| @Fable: The funny thing is that a recent British study just reported that males have more PMS symptoms than women, with one sole exception: abdominal swelling. To understand this result, one must know that PMS symptoms are specified as including headache, mood swings, depression, hot flushes, poor concentration, stomach cramps, swelling of the lower abdomen, etc, etc. (I don't remember all the symptoms by heart). In a study where men and women reported how frequently and intensly they felt these symptoms, it turned out that males reported they had more or even of all symptoms except water retention.
This can be explained in 3 different ways I think:
1. The symptoms are very common and not related specifically to PMS, but when women experience these symptoms, people attribute it to PMS, while when men experience the same symtoms people attribute it to other reasons such as being overworked, stressed, or other things.
2. Both women and men frequently have PMS, but males hormonal cycles are less researched.
3. Men and women differ in how they report pain and unpleasant sensations, so they actually don't experience they same, they just report the same. Some previous studies of pain experience have shown that men tend to focus more on pain and unpleasant physical sensations than women, and men also have lower pain theshold and percept pain as more intolerable than women.
It's also interesting to note that according to a recent study, 78% of American men believe PMS is part of the normal menstruation cycle. I wonder if this is something the drug industry propagates in order to sell more SSRI:s?
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