Can women's menstrual cycles really synchronize?

If you're a woman, you've probably already wondered how it makes sense that all the girls in the office get their periods at the same time.

Well, there is an answer to that and I'm not sure you'll like it

Dr. Liora Barzeg Peru

03/08/2022

Wednesday, 03 August 2022, 09:54 Updated: 09:55

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The swimmer Fu Yuanhui broke a taboo of years (checked story system)

Almost every woman can tell the same story - when several family members or friends spend a lot of time together their periods synchronize and appear at the same time.

Moreover, there are also women who can swear that there is one more dominant woman in the group, who is considered 'alpha', that the other women synchronize according to the time of her period.

Another belief believes that, like many other husbands, the hormonal cycle depends on the cycle of the moon.

So which of these is real?

In 1971, a large article was published in Nature magazine that tried to find an answer to the phenomenon.

After the author of the article, the phenomenon is called McClintock's effect.

The study based its results on looking at 135 female students who lived in college dorms together.

The researcher wanted to prove that when women live together, the time of the start of the cycle of two or more of them gets closer to each other, compared to what was a few months before.

It is important to note that the terminology is a bit misleading - no study has ever been able to prove that the cycles do synchronize, but that the day of the start of the cycle is closer than it used to be.

Hormones or cycles of the moon.

GIF of a woman on her period (Photo: Giphy)

The supposed causes of the synchronization of the cycles proposed by McClintock were the secretion of female pheromones or the cycles of the moon.

Other researchers hypothesized that the synchronization is more likely in women who are more considerate of what other people think of them, that is, women who need social approval more.

Another proposed reason claimed that the synchronization is related to the awareness that the phenomenon exists (as soon as women who were presented with the phenomenon as an existing fact began synchronizing their periods).

Many who tried to trace the results of Martha McClintock's experiment claimed that the original study contained errors in the study design and statistical analysis of the data.

For example, a study conducted on a large group of women in West Africa for over two years did not detect any synchrony, and in a joint American and Chinese study that followed 186 women in China who lived together for an entire year, they were unable to detect any synchronicity at the time of menstruation.

In 2013, a literature review was published by two researchers named Harris and Whitehome who concluded that due to the lack of scientific evidence of the phenomenon we should cast more doubt than accept the possibility that the hypothesis does exist.

Or in simple words - leave you alone, there is no such thing.

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