Overall, results suggest that providing information about the risk of CRC and the nature of the screening procedure can assist people to change their attitudes, regardless of the way this information is framed. Although framing the message around the screening test in terms of the likelihood of not being affected by CRC combined with the advantages of using the FOBT appears beneficial in a sample of people prepared to come to a laboratory testing session, future research is required to test the generalisability of the result. In the U.S. and other western industrial countries more women than men seek health care services for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). In addition, the health care impact of IBS also appears to be greater in women as compared to men. Women with IBS commonly report other somatic and visceral symptoms. Muscle and joint pain and disturbed sleep patterns are among the most common and the most distressing. Gender differences exist in types of GI symptoms (women report greater problems with constipation while men more frequently report diarrhea) as well as other extra-intestinal symptoms. The role of menstrual cycle in IBS symptom reporting is based on observations that women with IBS frequently report cyclic changes in their symptom severity. Women with IBS often report other menstrual cycle linked conditions including migraine headache, dysmenorrhea and premenstrual dysphoria distress syndrome. Gender differences in IBS begin to emerge at puberty. In children, the rubric of recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) includes IBS, functional abdominal pain, and likely, dyspepsia. Prior to puberty there is an equal proportion of boys and girls with a diagnosis of RAP. The factors responsible for the divergence in prevalence after puberty are not clear. Studies suggest that both environmental (i.e., increased risk if a parent has IBS) and gender factors (i.e., changes in hormonal milieu) likely play a role. The incidence of IBS in both men and women appears to decrease in late middle age. The severity of GI symptoms, including abdominal pain, altered bowel habits, and bloating, varies across phases of the menstrual cycle as well as during the menopause transition in some women with or without IBS or other functional GI disorders. A limited number of studies indicate that premenses (days immediately preceding the onset of menses) and menses, compared with other cycle phases, are periods of increased GI symptom distress in women age 19-37. Women with IBS experience a greater impact of menstrual cycle on symptoms as compared to those without IBS. While not extensively studied, oral contraceptives appear to modestly reduce but not eliminate GI symptoms in those with IBS. This paper will present they hypothesis that declining or low ovarian hormone levels underlies the occurrence or exacerbations of abdominal pain/discomfort across the menstrual cycle and the perimenopause-early menopause transition in women with or without IBS. Objective: Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) and the premenstrual syndrome (PMS) are psychiatric phenomena, which are associated with the menstrual cycle in women. Symptoms of PMS include mood changes, temper outbursts/anger, lack of concentration and abdominal pain. These symptoms also form the diagnostic criteria for psychiatric disorders, such as depression, pain disorder (e.g. chronic pelvic pain) or somatoform disorder, which are unrelated to the menstrual cycle. Our aim was to identify similarities and differences of PMS with these symptoms during different phases of the menstrual cycle.