Feeling sick before my period

[JerseyGirley]

I'm 17 years old, and lately I've been feeling sick before my period. I can't eat, I get a head ache, I get cramps, feel nauseous, light headed, can't go to the bathroom and when i do... it's not pleasent. Is this happening to anyone else?

[JMJ]

Premenstrual symptoms are often a sign that your body needs an extra nutritional boost.  I recommend a book called "Fertility Cycles and Nutrition" by Marilyn Shannon.  Be sure you get your hands on the new 4th edition since it is so much better and more understandable than the previous editions.  She recommends a few nutritional things that you can do to help with premenstrual symptoms:

-Get enough B-vitamins, especially B6.  If you need to, you can take a B complex, or you can do an internet search for foods high in B vitamins.  Adding a banana a day helped me a lot.  If you are vegetarian, make sure you are getting a good source of enough Vitamin B12.  If you are on birth control, that can deplete your body of some of the B-vitamins, especially B12.

-Get enough magnesium.  Take supplements if needed.  This is hard to get from food.  Constipation is a major sign that you may not be getting enough magnesium.

-Cut sugar and refined carbohydrates.  When you're feeling icky, that may be all you care to eat, but it's a vicious cycle.  When you eat sugar, your blood sugar rises and then drops, and the resulting low blood sugar makes you queasy.  That is a large part of what goes on in morning sickness, and if you're experiencing those same symptoms when you're not pregnant, cutting back on sugar is really something to look at.  Refined carbohydrates also deplete you body's B-vitamins.  It's all connected.

-Get enough healthy fat and protein to help stabilize your blood sugar even more.  Eat flax seeds and/or fish to make sure you are getting enough Omega-3's.

-Avoid artificial sweeteners.  Your body produces insulin because it is expecting sugar.  Then, you don't get the rise in blood sugar that you would get from sugar, just the drop because of the insulin, and it is the drop in blood sugar that makes you feel sick.

There are some supplements she recommends considering: Optivite PMT, ProCycle PMS, Vitex (though she recommends using it by taking Fertility Blend, that contains Vitex), and progesterone treatments (if nothing else is working).

Have you considered learning to chart your cycles?  By charting your cycles, you would be able to see more of what is going on with your body.  You can see signs of being progesterone deficient or having thyroid problems (or rule them out), just by looking at your chart, and if you know that you are having a problem that goes along with your cycle, it might be helpful for you to get a little more information on that.  Note: if you are on hormonal birth control, charting won't help you much.