In which I discuss some lady issues

Oh sure, Badger may have cornered the market on how to handle the flow but I'm here to tell you about how to manage the mood.

For you see, by the time you factored in my pre-menstrual tension, my menstrual-crankiness and my post-menstrual anger Chef and those around me were lucky to score about five days of me being relatively stable and gee, happy.

A lot of that pre-, during- and post- symptoms were greatly lessened even eradicated through the intensive breeding program that has been my life. But over the last couple of months I've noticed it returning to the point that by September I was positively vile to all and sundry. Road raging, angry at the universe, cursing the clothes for not hanging properly, yelling at the kids for yelling at each other or me (so so futile) were Top of the Pops in the allconsuming household.

So I mentioned it to M primarily in the context of coming off one of my meds and that perhaps my premenstrual rage was worse being off that particular drug.

He suggested an all-out attack on The Sydrome:
4 fish oil tablets (400mg minimum of EPA  per tablet) daily
3 evening primrose tablets per day
1 Mega B executive stress tablet per day

This was based on research undertaken that had established that fish oil is very effective in managing mood, particularly in conjunction with anti-depressants. We discussed a study that had been undertaken in which long term sufferers of depression who had been otherwise unresponsive to anti-depressants were put on a course of high-DHA fish oil supplements and anti-depressants. Those taking the fish oil and a placebo experienced a 30% improvement in mood while those on the anti-depressants and fish oil registered something like an 80% improvement. That's in a cohort of people that had otherwise been drug-resistant (as in the anti-depressants had not worked, side-affects had been too severe etc). Impressive hey.

There is still debate over the dosage - some say 1mg some say 3mg.

The evening primrose is well established as a PMT treatment and the executive stress vitamin B supplement would be good for managing my stress regardless.

The idea was to start taking it holus bolus half way through my cycle and to see if it made any difference.

Well, let's just say my little monthly friend arrived bang on time and compared to my normal ball of fire fury I'd barely managed a smolder.

For me the clincher on this formula being a winner has been the fact that if I have been angry or stressed or cranky it hasn't lasted longer than acceptable for such a state of mind (minutes as opposed to hours if not days) and I have also been able to lift myself out of such a mindset much more easily than previously.

Not bad huh.