For over 40 years, researchers and doctors have tried to answer that question with mixed findings — but these days, the science community is fairly confident that period syncing isn't a thing. Keep reading to understand how they came to that conclusion, what we've learned over the years, and where more research is needed. In , Harvard doctor Martha McClintock studied a group of women living in a college dorm. Since , multiple studies have been conducted on female roommates, best friends, lesbian couples, and even animals to see if menstrual cycles actually converge while spending time together.
In a study , McClintock, along with Kathleen Stern, announced that they had "definitive evidence" of the McClintock Effect, proving that human pheromones could manipulate the timing of ovulation.
But Beverly Strassman, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, used their assertion to inform her paper in Human Reproduction , arguing the opposite while analyzing cycle length:. By chance alone, one would expect two women to be 7 days apart half of 14 days. Given that menstruation can last 5 days, overlapping periods are a common occurrence. That women synchronize to each other, however, is a myth.
Subsequent studies from the last couple of decades continue to suggest that menstrual syncing with people around you is not a likely occurrence. First, the study of college students we mentioned earlier demonstrated that:. Then, 11 years later, researchers from a period-tracking app alongside Oxford University collected digital data from app users in a pilot study to observe changes in cycle length and occurrences of period syncing versus diverging.
FYI, this pilot study hasn't been published anywhere but the app's blog so far. After receiving over 1, responses and narrowing it down to pairs of users whose cycles occurred at similar times, they tracked three consecutive cycles for each pair. Besides moon phases, researchers wondered if human pheromones and periods can be linked together. Pheromones are chemicals released by animals that influence the behavior of others of the same species.
Among animals and insects, a lot of evidence exists to support the power of pheromones to impact and change hormonal behaviors.
Over time, a woman who has a three-week cycle and another who has a five-week cycle will eventually see their periods overlap. Why do women who live together have their periods at the same time? Find out the truth. Learn more about vaccine availability. She walks in menstruating, everyone is reaching for the tampons. But the problem comes when the theory seems to break down.
Inez says she has never synced with her flatmate. Source: NHS Choices. Alvergne is not surprised that women observe overlap in their menstrual cycle with their friends. By chance you would expect it to happen at least half of the time. Some academics recently decided to find out if the findings of synchronicity of periods could be put down to chance. They looked at six years' worth of data of the menstrual cycles of our close cousins, baboons.
Where the patterns are explained by chance. The researchers compared how much each model would account for the data being observed. They found that the model assuming that patterns would appear by chance was the best model by far. More research could be carried out in the future that does reveal evidence that women's periods sync. But currently many researchers are sceptical. Additional reporting by Elizabeth Cassin. Image source, iStock. Find out more. Image source, Getty Images.
Did the idea of synchronised menstruation reflect the emergence of the feminist movement in the s?
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