
Other Options:
Homeopathy. It works best when a homeopath prescribes a remedy specific to subtle symptoms; however, few studies have examined homeopathy's effectiveness.
Acupuncture. Some studies show that acupuncture can help with PMS.93Treatments may include moxibustion (the herb mugwort is heated over certain acupuncture points), herbal treatment, and/or changes to the diet.
Chiropractic. Women with PMS have been found to have more back problems, physical tenderness, and muscle weakness. One study showed that PMS symptoms significantly decreased after women received chiropractic spinal and soft-tissue therapy, though treatments may be needed monthly to maintain the results.
Do Alternative PMS Treatments Really Work?
Some alternative treatments for PMS have been shown to work in some studies, but not in others. However, studies may or may not reflect all there is to know about the effectiveness of an alternative treatment; for example, the dosage of an herb may not be right or may be affected if it's taken with or without food. Studies let you know how a population reacts; individuals may have success that is not reflected in the studies.
Some folks reject alternative treatments, saying these treatments work only because of the placebo effect: the notion that people feel better because they believe they’re taking a useful medicine when they’re actually taking a harmless medicine or procedure.
Harvard University and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center did a study where they told participants with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) to take a placebo (a sugar pill) twice a day. The bottle even had “placebo” written on the label. Compared to the control group that took no medicine—real or pretend—the placebo group reported a significant relief from their IBS symptoms (59% compared to 35% of the control group). And get this: the rates of improvement experienced by those on the placebo were roughly equivalent to those taking the most powerful medicines for IBS.94
Does the placebo effect mean alternative treatments don't actually work? Maybe, maybe not. One of the most significant factors in health and life is how our body and mind work together. Be open to finding what can help you—regardless of how it does so—and you will have more opportunities for a healthier body and brain throughout your menstrual cycle.
When There's a Bun in the Oven: Hormonal Changes During Pregnancy
If you get pregnant, hormones from both you and your baby have a field day (or more like field months). Because of these hormonal changes, along with strong emotions and adjustment to parenthood, up to 10% of pregnant women can become depressed at some point during pregnancy, says Dr. Channi Kumar at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.95 Usually depression sets in during the first trimester (the first twelve weeks of pregnancy). Why?
First, the stress hormone cortisol doubles the first trimester, rising to about three times the normal level by the third trimester, say Deborah Sichel, MD, and Jeanne Watson Driscoll, co-authors of Women's Moods.96 Some think these stress hormones could protect the baby from pregnancy stress and strengthen the mother-baby bond.
Second, estrogen and progesterone levels rise in the first trimester, and that increase can induce depressive symptoms. The levels of the hormone prolactin also increase to prepare the body for the formulation of mother's milk, and increased prolactin is associated with irritability and anger.
Anxiety, caused by hormonal shifts and possibly by the abnormal firing of synapses with norepinephrine, which triggers our fight-orflight reflex, may also be a factor in first-trimester depression.
The brain may naturally accommodate these hormonal changes and work through morning sickness, so that expecting moms feel better in the second trimester (weeks twelve through twenty-six of the pregnancy).
Incidentally, fertility treatments can act in the limbic brain and produce severe depression, unstable moods, and sleep disruptions, as well as possibly reducing our ability to pay attention.
Brain Fog in Pregnancy
If you've been pregnant, you may remember that you couldn't remember anything.
Women in their third trimester experience forgetfulness approximately 15% more than the average person, found Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.97 Studies have yet to determine the reasons, but some hypotheses are:
High estrogen levels—more than 1,000 times greater than the levels at ovulation.
High level of oxytocin. The love hormone has an amnesic effect, which is great for childbirth, but makes it hard to be dazzlingly brilliant at work.
High levels of stress hormones—three times their normal amount. High levels of cortisol specifically may adversely affect the hippocampus, which plays a critical role in learning and memory.
Decreased brain-cell volume. Though your brain cell totals decrease in the third trimester, your brain will plump back up a few months after delivery.
Brain fog may encourage you to let go of the stressful world and get ready to nest. But the stressful world doesn't always want to let go. What helps?
Write down what you need to remember, using white boards, sticky notes, and notebooks.
Create an information station, one spot for all your time-organizing and communication materials.
Get appointment confirmations by email or text, and mark down your appointments in your calendar or notebook.
Be a monotasker. Do one thing, then the next thing.
Ask for help.Your partner, older kids, and friends can help you remember what errands you need to do when.
Use your GPS to get where you're going.
Rest yourself and your brain.
Eat well to keep your brain primed.
Exercise.
Keep a sense of humor.
Mom's Brain After Baby
Skipping right through childbirth (let's thank epidurals and the amnesiac hormone oxytocin, which gets released during labor), let's dive into a mother's postpartum brain.
The baby blues are not uncommon; 60 to 80% of new moms experience them after childbirth. The blues are unexpected sadness, crying, irritability, restlessness, and anxiety. They are similar to the pregnancy blues, but many women are jarred by having them while they have a new baby.
It makes sense that these blues occur when you consider all the changes new moms experience: a precipitous drop in estrogen and progesterone, fatigue from childbirth, the round-the-clock demands of the newborn, disappointment or guilt that things may not have gone as planned, the adjustment to breastfeeding, frustration about the still-poochy tummy, a messier house, and new negotiations with your partner.
Most times, baby blues fade in a couple of weeks as your body adjusts