Daily HealthBeat Tip

PMS?

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Calcium and vitamin D are good for you in ways that science is still discovering. One researcher found women who had lots of each were less likely to develop premenstrual syndrome -- PMS. Elizabeth Bertone-Johnson of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst looked into it with support from the National Institutes of Health. Her findings were in Archives of Internal Medicine:

"Women who consumed the equivalent of about four servings per day of skim and low-fat milk, fortified orange juice and other low-fat dairy foods such as yogurt had approximately a 40 percent lower risk of being diagnosed with PMS than women who consumed these foods only about once a week or less." (15 seconds)

And that's PMS severe enough to substantially interfere with a woman's life.

Bertone Johnson isn't saying calcium and vitamin D can treat PMS, though � just that women who had high amounts at the start of her study were less likely to develop PMS later.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: August 9, 2005

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