Menstrual synchrony, as it is known, does occur occasionally, but not because of proximity or the release of chemical pheromones, which has long been a popular theory.
Is it true women who live together will menstruate at the same time? “It’s a mathematical coincidence,” says Jeffrey Schank, professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis, whose studies provide an explanation as to why women in close quarters sometimes
The belief that women sharing space had their periods together originated in a 1971 paper by psychologist Martha K. McClintock, who studied 135 women in a college dormitory and concluded that social interaction has a strong effect on the menstrual cycle, probably because of something physiological. Support for this so-called McClintock effect has persisted, despite many later studies that were inconsistent and failed to prove her hypothesis and challenged her methodology.
“The majority opinion is that it is a mathematical coincidence,” Leonard Weller says. “If you plot the onset for each of two women over a period of time, you will probably find they will converge as well as become disparate, having nothing to do with pheromone influence. Also, assuming the normal menstrual cycle lasts about five days, two women will have some overlap in the timing of their cycles. This has nothing to do with synchrony.
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