Word: menstrual
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Uncovering similar tendencies in humans wasn't easy; McClintock began looking nearly 30 years ago. As an undergraduate at Wellesley College, she noticed that the women in her dormitory often developed remarkably similar menstrual patterns. In other animals, this kind of synchrony has survival advantages. "When you see others successfully rearing young," McClintock says, "it means it's a good time...
...manipulate it. They recruited a group of 29 women and asked nine of them to wear pads under their arms for several hours, either before ovulation or just after. When the pads were wiped under the noses of the other women, the results were remarkable. Pre-ovulation pads shortened menstrual cycles by as many as 14 days in 68% of the women. When exposed to ovulation-phase pads, a different 68% experienced cycles that were as many as 12 days longer. Clearly, something was bringing the group into synch...
...ancient China, imperial gratification was a tidier affair. An Emperor in the Chou dynasty had 37 wives and 81 concubines. Harem administrators kept track of menstrual cycles, scheduling sex at each woman's peak fertility...
HEADACHES AND HORMONES Doctors have long suspected a link between headaches and certain sex hormones, particularly in women. A study of 100 women at the University of Mississippi Medical Center suggests that women who have gynecological problems (irregular menstrual cycles, ovarian cysts) or who have undergone hysterectomies are up to twice as likely to develop chronic severe headaches as women who have not. Scientists still don't know why some women get headaches during the hormone surges that accompany their monthly cycles...
...sweat, awakened "at two-hour intervals every single night by a self-generated tropical typhoon." She knew the term hot flash but hadn't expected to encounter one this side of 50. What conventional wisdom had neglected to convey to Shandler is that long before menopause occurs and menstrual cycles cease, women in their 30s and 40s can be subject to distressing symptoms. Like adolescence in reverse, the transition out of fertility, called perimenopause, is a time of wild hormone swings. And they can trigger a long list of problems, among them hot flashes, pimples, dry skin, insomnia, depression...