PMS

I am irritable today... very irritable. (As a matter of fact, my blogger recently decided it's going to display to me only the Dutch versions with no means of switching back to English and that irritates me.) I've started to notice in the last year or so that there are periods when I am quite irritable and moody, and other times when hardly anything bothers me. Then after paying attention to my mood swings last few months, I've concluded that I am victim to PMS. (Or maybe it's more correct to say others around me are victims to my PMS.)

I think European men seem less aware of what PMS is (based on blank looks I get when I mention PMS as an excuse), so let me define it here. PMS stands for premenstrual syndrome. It is a group of symptoms that typically start one to two weeks before your period. These symptoms may include breast swelling and tenderness, acne, bloating and weight gain, headache, joint pain, food cravings (i.e. chocolate), irritability, mood swings, crying spells, and depression. Supposedly they tend to affect women between their late 20's to early 40's the most, and recur in predictable patterns. Mine is starting to get very predictable. Practically two weeks out of the month I am showing symptoms of PMS. If I am fat, it's PMS. If I am irritable, it's PMS. If you say otherwise, you better have a death wish.

It is quite a concern for me now though, as my level of irritability seems to be getting higher recently. I can't imaging anyone would actually want to discuss this, but how do you (men and women) deal with PMS? I'm especially curious to know if the men actually notice in their women this monthly mood swing, and how they deal with it.