A new study conducted in New York finds that over 64% of women now experience premenstrual mood swings and anxiety, representing a "key public health issue globally.

Every menstrual cycle, the majority of women suffer premenstrual symptoms. Every menstrual cycle, at least 61% of women across all age groups reported experiencing symptoms related to their mood, leading the researchers to conclude that "premenstrual mood symptoms represent an important public health issue in the world."

The director of the Reproductive Psychiatry Research Programme at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Jennifer L. Payne, said that "our study reveals that premenstrual mood disorders are exceedingly frequent throughout the world." More significantly, she said, "a majority of women reported that at least occasionally, premenstrual symptoms interfered with their daily lives."

The Flo app, which helps women track their menstrual cycle or track their mood or physical symptoms during and after pregnancy, was used in the study, which was published in Archives of Women's Mental Health. More than 238,000 survey responses from women ages 18 to 55 from 140 countries were analysed.

The most common symptoms reported were food cravings (85.28%) followed by mood swings or anxiety (64.18%) and fatigue (57.3%), said the researchers.

Also, 34.84 percent of respondents claimed their premenstrual symptoms occasionally interfered with their daily lives, compared to 28.61 percent who said they did so every time they had a period. "The incidence of reported premenstrual mood and anxiety symptoms varied significantly by country." She said,  "Understanding whether differences in biology or culture underlie the country level rates will be an important future research direction."  

Researchers believe that by increasing healthcare practitioners' awareness of how frequently these symptoms, particularly anxiety and mood-related symptoms,  occur, women will benefit from improved care. Premenstrual symptoms that interfere with a woman's daily functioning can be treated using a variety of techniques, the expert added.

"Improving knowledge of how prevalent these symptoms are and that there are therapies available if they have an adverse impact on functioning can help women improve their quality of life," the researcher said.

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