The use of psychological therapies to treat PMS, various types of depression and menopausal symptoms such as hot flushes is based on the view that mental processes can play a significant role in the development and maintenance of these conditions and symptoms. Therapists treating women with PMS have used coping-skills therapies to alleviate the condition. These therapies have three main components. First, individuals are taught to examine their ways of responding to stressful situations. The second phase involves rehearsing new coping strategies that are based on a major re-think of the way they respond to stressful life events. In the third phase, women test their coping responses in the stressful situations that previously gave rise to their PMS and depression. Training programs, which sometimes incorporate relaxation skills, generally involve ninety-minute sessions once a week for eight to ten weeks.

In the case of Nina, aged forty, who had had unrelenting PMS for much of her adult life, coping-skills therapy helped her to identify cues associated with her irritability and feelings of tension and fatigue. She became aware that her approaching menstrual period generated feelings of having to ‘get things done’ in anticipation of her ‘bad days’ when even small things required an enormous effort. Instead of allowing these feelings to dominate her activities, causing overloading and a self-fulfilling exhaustion, she trained herself to develop a plan of action. ‘Don’t concern yourself about the bad days, just about what you have to do today,’ she told herself. ‘Keep the focus on the present.’ After several months she considered her PMS to be much less of a problem.

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Nearly all animals make vitamin Ñ in their bodies, except humans, guinea pigs, fruit-eating bats, primates, the red-vented bulbul bird and the teleost fish! We have to get it all from our diet.

Studies have established that vitamin Ñ enhances sperm quality. As a powerful antioxidant, it can protect the sperm and its DNA from damage.

In one study a group of men had their vitamin Ñ intake deliberately reduced from 250mg a day to 5mg a day. Their sperm had double the normal DNA damage. (We do not yet know for sure but it is possible that certain types of DNA damage make it difficult to conceive in the first place or cause an increased risk of miscarriage or a chromosome problem in the developing baby.)

When sperm stick together (agglutinate), this can obviously reduce the chances of conceiving. Yet research has shown that sometimes as little as 500mg of vitamin Ñ per day can help prevent this.

Some placebo-controlled trials (where some of the men were given a ‘dummy’ pill instead of vitamin C) have shown that supplementing with 1000 mg of vitamin Ñ per day increased sperm counts, improved motility and reduced the percentage of abnormal sperm.

If a woman isn’t ovulating she is usually given the drug clomiphene to stimulate ovulation. Sometimes the drug docs not work and there is still no ovulation. But it appears that if vitamin Ñ is taken at the same time as the clomiphene it can help trigger ovulation.

You may have been worried by newspaper scare stories claiming that vitamin Ñ could ‘promote cancer’. These were actually due to the press misinterpreting the findings of a preliminary investigation. In fact, the study to assess the effect of vitamin Ñ on cellular damage drew very conflicting conclusions and attracted criticism from the scientific world which felt that ‘the conclusions were not justified by the data’.

In any event, one piece of research should always be weighed against other existing research. In this case numerous other studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of supplementing with good levels of vitamin C.

You should take 1000 mg a day.

Your partner should take 1000 mg a day.

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