PMS: What It Feels Like, Why It Happens and What Helps

PMS, short for premenstrual syndrome, is the set of body and mood changes that can show up in the days before your period: bloating, sore breasts, spots, tiredness, headaches, and feeling teary, snappy or low. It is real, it is linked to the way your hormones rise and fall across your cycle, and it usually eases once your period starts or soon after.

Not everyone gets it, and it can change from one cycle to the next. Below this guide are the questions about PMS that readers have asked Soso, each with its answer.

What PMS can feel like

In your body:

• bloating, or a tummy that feels hard and full
• sore or tender breasts
• spots or breakouts
• feeling tired even after a full night's sleep
• headaches, aching muscles or heavy legs
• feeling hungrier than usual, or craving certain foods

In your mood:

• getting irritated by small things, or snapping at people
• crying more easily, sometimes without knowing why
• feeling anxious, low or extra sensitive to what people say
• wanting to be left alone

What makes it PMS is the timing: it comes in the days before a period and fades once the period starts or soon after. The emotional side has its own guide, big feelings before your period starts.

Why it happens

Two hormones, estrogen and progesterone, rise and fall across each cycle. Progesterone goes up in the second half, after an egg is released, and then both drop in the days before a period. Several PMS changes line up with those shifts.

Bloating is the clearest example. Progesterone relaxes smooth muscle, including the muscle of your gut, which slows digestion in the second half of the cycle. Then prostaglandins, the same chemicals behind cramps, speed things up around the period itself, which is why bloating often turns into looser stools on day one.

In the first year or two after a first period, most cycles do not release an egg, which is part of why early cycles are so irregular. That can make it hard to know when your period, and the days before it, are coming.

Helping your body feel better

Loose, comfortable clothes help on bloated days, and this guide to period bloating has more to try. A soft bra or crop top with some support often feels better for sore breasts. If cramps start before the bleeding does, light movement like stretching or a walk can help. Aches and headaches have their own guides: why muscles can ache before a period and period headaches and migraines.

Tiredness lands on top of sleep that is often already short. Your body clock genuinely shifts later during puberty while school still starts early, and with everything else keeping you up, sleep ends up both too short and badly timed. The recommendation is 9 to 12 hours of sleep in every 24 hours for ages 6 to 12, and 8 to 10 hours for ages 13 to 18, so the days before your period are a good time to protect your bedtime.

Magnesium may help with PMS, but the studies behind it are limited, and at this age food sources come before supplements. Any supplement is an adult's decision, like any medicine.

Helping your mood

These do not make PMS go away, but they can make the hard days easier to get through.

• Name it. Telling yourself "this is the days before my period talking" does not make the feeling fake. It just stops you treating it as the final word on your life, your friends or yourself.
• Give people a heads-up. One line to a parent or a close friend, like "I am in my grumpy days, it is not you", saves a lot of arguments.
• Plan around it. Keep those days lighter where you can, and do what calms you down: music, a shower, drawing, time outside.
• Snapping at someone on a bad day does not make you a bad person. A quick sorry once it passes fixes most of it.

When it is more than PMS

PMS lifts once your period starts or soon after. Talk to a parent or another adult you trust if:

• the low or irritable feeling does not lift after your period, or hangs around most days for two weeks or more
• you have lost interest in things you used to enjoy, are pulling away from friends and family, are sleeping much more or much less than usual, or feel worthless or numb
• the changes before your period are so strong every month that they get in the way of school, friends or home. There is a severe form of PMS called PMDD, and a doctor can help with it
• cramps or headaches are bad enough to stop you doing your usual things

If the feelings get so big that they scare you, or you do not feel able to keep yourself safe, tell an adult you trust straight away: a parent, a teacher, a school counsellor or any other adult you feel safe with.

Spotting your pattern

Notes turn PMS from a surprise into something you can plan for. Each day, jot down your mood, your energy and anything your body is doing, and mark the day your period starts. After a few cycles you may see the same days coming round again, which helps you plan ahead and tell PMS apart from feelings that stay all month. While cycles are still irregular, the pattern can take longer to show. The Soso app has a daily log for mood, energy and symptoms if you want one place to keep it. The checked facts this guide relies on are listed below, each linked to its card on our medical sources.