Doctors who run PMS clinics do not use the same doses of evening primrose oil. The best dose for the individual woman may have to be found by simple trial and error to see what works.
The lowest dose is used by Drs Nazzaro and Lombard in the USA. When patients have shown side effects of lethargy, or headaches, they have lowered the dose of evening primrose oil. These doctors also found that evening primrose oil occasionally had the side-effects of making the menstrual cycle longer, from 28 days to 31 or 32 days or even longer. It could also make people forgetful, with a feeling of being ‘out of it’.
Drs Nazzaro and Lombard were getting an overall 70% success rate on doses as low as one or two capsules of 500mg evening primrose oil a day.
The Women’s Nutritional Advisory Service in Hove, Sussex, reached their results of 83% improved on evening primrose oil when women were taking eight capsules a day.
The St Thomas’s study used three 500mg capsules twice a day only in bad cases. The usual dose was two capsules twice a day, after food. In the St Thomas’s study, three patients complained of minor skin blemishes during treatment, and three had passing phases of excessive mood quietening.
Efamol PMP, especially designed for PMS sufferers, suggests a dose of two capsules of evening primrose oil 500mg twice a day, together with one tablet of Efavite twice a day (containing the vitamin and mineral co-factors). This should be taken for ten days leading up to the period.

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WOMEN’S HEALTH