sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

June 8, 2009


biological purpose?
posted by soe 1:02 am

Can someone please explain to me the evolutionary purpose of PMS?

I understand childbirth pain and cramps from a biological perspective, even if I fail to appreciate the latter on a personal level. But what, oh what, could be the point of making me sad and cranky and paranoid and generally down in the dumps on a monthly basis? I mean there has to be some hormonal justification for this, right?

Here’s the lemonade version of my weekend:

  • Jazz being cancelled allowed Rudi and me to have a lovely Friday dinner out with Michael and Julia at a British pub we’ve been meaning to try for more than a year.
  • My Saturday bike ride not happening meant that my knee did not scream with pain for the whole day. And biking to and from the ball game (which I wouldn’t have been able to do with the gimpy knee) was pleasant and quick and allowed us to miss the Red Line delays and the crowds and to stop by the World War II Memorial on the 65th anniversary of D Day on a beautiful moonlit night.
  • The Mets being blown out of the water at the one game in the series we saw in person meant the Nats won a game in front of a large crowd. And it gave John Lannan the first complete game of his career.
  • Not successfully finding a vegetarian-friendly dinner at the ballpark (okay, I could have had pizza, but that’s really just overpriced cardboard and there’s no shiny way of rethinking it) meant that I found a $2 juice made with real fruit (it had strawberry bits in it!) at the coffee stand just above our seats. Cheap deals (particularly for something healthy) are hard to come by at the ballpark.
  • Going back to bed this morning instead of getting dressed and heading to the farmers’ market might have resulted in us missing the milk supply and shelling peas, but it netted me three more hours of sleep, which I clearly needed.
  • A lazy but enjoyable evening of Tony’s watching (even with its abysmal sound and video work) submarined my plan to make strawberry shortcake but it meant I had only half the dishes to wash and that we had strawberry-laden ice cream sundaes instead.

Okay, okay. I admit that Pollyanna may have had something here. I do feel better thinking about the positives that came out of this weekend rather than the things that didn’t end up working out. Normally I can do this automatically, but, as I wrote above, PMS makes me a little crazier than normal.

Which brings us back to my original question: What’s the point for PMS? Anyone?

Category: life -- uncategorized. There is/are 6 Comments.



Maybe the biological purpose of PMS is to keep potential mates away, since it’s not prime conception time? Whatever the reasoning, it truly SUCKS!!!!!

Comment by Jenn 06.08.09 @ 8:11 am

@Jenn: It just takes everything negative (all those things that normally you can just let go without even thinking about) and makes them more so. Totally unfair!

Comment by soe 06.08.09 @ 2:19 pm

Here you go:

http://xkcd.com/594/

😉

Comment by Jenn 06.08.09 @ 3:01 pm

@Jenn: Ha!

Comment by soe 06.08.09 @ 3:13 pm

Maybe the horribleness of PMS is supposed to encourage you to be pregnant as frequently as possible to avoid it? Not that being pregnant necessarily is hormonally superior.

Of course, you could always blame men throughout evolution for not being smart enough to select mates in such a way as to weed out this undesirable trait. In a less PMSy and more romantic perspective, this means that no matter how much of a terror she became on a regular basis, there was a man who knew absolutely that for the rest of the time, his woman was worth dealing with her occasional craziness/depression/crankiness.

Perhaps negatively obsessing over issues that normally would have been ignored has inspired women to greater heights of creativity an innovation?

Or maybe it was the cranky bitches of our primitive ancestors who had all the virgins lacking genes for nasty PMS sacrificed into volcanoes?

Or perhaps while the men were off hunting and wild animals attacked, only the women used to pain were strong enough to fight back and survive? Isn’t it empowering to think “Evolution has given me this unpleasantness to remind me that I could, as my sisters before me have done, single-handedly fight off a hungry bear.”?

Comment by Grey Kitten 06.09.09 @ 3:54 pm

@GK: No, it’s really not.

Comment by soe 06.09.09 @ 5:33 pm