The whole truth about the “synchronized” cycle of women

There synchronization of the period describes a popular belief that women who live together or spend a lot of time together start menstruating at the same time of the month.

Cycle synchronization is also known as “menstrual synchrony “or” McClintock effect “ and is based on the theory that when you come into physical contact with another woman who is menstruating, i pheromones they affect each other, so that eventually the monthly cycles align.

Some women even claim that some “alpha females” may be the trigger when entire groups of women begin ovulating and then menstruate.

Anecdotally, it seems that there are cases where some women actually synchronize with their menstrual cycle every month by being in close contact. But the medical literature does not report scientific evidence to prove this. Let’s take a closer look, even with the help of an expert.

The McClintock effect

The idea of ​​menstrual cycle synchronization has been passed down from mothers to their daughters and discussed in women’s dorms and bathrooms for centuries. But the scientific community began to take the idea seriously when a researcher named Martha McClintock in the early seventies he led a study of 135 women in an American college, they lived together in a dormitory to see if their menstrual cycles were aligned.

The study did not test other cycle factors, such asovulation, but tracked when the monthly bleeding started, noting that the cycles were actually synchronizing. Thereafter, the timing of the cycle was referred to as the “McClintock effect”.

Menstrual Synchronization: What Does Current Research Say?

With the invention of the app for menstruation monitoring, which stores the digital history of women’s cycles, much more data is now available to understand if menstruation synchronization is real. And the new research does not support McClintock’s original conclusion.

In the 2006 a new study claimed that “Women do not synchronize their menstrual cycles”. “This study collected data from 186 women, who lived in groups in a dormitory in China,” explains the doctor Manuela Farrisspecialist in gynecology and obstetrics – Any timing synchronization that seemed to occur, the study concluded, was part of the realm of mathematical coincidence. ‘

A datum validated by another broad study conducted by the University of Oxford and the menstrual cycle tracking app company ClueData from more than 1,500 people have shown that women are unlikely to be able to interrupt or coordinate each other’s menstrual cycles by being in close proximity to each other.

But beware: a much smaller studio, conducted in 2017, keeps the idea of ​​menstrual synchronization alive, noting that 44% of participants living with other women experienced menstrual synchrony. Period symptoms such as menstrual migraines were also more common in women living together. This would indicate that women could influence each other’s menstrual cycles in ways that go beyond the timing of bleeding.

Synchronization with the moon

The word “menstruation” comes from a combination of Latin and Greek words meaning “moon “and” month “. People have long believed that women’s fertility rates are related to the lunar cycle. And there is also some research that suggests that the cycle is related or in some way synchronizes with the phases of the moon.