Crash goes the Theory of Menstrual Synchrony

From Amy Harris' "Kinsey Confidential" blog comes news to break my heart. It doesn't matter how long a group of women live together: our periods are not going to synchronize.

begin quote  When Strassman reported that she found no evidence of menstrual synchrony in the Dogon, she also pointed out that it would be almost impossible for synchronization to occur, given the natural variation in menstrual cycle lengths. Women’s cycle lengths vary for many reasons, including responding to nutritional availability, changes in physical workloads, early (and often undetected) pregnancy loss, etc. For synchronization to occur, these highly variable, even erratic, menstrual cycle onset dates would need to align and remain aligned over time—but the biology of reproductive functioning and the reality of menstrual cycle data makes this kind of regularity highly unlikely. quote ends

Kinsey Confidential is a service of The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. Sexual health experts there answer questions, provide newspaper columns and weekly podcasts. A link to savor at KinseyConfidential.com