France – The lunar calendar has long been linked to women’s menstrual cycle, but a new study has found only a weak relationship between the menstrual cycle and the lunar cycle, contrary to popular belief.
Researchers from France and the United States analyzed menstrual cycle data from 3,296 European women and 721 North American women, to see if the dates fell in specific lunar cycles.
The team found that North American women start their menstrual cycles more often when there is a full moon, while European women start their menstrual cycles when the crescent moon is waxing.
Although there is no clear explanation for this difference, researchers suggest that it may be due to differences in lifestyle (such as sleep-wake cycles) between people from these continents.
Researchers believe that menstrual cycles, most likely, do not follow the 29.5-day lunar cycles, but are instead governed by the body’s internal clocks, which can be affected by the lunar cycle. Furthermore, they found that any existing lunar link varies depending on the continent.
Our internal clock controls our bodies’ circadian rhythm in a 24-hour cycle, and is responsible for waking our bodies up in the morning and ensuring they get a good rest at night.
However, they found a weak but statistically significant relationship between the menstrual cycle and the lunar cycle, which varies depending on geography.
It has been noted that our internal clocks can be affected by the lunar cycle which can cause people to lose sleep, and disruption of circadian rhythms is linked to disturbances in menstrual function.
This changes how our internal clock is calibrated, so “if the cycle gets longer, for whatever reason, this clock-based process adapts to shorten it quickly,” neuroscientist Claude Gronvier, from the University of Lyon in France, told the BBC.
The researchers found that when this happens, it creates something called a “jump phase,” when the biological clock becomes out of sync due to the waxing moon and attempts to self-correct by moving forward to the body’s next steady state, meaning the menstrual phases “jump” forward to match the body clock. .
“Jump phase” is also known as “relative coordination” that occurs in biological clocks such as the feeling of fatigue and desynchronization that an individual feels when traveling across time zones.
The team noted that previous research showed that women’s menstrual cycles longer than 27 days were intermittently synchronized with the lunar cycle.
The study says: “During millions of years of human evolution, this rhythm may have been active, perhaps linked to the lunar nightlight cycle.” “This may have allowed for the relative synchronization of the cycles of women living together.”
Gronvier added to the BBC: “If the existence of an internal clock that controls the menstrual cycle is confirmed in other studies, medical treatment for ovulation disorders might use biological chronological methods that have proven successful in treating cancer, sleep and circadian rhythm disorders, and depression.”
The team believes their findings might lead to potential fertility treatments, and say learning more regarding how genes regulate the menstrual cycle is key to understanding its chronobiology.
This detailed study was published in the journal Science Advances.
Source: Daily Mail
#connection #menstrual #cycle #moon
2024-04-18 14:55:34
