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Amherst, US (pte030/15.06.2005/13:00) - A new US study has found that a calcium-rich diet and vitamin D could lower the risk of PMS.
Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) symptoms include depression, fatigue, cramping, breast tenderness, headaches and irritability - which potentially interferes with normal life and relationships.
Elizabeth Bertone-Johnson at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, US http://www.umass.edu , led the study. Lives of women who suffer from PMS, she says, "are really being impaired for several days a month. It is a much more severe end of the spectrum than being cranky for a couple of days."
Susan Thys-Jacobs, at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in New York, who led a previous study on PMS, found that taking 1000 milligrams of calcium supplements a day can significantly reduce PMS symptoms.
Bertone-Johnson and her colleagues surveyed data from the more than 116,000 women registered in the Nurses Health Study II http://www.channing.harvard.edu/nhs/history/index.shtml , a major ongoing study. They compared 1057 women who were diagnosed with PMS with 1968 matched women who didn't suffer from it. Data regarding the presence and severity of 26 PMS symptoms and the intake of 131 food products were collected and compared.
Those who ate around 1200mg of calcium a day were 30 per cent less likely to develop PMS symptoms than those who only ate 530mg, the lowest average dosage. Women who had a high intake of vitamin D also showed reduced risk.
Four servings of milk a day equals 1200mg of calcium and 400 International Units of vitamin D. Low-fat or skimmed milk drinkers were 40 per cent less likely to suffer from PMS symptoms. Whole milk is not recommended, however, as studies have shown that its high saturated fat content is associated with increased PMS risk.
Drinking milk, however may not work for every woman, says PMS researcher Ellen Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia. "It is unlikely that there is a single cause of PMS and unlikely that all causes are preventable," Freeman says.
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