For Hippocrates, the wise Greek physician of Antiquity, some of the nervous diseases suffered by certain women of his time, had a mysterious relationship with the functioning of the female sexual organs, particularly with the menstrual cycle, and he recorded his certainty, baptizing one of those disorders like hysteria, a word that comes from hysteros, which means womb in Greek.
But beyond this criterion, which shows the good clinical eye of the brilliant Hippocrates, and also a certain macho whiff, it has been verified that three out of four women who suffer from physical and/or psychological symptoms in the days before menstruation. It is what is called premenstrual syndrome.
For some specialists, these discomforts appear on any of the days between ovulation – days 13 or 14 of a regular cycle of 29 or 30 days – and the start of menstruation, although other doctors speak of them lasting just a week, beginning two or three days before bleeding and concluding with it.
Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD)
- As is logical, this Syndrome is typical of women of childbearing age, especially those between 25 and 35 years of age. It is also said that the severity of symptoms increases with age.
- The Syndrome manifests itself with different levels of intensity and the most ruthless of all is the so-called premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) in whose treatment it is necessary to resort to hormonal supplements, birth control pills and antidepressants.
- The specific causes that trigger it are still unknown, but there is talk of certain circumstances such as traumatic births and that the genetic factor (inheritance) is responsible for between 30 and 40% of cases.