PMS is Real
"Amma is so sensitive yaar, she cried over the TV serial again last night."
"Careful what you say to my wife this week, she's PMSing, she won't be easy."
"Oh here we go, Priya's pulling the PMS card again to skip the client call."
Riya had heard all three lines — one from her brother about their mother, one from her brother-in-law about his wife, one from a colleague rolling his eyes about another woman on their team. Nobody in that week meant real harm, she was fairly sure. They said it the way people say things they've heard said a hundred times before, half-joking, half-believing it. And yet each line landed somewhere quiet in her, because she recognised herself in all three women at once — the tears, the sudden temper, the exhaustion that made her want to disappear from a meeting rather than push through it. She wondered, not for the first time, when exactly her own hormones had become a punchline.
There is a particular kind of loneliness in crying over nothing and knowing, even as one cries , that it is "nothing." Riya knew this feeling well. Every month, about a week before her period, something in her would shift — quietly at first, like a tide pulling back before it comes crashing in.
Some months she would feel it as a strange grace, almost poetic — a heightened sensitivity to music, to a sad scene in a film, to the smell of rain. She would write long messages to old friends, feel everything a little more deeply, and later wonder if she had simply been more herself that week.
Other months, the same hormonal tide would arrive as irritation she could not explain even to herself — snapping at her mother over a badly folded towel, glaring at a colleague for chewing too loudly, feeling her patience wear thin like an old dupatta.
Some months her stomach would bloat until her favourite kurta felt tight at the waist.
Some months it was her bowels that rebelled, sending her rushing to the bathroom before an important meeting, leaving her mortified and unsure how to explain it.
And every single month, without fail, the moment her period actually arrived, something in her exhaled. The cramps would come, yes, but so would a strange, immediate relief — as if her body had been holding its breath for days and could finally let go.
This is premenstrual syndrome, and some version of Riya's story is probably someone's too.
Not identical — PMS is remarkably good at wearing different faces in different women, and even different faces in the same woman from one month to the next — but familiar in its shape.
The tenderness, the tears that arrive without warning, the sudden hunger rather craving for something sweet or fried, the bloating, the headaches, the days when the skin feels like it doesn't fit right. And underneath all of it, the same quiet question: is this normal, or is something wrong with me?
The honest medical answer is that PMS itself is entirely normal. It happens because of the natural rise and fall of oestrogen and progesterone in the second half of the menstrual cycle, which in turn affects serotonin — the brain chemical responsible for mood, calm, and a sense of wellbeing. When progesterone rises after ovulation and then both hormones fall sharply just before your period, the brain's serotonin system takes a hit, and this is what produces the irritability, the low mood, the tearfulness that so many women describe. The bloating happens because these same hormones affect fluid retention. The loose motions that some women experience are linked to prostaglandins — the same compounds responsible for period cramps — which can affect the gut just as much as the uterus. None of this is imagined, and none of it is a character flaw. It is physiology, plain and simple, repeating itself with quiet regularity in almost every woman who menstruates, from her teenage years right up to perimenopause, though how it shows up can change with age, stress, weight, and even the years since she first started her periods.
What varies enormously is severity, and this is where the line between "normal PMS" and "something to see a doctor about" begins to matter. If the symptoms are uncomfortable but manageable — if one can still go to work, still function in relationships, still recognise oneself even on a difficult day — this is ordinary PMS, and it responds well to simple changes.
If, on the other hand, the mood swings are so severe that they disrupt work, relationships, or sense of self for several days every month; if leaves a feel of despair or rage that frightens oneself; if the physical symptoms are severe enough to keep one away from daily life month after month — this may be PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a more intense variant that deserves proper medical attention rather than quiet endurance.
Severe pain that doesn't respond to usual measures, unusually heavy bleeding, or symptoms that seem to be getting worse each cycle rather than staying the same are also signals worth bringing to a doctor. There is no medal for suffering through it alone.
On the simpler end, a great deal can be done at home. Cutting back on oily and fried food in that second half of the cycle helps with both the bloating and the mood, since these foods tend to worsen inflammation right when the body is already more reactive.
Staying well hydrated helps with the bloating and the headaches alike.
Seed cycling — rotating flax and pumpkin seeds in the first half of the cycle and sesame and sunflower seeds in the second half — has a following in nutrition circles for its gentle hormone-supporting effects, and while the science on it is still emerging rather than definitive, it is a low-risk habit that many women find genuinely helpful alongside everything else.
Regular exercise, even just brisk walking or a consistent yoga practice, has fairly solid evidence behind it for easing both the mood symptoms and the physical discomfort of PMS, largely because movement itself supports serotonin and eases fluid retention.
Magnesium and vitamin B6, calcium, and reducing caffeine and salt in the days before the period are other small, evidence-backed changes worth trying.
For some women, a short course of medication — whether for mood symptoms or for physical ones — genuinely helps, and there is no shame in needing that support any more than there is shame in needing glasses to see clearly.
What makes PMS so much harder than it needs to be is not the hormones. It is the silence around it, and worse, the mockery.
Riya knew what it felt like to snap at a colleague and then hear, not quite out of earshot, someone mutter "PMS" with a roll of the eyes, as though her irritability were a performance rather than a physiological wave she was riding without much choice in the matter. She knew what it felt like to be told she was "too sensitive" during the very week her brain chemistry had, quite literally, made her more sensitive. This dismissal cuts both ways — it makes women ashamed of something they cannot help, and it makes the people around them treat a real, hormonally driven experience as an excuse or an act. Neither response serves anyone. The people who share a life with a woman going through this — her partner, her family, her colleagues — do not need to diagnose her or tiptoe around her. They simply need to know that this is real, that it passes, and that a little patience during that one week goes a long way. And she does not need to hide it either, pretending each month that nothing is happening while she quietly white-knuckles her way through it alone.
The next time that familiar shift arrives — the tears that come too easily, the sudden bloat, the short temper which one doesn't recognise as own — one might remember Riya, and remember that this is not a flaw to be corrected but a rhythm to be understood.
Track it if it helps to make sense of it.
Be gentle with oneself through it. Make the small changes that genuinely help. And if any month it ever feels larger than one can carry alone, let that be the moment to see a doctor — not out of failure, but out of the same good sense that would have one see a doctor for anything else the body was clearly asking for attention to pay to.
PMS is real and taking help is being Realistic!
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