If you suffer from anxiety, mood swings, irritability, and crying jags, you are in the great majority. Between 60 and 70 percent of women with PMS complain of these affective symptoms. The cyclical changes in estrogen and progesterone levels are thought to be responsible.

At the start of the luteal phase, the body has high levels of progesterone, which acts as an antidepressant and helps regulate the thyroid. But progesterone levels drop sharply as the menstrual cycle progresses. Estrogen can affect the levels of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, in the brain and nervous system. As the levels of these hormones shift— sometimes up, sometimes down— in the second half of a woman's period, they can affect mood.

In addition, hormones affect how the thyroid functions, thyroid function can cause anxiety, among other symptoms, makes it a possible culprit for Type A PMS.

Estrogen affects the body in many ways, such as:

• Helping maintain body temperature

• Perhaps delaying memory loss

• Stimulating breast development

• Helping regulate the liver’s production of cholesterol

• Helping preserve bone density

• Stimulating the maturation of the ovaries, uterus, and

• Helping regulate the menstrual cycle

• Affecting brain chemicals, including serotonin, dopamine, allopregnanolone, and endorphins, among others

Alternative, or complementary medicine, also blames poor function for the anxiety in this type of PMS because the liver organ that metabolizes, or breaks down, estrogen in the body. remedies include eliminating caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine, “detoxifying” the liver with herbs such as milk thistle.

Affective symptoms, as they’re defined by conventional medicine, and Type A PMS are not the same thing! Affective PMS symptoms are a much broader category and include depression and food cravings, which are not considered part of Type A.