Does anybody have a valium? I really wanted to ask every girl in the office, but I figured no one would have anything stronger than ibuprofen. I had already taken 6 that day I'm sure, and since the bottle said don't take more than 8, I wanted to save some for the afternoon since it was only 9 A.M. when this intense wave of cramping took over my entire body.

This was nothing new, really. I had been suffering from intensely painful menstrual cramps since I was 14 years old. Staying home from school, putting a heating pad over my stomach, popping ibuprofen like candy and sometimes just crying from the pain was the norm. My mom said that she suffered from the same thing, and she didn't know what else to do.

As I got older, I also experienced breast tenderness, headaches, lower back pain, breakouts, fatigue, heavy bleeding with clotting, cravings and mood swings including anger, irritation, lack of patience and aggressiveness.

I am now 31 years old, and for the past 6 months my period has been nothing like this: my cramping is minimal to non-existent, the bleeding is much less and only lasts for about 3 days, the breakouts, breast tenderness and back pain are almost unnoticeable and the cravings and mood swings are much improved. I was thinking the other day, this is how a period should be!

Let me give you a bit of history: I have been suffering from hormonal imbalance for a long, long time. I started to bleed in between periods 3 years ago, and went to a gynecologist to get things checked out. She found out that my uterine wall was thickened, and there was a polyp in there too. She removed the lining and polyp and put me on birth control meds for 6 months to fix things, because all of this was caused by a hormonal imbalance, so she said. Did she check my hormone levels? No. She just put me on fake hormones to try to fix things. She would have had me stay on the birth control forever, but I didn't want that fake stuff in my body, so I quit taking them after the 6 months. For a while, my periods and cramping did improve, which was nice, but not worth the risks associated with birth control pills.

Last year, I went through a very stressful time and was overcome with fatigue that just wouldn't go away. I have struggled with fatigue off and on for my whole life, but this was debilitating. I got online and did research for months, and finally discovered that my hormones were the culprit of pretty much everything I had been suffering from since I was a teenager. I found out that I probably had too much estrogen in my body and not enough progesterone. I took a saliva hormone test and confirmed that my levels of progesterone were very low compared to the levels they should be during the latter part of the menstrual cycle. I started supplementing with a natural progesterone cream and the results have been wonderful. I still need ibuprofen sometimes to help with my headaches and occasional cramping, but I don't dread my period anymore.

Here are some of the symptoms of estrogen dominance according to Dr. John. R. Lee M.D., a leading expert on hormonal issues: "Both women who have suffered from PMS and women who have suffered from menopausal symptoms, will recognize the hallmark symptoms of estrogen dominance: weight gain, bloating, mood swings, irritability, tender breasts, headaches, fatigue, depression, hypoglycemia, uterine fibroids, endometriosis, and fibrocystic breasts. Estrogen dominance is known to cause and/or contribute to cancer of the breast, ovary, endometrium (uterus), and prostate."

If you are suffering from PMS, why not get a saliva hormone test to see if estrogen dominance is the cause of your symptoms? Why suffer if you don't have to?