Since I’ve been deemed incapapible of understanding the female mind by experts, I guess it should be fitting that I’d be lost on their physiological aspects as well.
I was watching television when this commercial for some period medicine comes on. Usually, that is my cue to raid the refrigerator, but I hear them imply that PMS and PMDD are different disorders. I know nothing, so natually I’m baffled. I have never heard PMDD before. [I believe] I was introduced to the concept of PMS early by some irate members of the fairer sex in middle school (not telling). Is PMDD different than PMS? Or is just a renaming of the disorder.
Is a testament to how much I know, PMDD stands for Premenstral something Disorder.
I think that PMS makes you want to shoot somebody, but PMDD makes you actually go and buy the gun and bullets and think ‘powpowpow’ while sporting a malicious glint in your eye.
I am of the opinion that PMDD is a minor affliction (if one at all) invented by or trumped up by Eli Lilly so they can sell more and new drugs. The above posted link has Lilly’s signature on it. I think it is along the lines of “inventing” underarm odor to develop the deoderant industry. Everybody smelled bad, but nobody cared until some wise marketer made us paranoid about it.
I agree with bwk. I am not a doctor, but it sounds like PMDD is extreme PMS. Looking at just the language, the Syndrome part of PMS just means a group of symptoms, but the Disorder part of PMDD implies something abnormal. It makes it sound like anyone (female) can get PMS, but if it is abnormally bad, it is called PMDD.
Using Sigene’s odor as an example, everyone had Underarm Stench Syndrome, but if you really stank you had Underarm Super Stink Disorder.
PMS = Premenstrual Syndrome
Alternative names:
premenstrual tension; premenstrual dysphoria
PMDD = Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder
I would say it’s the same thing, although as other posts mentioned, the latter probably refers to the more severe cases - that is, the 10% or so of women whose symptoms are classified as “so severe they are considered disabling”.
This is getting more and more common in the Rx industry…where a company reinvents a condition to sell more product.
Example: Pharmacia sold Detrol in early 98 as a product for the treatment of ‘Overactive Bladder’. Point: Overactive Bladder is a made up condition which sounds much more palatable to a potential sufferer than Urinary Incontinence.
The ability of a company to extend a patent is usually the root of any strange marketing concept in the Rx industry.
Note that Lilly’s product Sarafem is just Prozac for a different indication.
Just as GW’s Zyban is Wellbutrin for a different indication.
With direct-to-consumer advertising, these tricks are easier to foist on consumers as opposed to traditional marketing which just was thrown at physicians.
You know what? It’s the same damn thing as PMS.
And ask any woman-PMS is bad.
Of course, all doctors know it’s just in our heads, right?
:rolleyes:
Still, it is kinda funny…
Don’t denigrate PMDD. In extreme cases its sufferers are actually psychotic, unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. With PMS, women act the way men act all the time, but with PMDD, they are truly ill. Of course, the difficulty is where to draw the line between the two, and certainly those with vested interests (ie pharmaceutical companies, others) will want to draw it so as to enlarge the population of sufferers.
Of course, it’s a marketing disorder. Even MD’s did not dare to call the PMS 'a diseaese" (which does not make it any more bearable). Any “syndrome” or disease may be more or less severe. To get a different name, it should change its quality (significantly), get new symptoms, etc. The degree of the malfunction does not make a new condition. Only if the main characteristics change. There are diseases which are usually benign, but sometimes people die from them. The are not given a new name on the deadbed, although the severity changed enormously, could not change more. Right Qadgop, M.D.?
The same analogy: we all stink, Enoss calls it USS. But if one stinks excessively, s/he goes to the doctor, who diagnoses hyperhidrosis, not USSD.