New ad: Milk decreases PMS symptoms - Yes or no??

[Guest guest]

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Debuting this morning, the California Milk Processor Board (CMPB)’s

“Everything I Do Is Wrong” campaign features humorous depictions of men

whose lives are apparently made miserable by their womenfolks’ premenstrual

syndrome (PMS) symptoms.

One shows a man clutching two cartons of milk, cowering under the headline,

“I’m sorry I listened to what you said and not what you meant.” Another

reads, “I apologize for not reading between the RIGHT lines.” There’s also a

Web site — Everything I Do is Wrong.org <http://everythingidoiswrong.org/> —

and a social-media campaign, plus, in California only, billboards, radio and

print ads.

The campaign features the statement, “Milk can reduce the symptoms of PMS.”

Steve , executive director of the CMPB (best known for its “Got Milk?”

campaign), says the new effort is meant to “immediately disarm the

situation” surrounding PMS and its effects, not only on women who suffer

from it but also the people around them. “It’s a serious topic and a serious

condition,” says. “But the nature of the humor” is such that “people

can laugh right off the bat.” The campaign, he says, is “almost like a

public service, providing tools and abilities to talk about” PMS.

But Connie Bohon, an ob-gyn in private practice in Washington, D.C., says

that the statement linking milk to reduction of PMS symptoms is “soft,” in

that research hasn’t established a clear link between the two. One study

published in

1998<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002937898703771>in

the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology — and sponsored by

Kline Beecham Consumer Healthcare, makers of calcium-supplying TUMS —

found that women who consumed 1,500 milligrams of calcium via supplements

experienced nearly a 50 percent reduction in such PMS symptoms as negative

affect, water retention, food cravings and pain. (That effect took several

menstrual cycles to take hold.) Another

study<http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/165/11/1246>found

a reduction in risk of having PMS symptoms (that’s different from a

reduction in the symptoms themselves) among women who ate calcium-rich foods

and milk.

Bohon says that while “there are some beliefs that calcium can improve PMS

symptoms, I don’t know that it’s universally accepted” that it can do so.

Nor is it clear whether the body responds the same way to calcium

supplements as to calcium supplied by food. Still, women who experience PMS

symptoms and who wish to avoid medications to relieve them may turn to milk,

mostly as a mood stabilizer, Bohon says. She says she recommends that women

who go that route “do it in conjunction with exercise,” another mood

booster.

The statement about milk and PMS may be, as Bohon puts it, “soft.” But, she

says, “I think it doesn’t do any harm.”

For his part, maintains that “it’s the calcium” that does the job,

“and milk is a prime source, and a highly digestible source, of calcium.”

“That line [linking milk to PMS symptom reduction] may or may not please

some people in the parsing of it,” acknowledges. “But in the gist of

it, we feel we are on solid ground.”

WashingtonPost<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-checkup/post/new-campaign\

-says-milk-can-help-with-pms/2010/12/20/gIQA51sp5H_blog.html>

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Ortiz, MS, RD

*The FRUGAL Dietitian* <http://www.thefrugaldietitian.com>

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