Another Period Myth Disputed Today: Mood Swings Should Not Be Blamed On PMS

It is something women have had experience with since the beginning of time, but in the last week it seems everything we’ve ever known or associated with our period is being disputed by research.

We were told yesterday that our monthly chocolate cravings are just in our head and don’t have any medical connections to our periods.

Today, we are being told that our mood swings should not be associated with our periods either.

Canadian researchers are sticking to our side though and said that symptoms such as irritability are often unfairly blamed on a woman’s period, when other factors such as stress or lack of support could be to blame.

They also said premenstrual syndrome in women has been over-estimated and may not be the cause of women’s bad moods at certain times of the month.

Researchers at the University of Toronto studied a mass of research relating to premenstrual syndrome (PMS).

They suggested that our problem is we tend to blame everything on PMS, disregarding other reasons why women might be angry or upset.

“The idea that any emotionality in women can be firstly attributed to their reproductive function, we're sceptical about that,”  lead researcher Dr Sarah Romans told The Atlantic.

“I think most would assume that PMS is much more firmly evidence-based than in fact it is.”

Dr Roman and her team found some associations with mood at various times of a woman’s cycle, but there was no clear pattern as to which part of the cycle was affected.

On top of this, 36 per cent found absolutely no association between mood and the menstrual cycle.

Another 42 per cent “found an association of negative mood in the premenstrual phase, combined with another phase of the menstrual cycle.”

A very small number, only 13 per cent, found an association between negative mood and the premenstrual phase. This suggests that hormonal fluctuations related to the menstrual cycle aren't necessarily to blame.

'When a woman's upset, it's still often one of the first thoughts people have - maybe she's premenstrual, rather than 'Is her physical health bad? Is she under a lot of stress? Is she lacking social support?” Dr Romans said.

But we weren’t completely misguided in believing our bad moods might have had something to do with our periods.

Negative moods have long been associated with the menstrual cycle, with references to the issue found in medical literature as far back as the 1930s.