PMS: Ways to Record Your Symptoms
Topic Overview
There are several ways to keep a menstrual diary of your Reference PMS Opens New Window symptoms. Diaries that require daily recording are more reliable in tracking your symptoms. Calendars without marks for a day may mean you forgot to record for that day rather than a day when you didn't have any symptoms.
Most bothersome symptom scoring
You can choose your five most bothersome PMS symptoms and record their severity daily with a score from 0 to 3 (0 being the absence of that symptom, 3 being most severe). See example below.
| Day of month | Symptom 1 | Symptom 2 | Symptom 3 | Symptom 4 | Symptom 5 |
| 1 | Score 2 | Score 1 | Score 3 | Score 0 | Score 2 |
| 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 2 |
| 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 2 |
| Continue days |
Variety of symptoms scoring
You can keep a calendar that lists a wide variety of symptoms. You record the severity of each symptom daily on a scale of 1 to 3 (1 being mild and 3 being severe). If the symptom is not present on any day, you don't record anything. See example below.
| Day of month | Symptom A | Symptom B | Symptom C | Symptom D | Continue symptoms |
| 1 | 1 (mild) | 1 | 1 | 2 (moderate) | |
| 2 | -- | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| 3 | -- | -- | 2 | 3 (severe) | |
| Continue days |
Symbol scoring
You can use symbols to indicate the presence and severity of a list of symptoms or just the ones most bothersome to you. If you don't have a symptom that day, you don't mark the diary for that day. A mild symptom is indicated with a dot. Moderate symptoms are indicated by a circle. Severe symptoms are indicated by an X. See example below.
| Day of month | Symptom A | Symptom B | Symptom C | Continue symptoms |
| 1 | · | ° | × | |
| 2 | · | × | ||
| 3 | · | ° | × | |
| Continue days |
| By: | Reference Healthwise Staff | Last Revised: Reference June 8, 2012 |
| Medical Review: | Reference Sarah Marshall, MD - Family Medicine
Reference Kirtly Jones, MD - Obstetrics and Gynecology |
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