Oh for fuck's sake

"PMDD occurs regularly before a woman's menstrual cycle."

I have essentially one reason for having a blog: I like to rant about things no one wants to hear about. For instance, the above quote comes from a Yaz! commercial which discusses "PMDD" (which used to be known as PMS), and how great Yaz! is for containing the symptoms of this very real syndrome associated with changing hormones, and yadda yadda yadda. Truth is, every form of hormonal birth control has an effect that contains symptoms of PMS -- in all honesty, Seasonale has helped my periodic (and I use the term intentionally) pain, mood swings, etc. more than any other hormonal birth control I've used since age 16.

My issue, however is not with this claim, or the rebranding of PMS as PMDD, but rather that PMDD occurs "regularly before a woman's menstrual cycle".

This is a semantic discussion, and essentially not worth reading, but it must be said: from menarche to menopause the entire cycle flow to egg drop to flow is entirely the menstrual cycle. The bleeding part isn't the cycle! It's the whole damn thing is!

Now, the people who write script for commercials are medical professionals (and obviously the one writing the script for this particular commercial wasn't a woman, because we learn this shit, and it is ingraned in our heads from age 9; the egg grows, matures, bursts through from ovary to fallopain tube and if it isn't fertilized, you have your period -- the menstrual cycle in half a sentence), but this is just one more reason why there shouldn't be medical commercials unless they're PSAs about health, since those are required to be accurate in order to count as a public service announcement.

Commercials for pharmaceuticals drive me insane. I think they damage public health, and are a serious symtom of all the things that are wrong with a for-profit medical system.