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Neal D. Barnard, MD, President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), wrote in a PCRM fact sheet titled "Nutritional Factors in Menstrual Pain and Premenstrual Syndrome," published on the PCRM website (accessed Dec. 10, 2007), that:

“For some individuals at least, diets that avoid animal products [including milk] and keep vegetable oils to a bare minimum cause a marked reduction in menstrual pain…

Some evidence suggests that getting into better calcium balance can help reduce both menstrual pain and PMS. The effect is probably not a large one, however, and not all women notice an effect.

Most people think that improving calcium balance means ingesting more calcium either through supplements or dairy products. And, indeed, calcium carbonate supplements have been shown to reduce PMS symptoms.

But potentially much more important is to reduce the amount of calcium your body is losing minute by minute. Researchers have clearly established that animal proteins increase the loss of calcium by increasing the amount of calcium your kidneys remove from the blood and excrete in the urine. When people avoid animal proteins, their calcium losses are cut to less than half of what they had been.”

Dec. 10, 2007