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Good Health / Nutrition -
How a simple change in diet put an end to my tantrums
DAILY MAIL OCTOBER 15 1996
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| Gloria Booth still remembers with vivid horror the times when she thought she was turning into a monster. |
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'There was one evening when the children were small and they were messing about, splashing water, in the bath. Suddenly, I became so angry I had to go out of the bathroom and bang my head against the wall to stop myself hitting them.
'And I thought "this is not me. I don't want to hit my children. I must be going mad". Another evening, my daughter had spread all her pencils over the floor and I told her to clear them up. When she didn't jump to it I snapped the pencils in two. Again I thought "what's happening?"
Mrs Booth did not know then that she was suffering from Pre-Menstrual Syndrome, the collection of mental and physical symptoms that build up before a period. Nor did she know how easily she could be cured by a change of diet.
From being a confident, articulate woman who rarely got angry, she became prey to violent mood swings, feelings of aggression, bouts of weeping and overwhelming lassitude.
'I'd go to bed at 8pm and the next morning I'd feel I hadn't had a minute's sleep. I was also craving chocolate. I was eating five bars after my evening meal. '
Her symptoms understandably put a strain on her marriage to Christopher, a quantity surveyor. 'I was lucky because he tried so hard to understand.
'But if he'd been the sort of person who'd responded by becoming aggressive himself I'm sure it would have ended in fights.'
Looking back, she believes the problems stemmed from having four pregnancies in four years, two of which ended in miscarriages and the others in the births of her daughter, Ashley, now ten, and her son, Alexander, seven.
'Now I realise that my body had been through a tremendous hormonal upheaval.'
'My strange behaviour began when I finished breastfeeding Alexander. At first it was just a couple of days a month, then a week and then by the end of a year almost three weeks out of every four.'
'In the week I was rational I'd tell myself "you're strong, you can rise above this" but then it would start all over again.'
Her doctor put her on the Pill, but when that failed to work she was simply told : 'You're getting to an age when this sort of thing can happen' She says 'Normally, I'd have challenged him but when you're so vulnerable you come away thinking, well this must be my lot.'
Then she heard about the Women's Nutritional Advisory Service and rang it immediately. To its founder, Maryon Stewart, Mrs. Booth's story was all too familiar. The organisation she launched 14 years receives between 200 to 300 letters a day from women for whom something has gone seriously wrong.
'We've had a woman who's been naked and screaming in the street, one who's held a baby under the bath water, another who lunged at her partner with a sharp instrument, women who've been violent, depressed and suicidal as well as those suffering a range of physical symptoms.'
And she believes the symptoms, even the mental ones, stem from a basic physiological cause : poor or inadequate nutrition.
'Look at how we live in the Nineties compared to the Thirties. then we would have four proper meals a day with one snack. Nowadays women feed the kids and then have a rubbishy snack, and by the time their husband gets home, they've gone off the idea of a proper meal. 'But in the week before a period you may need to increase your intake by 500 calories a day. That's why you get these cravings for chocolate.' The WNAS approach is three-pronged. After filling in an extensive questionnaire, clients are given a detailed diet sheet tailored to their tastes and lifestyle and usually including foods rich in magnesium like fruit, nuts and pulses. Research suggests that up to 80 per cent of PMS sufferers have too low levels of iron and B vitamins.
Sufferers may also be given multi-vitamin supplements for short-term use and an exercise schedule geared to their level of fitness. Progress is monitored by follow-ups at one and two months. The service, which has dealt with tens of thousands of women, claims a 90 per cent success rate within four months.
The programme costs £98 if done by telephone and correspondence, and around £125 for visits to WNAS clinics in London, Hove or Lewes, plus about £20 a month for the supplements.
The Women's Nutritional Advisory Service is at PO Box 268, Lewes, E. Sussex BN7 2QN. For an information pack enclose an A5 envelope with four loose first-class stamps.
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