What Is Premenstrual Magnification?

If you haven’t heard of ‘premenstrual magnification’, you’re not alone. Also known as PMM, this little known condition may be the reason for your pre-period flare-ups. It turns out that periods can actually exacerbate certain chronic health issues. Yep, that’s on top of the bleeding, cramping, bloating, aches, mood changes, and plethora of other menstrual-related side-effects.

From PMDD to PMS, menstruating people are often left in the dark about their hormonal health and ignored by health professionals when they flag abnormalities. A government survey found that less than 1 in 5 women feel they have enough information on menstrual wellbeing (17%).

The Female Body Bible: A Revolution in Women’s Health and Fitness, by Dr Emma Ross, Baz Moffat and Dr Bella Smith, says: “Some symptoms aren’t actually symptoms of the cycle at all, but a worsening of symptoms that are due to another underlying cause and generally experienced at the end of the cycle.” Migraines, they found, are particularly linked to PMM: “Headaches, particularly migraines, have been linked to this phase of the cycle, with 50% of female migraine sufferers experiencing a worsening of these types of headaches just before their period.”

The authors added that “this premenstrual worsening of symptoms that you tend to experience all the time – such as irritable bowel syn­drome (IBS), mood disturbance or acne, as well as headaches – is called premenstrual magnification. Rather than treat them as PMS symptoms, you need to get to the underlying conditions and treat those.”

Dr Emma Ross, one of the authors, put a testimonial in the chapter ‘Mastering Your Menstrual Cycle’:

I have first-hand experience of premenstrual magnifification. As an IBS sufferer, I am used to its symptoms, but have never understood their inconsistency. I was forever trying to find things that triggered the painful spasms and unbearable bloating, so I could eliminate them from my diet. When I started tracking my cycle, things suddenly fell into place. There were certain times of my cycle, the premenstrual phase in particular, where my IBS was indeed very irritable, and triggered further by lots of things that usually didn’t cause me a problem. With that knowledge, I knew to be especially diligent about not doing anything at that time that would risk bringing on my IBS symptoms, like going too long without eating or having too much caffeine.