GOOD news for premenstrual women. If you鈥檙e feeling tense, as little as half a glass of wine could relax you.
A team led by Sheryl Smith of the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York treated rats with hormones to make them 鈥減remenstrual鈥�. They found that the rats had abnormally high amounts of a specialised brain receptor activated both by alcohol and by allopregnanolone, a 鈥渇eel-good鈥� hormone that slumps in concentration before menstruation. Smith speculates in Nature Neuroscience (DOI: 10.1038/nn888) that alcohol does the same job as the depleted hormone, and has a heightened effect before periods because the brain makes more receptors than usual to capture what little hormone is available.
