Video Podcast with Shalene Gupta about PMDD: Destigmatizing Menstrual Health & Breaking the Silence

Ayurvedic secrets for women's wellness to balance energy and mood

Written by Heather Burkart

I'm passionate about helping women unlock their greatest potential to experience the energy, focus, and mood that they deserve.

In this episode, Heather Burkart interviews Shalene Gupta, author of the book ‘The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD.’ They discuss PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and its severe psychiatric symptoms that occur before or during the second half of the menstrual cycle. They also touch on the misdiagnosis and lack of awareness surrounding PMDD, as well as the importance of destigmatizing menstrual health and providing support and understanding for menstruating individuals. The conversation explores both allopathic and holistic approaches to managing PMDD symptoms.

Listen or watch the full video podcast episode.

Main Takeaways

  • PMDD is a severe form of PMS that affects about 10% of the population and can cause severe mood swings, depression, anxiety, and deep rage.
  • PMDD was only officially recognized as a diagnosis in 2013 and is still not widely understood or talked about.
  • There is a need for more research and awareness around PMDD and menstrual health in general.
  • Treatment options for PMDD include medication, holistic approaches, and a combination of both.
  • It is important to create a supportive and understanding environment for menstruating individuals and to prioritize self-care and well-being.

A Conversation with Author Shalene Gupta

Heather Burkart (00:02.41)
Welcome to Her Wellbeing podcast where women can be embraced and empowered by the sister sciences of yoga and Ayurveda to unlock their greatest potential. I’m your host, Heather Burkhart. I’m a certified Ayurvedic practitioner and the founder of Her Wellbeing, Ayurveda and Yoga. Welcome. Today, my guest is Shalene Gupta.

I’m really excited to have Shalene with us today. She is a Minnesota grown Boston based writer with Chinese, Indonesian and Indian roots. She’s the author of the cycle. I have the book right here, The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD. She’s also the coauthor of the Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, and Regain It. Your book The Power of Trust was nominated for a Thinkers 50 Breakthrough Idea Award. In 2022, Shalene was identified as a thinker to watch out for and made the Thinkers 50 radar list. She’s also the host of The Trustonomy Podcast, which was nominated by the AMVs for excellence in podcasting. Please join me in offering a warm welcome to Shaleen Gupta.

Shalene Gupta (01:36.617)
Thanks so much for having me, Heather, and for raising awareness on this super important topic. Really appreciate it.

Understanding PMDD: Severe Symptoms and Impact

Heather Burkart (01:43.058)
Absolutely, I’m happy to have you as our guest today. I borrowed your book from my local library, and I absolutely devoured it. And the book I’m talking about is The Cycle, and that’s what we’ll be talking about today. I really appreciated all the information that was shared in this book that can help people have a better understanding of PMDD. So, let’s start there. What is PMDD and what is it?

Shalene Gupta (02:25.813)
Sure, so PMPD stands for premenstrual dysphoric disorder. More simplistically, I like to think of it as PMS on crack or PMS on steroids. It’s very severe psychiatric symptoms right before your period or sort of right around that time, but essentially during the second half of your menstrual cycle. So, it varies what that looks like from person to person, but about 10 % of the population has it and it can really derail you with severe mood swings, depression, anxiety, and deep rage. And it just makes it really, really hard to function.

Heather Burkart (03:10.892)
Thank you. And in your book, you have quite a few case studies, if you will, when you look at various people who are going through PMDD and what that really looks like in everyday life, which I really appreciate so that people hopefully can relate to that and understand like, my gosh, maybe I have PMDD. I don’t just have PMS, right? This is an actual condition. And according to your book, it’s fairly, it’s only recently been made official, if you will. I’m not sure about the exact lingo around that, but we’ve only known about PMDD maybe for about how many years?

The Journey to Diagnosis: Challenges and Misunderstandings

Shalene Gupta (04:05.109)
Oh my gosh, the timing gets tricky, but essentially, researchers have known about PMDD for a while, since like the 1960s, but it was only made an official diagnosis. And the DSM, is, it’s sort of this giant bulk of official mental health diagnoses that clinicians use, it only entered there in 2013. And I believe the World Health Organization only acknowledged PMDD as real in 2019.

I first found out about PMDD despite suffering from it in 2020, which strikes me as really late.

Heather Burkart (04:42.08)
Wow. I like to think that I specialize in women’s wellness, especially around the menstrual cycle. That said, a lot of what I read in your book was pretty new to me. And I think what’s so fascinating is that it is commonly misdiagnosed. Am I right about that?

Shalene Gupta (05:11.775)
I think what’s more common is that people don’t even realize that it’s an issue. Like I knew for myself, well, I would have considered myself like a mental health ally. I had friends with mental health issues, but if you had asked me like, personally, do I think I have anything? I’d have said, absolutely not. And, you know, it was only in my early thirties that it really hit me like something is wrong and I need help, and this is worth seeing a doctor about. And it’s simply because I had no idea that there’s such a thing as having really severe mood swings before your periods. Like I knew I was having mood swings. I knew that they were coming before my periods. I just didn’t know that that was out of ordinary or something that could be treated.

Heather Burkart (05:54.218)
Right, that it’s actually a condition. And I think what comes to my mind is, you know, this cultural perception of the crazy menstruating woman. I’ve just, you know, started my period. And that not really allowing women to understand that gosh, my symptoms are really severe. This is not just PMS. This is more, and I think it’s really empowering for us, honestly, to have this diagnosis now, because now we can start talking about all the things that follow like treatment and how to get a diagnosis and things like that so that people can start having these conversations with their doctors and physicians and caregivers about getting help for this. This is not just me having an off month. There’s something going on. And then there’s also what complicates this. There’s also, and I think this is a relatively new condition as well, PME. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that is on the spectrum of menstrual disorders.

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Shalene Explains Premenstrual Exacerbation

Shalene Gupta (07:20.509)
So PME is premenstrual exacerbation. And what that, gets really confusing, but essentially premenstrual exacerbation means that you have an underlying condition, and it could be anything. It could be like migraines, asthma, anxiety, or depression. And your menstrual cycle makes this worse. So, there are certain times when your condition’s doing okay, like you still have it. And then second half of your menstrual cycle, again, once you ovulate, your symptoms get a lot worse.

So PME doesn’t even have its own diagnostic criteria. We’re much further behind in terms of our research and our knowledge about that. In fact, many clinicians that I’ve spoken to suspect that if somebody has anxiety and depression, and then they also have a PMDD diagnosis separately, that they actually might just have PME and that in fact, many women who are suffering from mental health issues have co -occurring PME and it’s just not talked about because we don’t talk about periods. We’re not in the habit of asking people who have illnesses to track their symptoms and think about the timing. Is there a time when they get worse? Is there a cyclicality to it?

Destigmatizing Menstrual Health: Breaking the Silence

Heather Burkart (08:31.2)
In your book, I appreciated how you went through the whole cycle and broke it down in terms of the hormones, the different hormones that are in play at different times and how, depending on which hormone is, let’s say, activated at that time, that hormone can be the one that is causing the symptoms.

Or, maybe it’s the decline of the hormone. And so it almost sounds like there’s a possibility that there are different types, right? Where we have a type that is, the symptoms are more pronounced at ovulation, right? And then maybe someone has symptoms more pronounced at a different phase in a cycle. So it’s really fascinating. And I think if we can call more attention to this. I think that’s what your book is doing, then we can start to understand our different relationships to these hormones and how does it change our experience during our premenstrual time specifically.

Shalene Gupta (09:44.777)
Yeah, I think that’s what makes it so much harder and so much more complicated to study. It’s that, first of all, we haven’t isolated, are there different types? Are people responding differently to different changes? But there was a researcher in the 1960s and 70s, Katrina Dalton, who was one of the first to study this. And she was just tracking a lot of different types of behavior from schoolgirls, from their grades to how tidy they are to physical cramps.

And what she found was essentially everyone kind of had a pattern, but the patterns were all different. Some people became like a lot tidier right around their period. Other people became a lot messier. As you can imagine, this makes it a really challenging thing to study if you’re just looking at population, because everyone’s changing differently. They just kind of have their own pattern. And again, this is where I just feel like I’ve become this really strong advocate of take some data on yourself. Know your cycle. Also, we need to be communicating that you know the cycle is real. PMDD is caused by changes in the hormones. There’s this idea it’s caused by imbalanced hormone levels. That’s not true. It’s the sensitivity to regular fluctuations in your brain, hormonal fluctuations in your brain responding poorly to them. But you know that can have other implications in your life.

Heather Burkart (11:11.2)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you hit on something earlier when you said, we’re not in the practice of talking about the menstrual cycle. And I think that is a huge sore point. It is a gaping void in our medical care system that has been there way too long. Since working with menstrual health, I realize that there’s more awareness around this, more research, and more care that can be offered to people who really need that, need the extra support. But even just those without PMDD or PME, right?

And understanding we are not in men’s bodies. We have a very different body. We have a cycle, very different changes that we go through every month and to accept that as opposed to trying to force ourselves into the status quo, which is this male dominated society, we just don’t fit.

I hope that there’s more awareness around menstrual health. And that’s certainly what I’m trying to do in my work so that we can have that conversation openly between each other, within this community, and then also with our caregivers so that we can ask for the care that we require.

Treatment Options: Medication and Holistic Approaches

Shalene Gupta (12:58.771)
I love that because also, you may not have PMDD or PME, but you might still be heavily affected by your cycle. PMDD has a really strict criteria to meet, and that’s because of the history of people, you know, doctors didn’t want to medicalize periods and be like, my God, all women, you know, have a disorder. So, they made that, that criteria like really, really tight. But on the other hand, there’s still a ton of people who have maybe one symptom of PMDD. Maybe you get extreme fatigue right around your period. I talked to one woman who was just like, you know, sleep for like 18 hours a day for one or two days before her period. And that still has an impact on your life, you know, and that’s still, you’re still carrying around this like shame and guilt of like, why am I like this? We live in a society that’s built by men for men. And we see the traces of the patriarchy everywhere.

Maybe you have something cyclical and you know in a couple days you’ll be fine but for two days you need to sleep for 18 hours a day and you should just do that.

Heather Burkart (14:06.592)
Yes, absolutely. I am all for that. You talk in your book a little bit about fantasizing about the like the type of work schedule that honors the menstrual cycle and honors the fact that like, yes, one or two days, maybe even more out of the month, I am not getting out of bed or I’m not leaving my house.

I would love that as well. I would love for our culture to embrace the importance of the menstrual cycle and to give people at least the option to opt out. And for us not to be seen weak or crazy because of it. Whether you’re planning on having children or not, this is what women’s bodies are built to do. We have creative powers, certainly, and some of us choose to start families and some of us choose not to. But that being said, that is something really that I think needs to be acknowledge as really important as a major women’s wellness topic, so we can have this conversation about menstrual health and how it is important to support menstruating people and not just, you know, write them out of the script. I think in a way we’re writing ourselves out of the script too, because we’ve been taught to like to tamp it down, you know, ignore it, not talk about it and just try to tuck it away. And I what do you think about that? How is that helping or not helping?

Shalene Gupta (16:07.941)
Yeah, mean, something I worry about and the concern that’s been raised to me is, know, when we start talking about PMDD, our people who are sexist or who, you know, who maybe just don’t even know better, going to start using this as an excuse to not hire, not promote people who have PMDD or even people who need a little bit of time during their menstrual cycle. And I feel like there’s this way that we’re confusing, you know, needing flexibility with sort of being incapable or with being weaker. And I would really want to push back against that and say, no, it’s that somebody is working differently. And I see that with my husband. He works extremely hard, but he will push himself to the brink. And what I’ve noticed is because I rest every month, I can bounce back way quicker than he can, whereas he’ll get to a point where he depletes himself because there’s no sort of natural break on his system.

And then when he’s sick or when he’s exhausted, it’s really, really bad. He’s knocked out way faster than I am. I feel like if we just think about this in terms of people have different patterns for how they work and everyone knows their body differently and we just need to accept that instead of using this to judge people and essentially, you know, walk them out of positions or, you know, disenfranchise them or discredit them we would be in a much better place. Because I’ve talked to so many people with PMDD where there’s a real concern, like they don’t want their name on the record because they’re afraid they won’t get promoted.

Heather Burkart (17:42.678)
It’s unfortunate because I feel like women are already dealing with this in terms of taking time away from work to have children to raise their children, right? And that maybe being frowned upon because that can be seen as a liability for the companies that employ them. Maybe we need a more inclusive picture about being more flexible at work in general and not just for women and their families, but just people in general who might need like a mental health vacation day like your husband, you know, just someone who needs to take the day off because maybe they’ve been traveling for like a week straight and they’re not going to jump right back in it.

I think part of it is tied into this American mentality of go, go, go, do more, keep going no matter what, keep driving harder. I think that’s unrealistic and unsustainable. What if we have this more inclusive view to give folks a break. Let’s just give them a break. Whether you’re menstruating or you know you’re about to menstruate, or your child is sick or you’re sick, I even see how my husband will try to avoid taking sick time. We really need that downtime to not just us but anyone to replenish, to fill their well, to rest, especially in this day and age where like we’re expected to just push it so, so hard. I just don’t think that that is a good fit for the human body and for the human brain and everything else that goes with that. Would you agree? Is that asking too much?

Creating a Supportive Environment for Menstruating Individuals

Shalene Gupta (19:55.093)
Oh, absolutely. It was really validating to interview Ariana Huffington, and she was talking about how she would work like these 18-hour days. And then one day she just passed out on her desk, or I think she like woke up in a pool of blood. And she like passed out working and she had this whole epiphany about the importance of sleep and the importance of rest. And so, one question I had, because I’d heard that story before was just, okay, so what happened to the quality of your work and your after you rested that much. Because I think we have this idea that, all right, if you sit your butt down for 18 hours and you grind out work, you’re going to achieve more than the next person.

And I say this as someone who is kind of obsessed with achievement. And she blew my mind. She said, everything that I’ve accomplished in my career happened after I started sleeping. And so now she’s devoted herself to a company focused on not burning out. Really think it’s about, I think too often people can think, saying taking a break means not working or they’re afraid it means that they’re lazy, but really what it means is working sustainably, right?

Like being able to bring your best self to work and to accomplish the things that you want to, because when you’re well rested, when you’re creative, when you’re in balance, you’ve spent time with your family and friends, that’s when your creativity is running at its highest and you can give your best to the work. And it’s much better, I’d say, to have high quality work than a lot of work.

Heather Burkart (21:23.082)
Hmm, absolutely. And I also what I appreciated about your book is so many conversations that you bring to light with people who are struggling with PMDD. Lots of personal stories that you share including your own personal story that I think is really powerful. And you have a lot of scientific research as well to back things up with like, you know, we’re learning about this and we need to learn more, certainly. Is this where you see things going, more research being done on the subject?

More Research is Needed for PMDD

Shalene Gupta (22:16.915)
Absolutely we need more research and more research is being done. PMDD continues to be a topic that doesn’t get much attention. I have a newsletter now where, because after my book came out, I was like, there’s still all these really cool papers coming out, which I didn’t get to include because at some point you have to turn in a manuscript.

In my newsletter, I take a paper, and I interview the author and ask them, what are they working on and a lot of them will say, know, like, oh, we’re behind, like, we’re 10 or 15 years behind depression or anxiety, or the number of studies we have is not that big.

Or I go to conferences and people are talking about postpartum depression, they’re talking about menopause. But then when you talk about people who are actually having their periods and struggling with, like, cyclical PMDD, there’s just sort of this blank. People don’t even know what they’re talking about.

Even just thinking about the title of my book was really challenging just because it was… So on one hand, I needed the phrase PMDD in there to signal to people it’s about PMDD, but on the other hand, a lot of people don’t know what PMDD is. So how do you come up with a title that kind of signals a disorder that not many people have heard

Heather Burkart (23:30.576)
I think it’s important that you included period in the title, confronting the pain of periods and PMDD, because so many people are suffering with just really intense periods, right? They might not have PMDD, but it’s shutting them down in some way.

So, yes, I get that. Absolutely. You talk about getting a diagnosis, now we do have a diagnosis for PMDD. How exactly do women or menstruating people get diagnosed for? Is it just PMS? Is it PMDD? Is it PME? Which is it?

The Importance of a Diagnosis for PMDD

Shalene Gupta (24:25.269)
Yeah. So I’m going to, I’m going to talk about like the ideal world of what clinically should happen. And then I’m to talk about what actually happens. Theoretically what should happen is that you take, you track your symptoms for two months and there’s something called the DRSP, which is sort of the daily record of the severity of symptoms. And you can find that online and it’s like 11 different symptoms that correspond with PMDD and irritability, depression, exhaustion, withdrawing from society or your interests.

And you track that across two months to see how severity changes across your period. And then you can take that to a doctor and they should be able to confirm that you have PMDD. Unfortunately, premenstrual exacerbation doesn’t have that. It’s just so understudied. It doesn’t even have its own criteria. It’s literally shoehorned into PMDD as a little footnote of like, yeah, some people also have premenstrual exacerbation.

Now, what actually ends up happening, I interviewed a ton of people for this book. None of them mentioned being asked to record their symptoms for two months. Most of them were diagnosed by Googling severe outbursts, deep anger before my period, which is how I was diagnosed, and then essentially calling their doctor. And it kind of depends on, do you get lucky? Do you have a doctor who’s heard of it? Or in one case, a woman called her doctor and he was like, I think you have diabetes, which she did not have diabetes, had PMDD.

I got lucky, my doctor believed me, which I was frankly very relieved because at that point in time, I knew I’d been having these breakdowns for years. The last thing I wanted to do was then wait two months to get a treatment. But there is still so much disbelief around PMDD that while writing this book, I actually ended up going off of my medication.

Doing the DRSP symptom tracking just because I was getting so many, I was interviewing a bunch of feminists who did not believe PMDD was real and it started messing with me. So was just like, you know what, I’m going to do the official tracking. So if anyone asks, I have it, the data’s all

Heather Burkart (26:41.568)
Hmm, wow, that’s fascinating that you’re able to do that process for yourself. And I think what’s so interesting about PMDD. I understand people can get misdiagnosed for like anxiety or depression, but I think it’s the irritability and the rage in particular. I find that to be remarkable in terms of, you know, it’s not like there’s a diagnosis for rage. But clearly menstruating people, women are experiencing this in their premenstrual phase. It is a real thing.

And it’s funny because, you know, I thought to myself, like, I wonder if I have it because I could always track all like the biggest fights I had with my husband to those days leading up to my period. Not that we never argued any other time, but I just, you I can look at some of our bigger arguments and say, yeah, that’s definitely right before my period started. So to be able to like see that in a condition as in PMDD, I think that’s so powerful because really before that, there was no place for like, what about this rage? Am I just an angry woman? It’s like, no, it comes every month before my period. Like, what is up with that?

So I just love that this book is facilitating this larger conversation about like, yeah, it’s not just us being emotional people. And yes, women can be more emotional, but like, what is it at that time of the month that’s triggering these really intense moods? Like you explained in your book how intense they really can be. I they can be life -changing for some people. So again I just think it’s so important to make that distinction that you know it is women are you know a lot of these symptoms kind of live in the mental health department.

Heather Burkart (28:59.87)
And I think I understand why some people might think like, no, you want to stay away from that because then we’re just going to become like crazy menstruating people. But I do think that it’s important that we’re on the right side so that, again, we can get the help, the support that we need. Now, that’s kind of like the allopathic approach.

Do Holistic Approaches Work for PMDD?

You interviewed some people who tried the holistic approach, like maybe working with changing their diet or taking certain supplements. Did they find some relief with holistic remedies? You’ll have to refresh my memory.

Shalene Gupta (29:52.819)
You know, I’m going to say that PMDD, kind of like any other illness, you know, at some level, at basic level, like take care of yourself, like exercise, eat well, like if you are not in a healthy environment, I kind of compare it to like asthma, if you’re in an environment with allergens and you’re not, you’re not like working on your fitness, you’re not eating healthily, like yes, it will be worse. That said, I also feel like there’s, you know, a lot in the community going on about like,

Maybe I can treat this completely naturally and I think I talked to somebody who was using crystals and the sense I got was that that that wasn’t completely a solution like obviously I don’t like if something if someone finds something helpful they should do that as long as it’s not causing harm to themselves or other people

But I also worry that for so long, PMDD has not been taken seriously. It’s been ignored. And mental health itself is stigmatized. And I do understand, I there’s a debate about is it, know, is PMDD mental health? Is it reproductive health? And at some level, I feel like I’m not the person to say what the name is because I don’t care. I just want it treated, right? Like I think everybody deserves treatment regardless of what you call it. And that’s where I’m sad.

Read the article Unveiling the Ancient Wisdom: How Ayurveda Empowers Women’s Reproductive Health

mysticmag.com

Sometimes I think people are looking towards like crystals or maybe I can just like treat it with yoga and they continue doing that and they’re not seeing the relief and it’s, you know, I’ve talked to people where they’re on the brink of divorce, they’re on the brink of losing their jobs and at that point it’s just like, well, if you’ve tried everything else, why not try medication?

Does Medication Work for PMDD?

Heather Burkart (31:40.146)
That’s great to know that there is a medical treatment and there is medication that is available for people who are having those severe symptoms. I would say that acute symptoms, especially ones that are affecting your emotional and mental wellbeing, I would like a team of caregivers for those people so they have lots of options including medication.

I don’t think you should necessarily have to choose completely holistic or completely allopathic. The beautiful thing is that there are so many options. So, if you want to find out about medical treatment or the medication and also work with some of these holistic approaches, you have a holistic toolkit that you can work with.

And I understand that some people really want to stay away from medication and that’s their right to want to do things naturally. After reading the stories in your book, Shalane, I think especially those who found relief from medication, I think it makes perfect sense and I feel relief for them that they were able to find relief because it’s the acuteness and the severity of the symptoms that make me concerned as a holistic practitioner.

I can’t give you a yoga routine that is going to make you not want to rip your own hair out. It’s like, yeah, we can work on calming down the mind and work with the body.
This is a situation where I think Eastern and Western paths work really well together so that people do have a whole plethora of options as opposed to like, no, I’m just going this route or I’m just going that’s okay to choose both, to choose both or, you know, whatever works for you. And like you say in the book, everyone’s cycle is so different. Ayurveda understands this. We’re such unique beings. We’re all going to have very unique experiences. We can find common ground, certainly, but everyone is so very, very different. And what that means is that everyone’s going to find a different way. And honestly, the more options we have, the better.

Shalene Gupta (34:46.087)
I love that. I think that’s a really wise way of looking at it because, and you know what, like I take medication, but exercise is also a big part of my routine. Like I eat healthily. It’s just that it’s sort of like all these pieces of puzzle functioning together. And you know, if any of them drop out, I don’t feel good, but where I think I tend to go really heavy on medication is it breaks my heart. just see so many people. And I think we’re still at a point where we, there isn’t this understanding of mental health.

as health or an illness, it comes across as more of like an issue of self -control or something that doesn’t need to be treated. And I think that’s where I just doubled down on medicine because I was like that, you know, for a lot of, for a long time, I was just like, okay, well, every month I know that this rage is coming and I’m going to get on top of it. And I really never did. And for so long, I internalized that, and medication was like, it was life -changing and I wish I’d tried it soon.

Heather Burkart (35:49.644)
I think that’s great for people to hear that it’s okay to try it and see if it helps. And certainly, maybe it can help kind of tone down the symptoms a little bit. So, you can explore some of these holistic options. And yes, there are many, you know, and I think you’ve hit on them. Just taking care of yourself, eating healthy, there’s so many, yoga certainly can be helpful. I, know, when I do yoga, I’m always thinking of menstrual health, yoga for menstrual health. You know, is it going to cure your terrible menstrual cramps in the moment? I can’t guarantee that, right?

Yes, luckily we have lots of options and I think the more we look into this and learn about it, I think we’ll have even more. Well, what do you think is, to kind of wrap this up a little bit, Shaleen, what do you think, what is your biggest piece of advice for women menstruating people who think they may have PMDD?

Advice for Women / Menstruating People Who Think They Have PMDD

Shalene Gupta (37:12.895)
Get help, do your research, that this is real. And to not internalize this as your fault, that there’s something bad that you did. The shame is really societies, because we’ve known about this for a long time. And we still have trouble talking about this. And what this means, our inability to talk about periods and emotions and mental health and the impact, it means that people are suffering in silence, and it means that some people are dying.

That should not be something where we’re feeling guilty and terrible and like we did something bad. Society gave us the short end of the stick.

Heather Burkart (37:53.398)
I think that’s really important to point out that we can choose a more empowered place to find agency by connecting with each other, finding the right community, plugging in, finding those people who will help you and through your journey, finding the right doctors who will support you. Thank you so much, Shalene.

This I think is such a gift for us, your book, that I hope will be an ongoing conversation. For those of you who are listening, if you want to learn more about PMDD, her book is The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD. And there’s also, Shalene mentioned a newsletter, and I joined that as well because absolutely the research continues to come out. There are more stories to tell. So, I also suggest getting on the newsletter as well so you can get the updates. And where can they sign up for that newsletter, Shalene?

Keep Learning About PMDD in Shalene Gupta’s Newsletter

Shalene Gupta (39:28.903)
Yeah, absolutely. all you have to do is go to my website, www.shalenegupta .com. And there’s a little tab that says newsletter.

Heather Burkart (39:40.202)
Wonderful. And I want to thank you, Shalene, for the work that you did in this book and the work that you continue to do for helping us raise awareness around menstrual health and PMDD. And thank you so much for joining us here today on the Her Wellbeing podcast.

Shalene Gupta (40:00.181)
Thanks so much, Heather. Really, really appreciate you having this conversation.

Resources

Shalene’s Website

Sign up for Shalene’s Newsletter

Diagnostic Criteria for PMDD (National Library of Medicine)

DRSP for PMDD Diagnosis

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Ayurvedic practitioner for women in Milwaukee Wisconsin nationally certified
Ayurveda practitioner in Milwaukee Wisconsin US
her well being ayurveda and yoga for women

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