PMS, and its much more severe cousin, PMDD, affect millions of women every 28 days, and surely leave them with only half a life?

Of course the menstrual cycle is compeletely natural, and necessary to prepare your body for the most demanding thing of all, bringing a new baby into the world.  But why should you have to suffer so? 

PMS - or Premensrual Syndrome/ PMT (Premenstrual Tension) affects around 30% of women.  Of course most women can tell when their period is about to start; about 1/3 say that the symptoms impact or severely impact their life.  You can find out more with a Google Search, or from sites such as NetDoctor's PMS page, the National Association for PMS, or the NHS page.

But some people get it much worse.  Most severe seems to be the depression and suicidal tendencies.  This 3 to 5% (around 1 in 20) of women really do have a tough time.

This has been given a different name - Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder or PMDD.

Whereas PMS appears to be hormones not working exactly as they should (oestrogen and progesterone in bigger peaks and lower troughs), and can be readily controlled with hormone pills (typically the contraceptive pill, in one of its formulations or other), PMDD appears to work the opposite way - it may be the brain's over-reaction to the hormone changes.

NetDoctor describes it as being very similar to depression - and that you can distinguish between the two because PMDD occurs in regular cycles.

NetDoctor also says that PMDD is most likely to occur in women with Anxiety Disorder, Post-Natal Depression, etc.

So where does B12 fit into all of this?

After all, it isn't mentioned on any of the standard web pages?

It's intriguing that B12 is missing, when some of the recommended treatments for PMDD include Vitamin B6.  It's even more intriguing because many of the symptoms described for PMDD are also symptoms that are reversed with B12 supplementation - anxiety with no obvious life change cause is very likely to be caused by B12 deficiency and cured by B12 supplements, and post-natal depression is almost certainly due to the mother giving up her stores of B12 to the growing foetus and having none left.  How do I make these assumptions?  Simply because in both of these conditions, B12 supplementation of people suffering from these symptoms has immediately given that person their life back.

Obviously we need to do more work on this subject, but I would strongly recommend that anyone suffering from PMDD and even from PMS, fibromyalgia, menorrhagia and a whole series of problems consider big supplements of B12. See one of our patients describe the improvements from B12 in a video interview on http://b12d.org/content/womens-problems-b12-deficiency

Is B12 safe?

B12 is not a medication, it is a nutritional supplement.  It is a particularly safe nutritional supplement - it doesn't interfere with any medication you may be taking so you can take it alongside any medication and other nutritional supplement.  This is particularly important if you are taking painkillers or other treatment for a symptom that you want B12 to reverse - supplement with B12, and only when your symptoms go away do you stop the other medication.

B12 is completely safe at every level so far tested.  European Union published a report on nutritional supplements in Oct 2004, to report what the higher levels of each one are.  Most vitamins have a maximum intake or a maximum number of days that you should take them for, whereas B12 (cobalamin) is listed as completely safe at any level.

B12 is being tested for its power to cure cancer.  It is being tested on cancers in mice (it appears to be very effective), and part of the test is to test for any toxicity.  In mice, it has been tested up to 100million times the therapeutic dose (ie the dose you or I would get, scaled to a mouse body weight) and still no signs of toxicity.  So it is perfectly safe as far as all the tests show.  It is also extremely effective.

How does it work with PMS and PMDD?

At this stage I can only describe how it works in theory. 

Vitamin B12 is important for lipid metabolism, that is, the construction of the lipids which form the outer membrane (bag or boundary) of every cell in your body.  Actually it is wrong to suggest that this is a bag or boundary, since the membrane is where all the action happens - the membrane contains the proteins that interact with the outside world (take in nutrients and oxygen, get rid of waste and carbon dioxide, respond to hormones, secrete messenger chemicals, respond to just about every other signal).

PMS (as I've described above) is caused by the hormones not functioning exactly as they should.  B12 is needed by hormone-producing organs (ovaries, lining of the womb, adrenal glands, pituitary, etc) both to produce hormones in the first place, and to detect the level in the blood and adjust it so it is the right level.  B12 makes sure that the cell membrane is stable, and the cell can then do its job.

Of course B12 is also needed by all of the other cells that need to respond to this hormone, so they can detect its presence.  Some of these have to do things directly to do with fertility, and others, like the brain, need to take other actions such as change your mood.  In cave woman times, you'd want to shut down your libido just before a period, so that your man had a chance to rest his sperm so they were in tip-top condition just before ovulation two weeks later.

B12 is also needed by nerve cells, to make sure they function correctly.  B12 makes sure the Schwann cells form a good insulation (the myelin sheath) around the nerve axon (the process or arm that sticks out from the nerve cell and carries the signal to or from the next cell in line).  You have lots of nerve cells in your brain, and if they lose their insulation, then your brain starts to function badly in various ways.  It's all to do with glials and a little detailed for a description here - suffice to say that Scalobrino in Milan concluded in his study "you can restore the nerve myelin sheath by injecting complicated substances to exact locations in the spinal cord, but it is a lot simpler and just as effective to supplement the whole body with B12".

B12, and lack of it, affects your mood.  Part of the Krebbs cycle (which produces energy) requires methoinine, and methionine comes from homocysteine.  Homocysteine in high concentrations makes you feel depressed and severely depressed.  B12 is needed (it is the only thing to do this) to convert homocysteine to methionine.  So when your B12 is low, you get depressed from the build-up of homocysteine, and you have no energy from the lack of methionine to keep the Krebbs cycle turning.

Of course if you have enough B12 you are fine.  We've just observed that about 20% of people or 1 in 5 suffer from B12 deficiency and can overcome/ reverse all of their symptoms with B12 supplements, best in the form of injections.