Tame your "raging hormones"

By Nancy Monson

Thirty years ago, hormones were all the rage -- literally. In 1970, a prominent doctor and political adviser named Edgar Berman infuriated feminists when he made an outrageous statement: that women's "raging hormonal influences" should preclude them from holding positions of power.

Today, most people, and thankfully doctors, know better. In general, our bodies regulate these natural hormonal fluxes with precision and finesse. But because our female brains are wired to be highly responsive to sex hormones, sometimes these vital hormones exert negative effects, dampening our moods, making us irritable, or sparking a case of the blues or, in rare cases, a serious mental disorder.

According to Deborah Sichel, M.D., a psychiatrist specializing in female mood disorders at the Hestia Institute in Wellesley, Mass., and the co-author of Women's Moods (William Morrow, 1999), estrogen acts as a natural "upper" and mood stabilizer in the brain, while progesterone is more of a "downer." The interplay between these mood-altering hormones and brain chemicals such as serotonin -- which rises and falls with estrogen and must remain at certain levels to prevent depression and anxiety -- helps to maintain our emotional balance. But kinks in this interaction appear to be at least partially responsible for the fact that women are twice as likely as men to develop depression and anxiety disorders, especially during times of major hormonal change. Here are four of those times:

1. Before your period
The week or so before the menstrual period is often characterized by symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). "Up to 85 percent of women experience at least one symptom of PMS," says Joseph T. Martorano, M.D., a New York psychiatrist and author of Unmasking PMS (M. Evans & Co., 1993). These include a spectrum of moods -- sadness, irritability, anxiety, confusion -- that can range from mild to severe, along with physical symptoms that may include breast tenderness, abdominal bloating and headache. Between 3 and 7 percent of PMS sufferers have symptoms that are so incapacitating that they interfere with daily life. PMS usually lasts two to five days, but may plague some unlucky women for up to 21 days out of each 28-day cycle.