Women’s menstrual cycles are completely out of sync with the changing phases of the moon, according to new research.
For decades, alternative health gurus have argued that the moon cycles influence our sleep and therefore can be used to predict when your period will come.
But this is a complete myth, according to new research from European scientists, presented on social media by New York-based fertility expert Dr. Steven Palter.
“New research about to be published based on more than 300,000 menstrual cycles analyzed shows that the majority of people’s cycles start on Thursday or Friday,” Dr. Palter said in a video on his TikTok channel, where he has 187,000 followers.
Dr. Palter showed viewers an intriguing graph showing that the majority of cycles in the sample started on one of those two days.
Meanwhile, cycles were least likely to start on a Tuesday.
He further explained that the scientists also analyzed whether women’s menstrual cycles were in any way related to the 28-day lunar cycle, as has long been suggested.
‘It actually had nothing to do with the full moon’ he said. ‘Fertility doctors think: it’s everyone’s first day of full moon, but it wasn’t.’
How is it possible that the first day of your period is related to the day of the week?
For most women, the menstrual cycle lasts 28 days and consists of four main phases, although this can vary greatly from woman to woman.
The hypothesis, Dr. Palter explains, is that it is related to your sleep, eating and stress patterns.
And these are thought to be more extreme or disrupted earlier in the week, compared to towards the end, as the weekend approaches.
Previous studies have shown that increased stress, which can also be caused by a lack of sleep, can cause levels of the hormone cortisol to rise, which disrupts the reproductive hormones that determine when your period comes.
Dr. Palter added that the pattern was strongest in women with normal length or longer cycles (28 days+), and less applicable in women with shorter cycles.