The Visible Women podcast has a great episode on myths around menstrual blood - which includes a jawdropping quote from a peer reviewer recommending rejection of a research paper looking at the possibility of extracting stem cells from menstrual blood.
"In general, the topic idea is not that novel and could not be accepted as it is since almost all articles in the literature reported the severe undesirable and toxic effects of menstrual blood and all its constituents on the human body. Even in all religions, it is well known that menstrual blood and its stem cells are extremely, very toxic and of very low quality. This blood contains the destructive metabolic constituents with very potent cytotoxic activities. Thus, in toxicological criminology, some women in some cultures use very few drops of its potent toxic extract to secretly kill their husbands."
An artefact of the last century? No, this was just a few years ago.
Thanks for being a myth buster. You should do a book signing at The Vagina Museum. You mentioned Clue. Cycle trackers are useful but in the US where reproductive health care is in jeopardy I’m wary. Despite assurances from the companies providing, that data is private, everyday I seem to get another data breech notice from even health care companies. FDA approval of Natural Cycles on the Apple Watch ….more to worry about. I sound like my friends my gramma ….”Those Walkman things are going to stop people communicating” She had some wisdom. And even though it’s patriarchal, some days I wish I had those mythical powers. As an “old crone” I’d be feared.
There's a much simpler way to track your period: take one of those one-page year calendars at the back of a pocket calendar (or one of those one-pagers sent by non-profit org.s) and keep it in your night table drawer.
Yes! More private and so simple! Or, once I started using iCal, I just set up a code for myself and the day my period started I added an “all-day event” with that code as the title. An elegant combination of tech and old-school, and also private
My daughter and I were chatting about this and decided to make a model to help explain this to every woman we know who swears this has happened to them. We used an online graphing calculator and put in several sine functions with various periods and shifts. When we zoomed out it was easy to see where those waves all overlapped and appeared to be synchronized for several periods and, more importantly, where the synchronization totally fell apart. I’ll bet if we’d included the phases of the moon that would have synched up too… ;)
Once again, I'm reading your essay out loud to my husband because it's brilliant. What people with uteruses have needed for a long time is someone we can trust to tell us the truth about our bodies. (When some of us were young and naive, we thought Christiane Northrup was one of them—or maybe she was in the before times.)
Thank you for being that voice and for using it with wit, kindness, and reverence for our bodies.
Gee, I remember reading (~40 yrs ago +/-) that a study was done on this (showing synchronicity), and that it was olfactory exposure to sweat that was the causative factor: swabbing one woman's sweat above the upper lip of another woman resulted in synching the cycles. Was that one based on faulty data too?
The Visible Women podcast has a great episode on myths around menstrual blood - which includes a jawdropping quote from a peer reviewer recommending rejection of a research paper looking at the possibility of extracting stem cells from menstrual blood.
"In general, the topic idea is not that novel and could not be accepted as it is since almost all articles in the literature reported the severe undesirable and toxic effects of menstrual blood and all its constituents on the human body. Even in all religions, it is well known that menstrual blood and its stem cells are extremely, very toxic and of very low quality. This blood contains the destructive metabolic constituents with very potent cytotoxic activities. Thus, in toxicological criminology, some women in some cultures use very few drops of its potent toxic extract to secretly kill their husbands."
An artefact of the last century? No, this was just a few years ago.
Sorry, meant to share the link: https://www.tortoisemedia.com/audio/murderous-menstrual-blood/
Thanks for being a myth buster. You should do a book signing at The Vagina Museum. You mentioned Clue. Cycle trackers are useful but in the US where reproductive health care is in jeopardy I’m wary. Despite assurances from the companies providing, that data is private, everyday I seem to get another data breech notice from even health care companies. FDA approval of Natural Cycles on the Apple Watch ….more to worry about. I sound like my friends my gramma ….”Those Walkman things are going to stop people communicating” She had some wisdom. And even though it’s patriarchal, some days I wish I had those mythical powers. As an “old crone” I’d be feared.
In my new book I have a breakdown of the the safest apps
There's a much simpler way to track your period: take one of those one-page year calendars at the back of a pocket calendar (or one of those one-pagers sent by non-profit org.s) and keep it in your night table drawer.
And less expensive.
Yes! More private and so simple! Or, once I started using iCal, I just set up a code for myself and the day my period started I added an “all-day event” with that code as the title. An elegant combination of tech and old-school, and also private
My daughter and I were chatting about this and decided to make a model to help explain this to every woman we know who swears this has happened to them. We used an online graphing calculator and put in several sine functions with various periods and shifts. When we zoomed out it was easy to see where those waves all overlapped and appeared to be synchronized for several periods and, more importantly, where the synchronization totally fell apart. I’ll bet if we’d included the phases of the moon that would have synched up too… ;)
Once again, I'm reading your essay out loud to my husband because it's brilliant. What people with uteruses have needed for a long time is someone we can trust to tell us the truth about our bodies. (When some of us were young and naive, we thought Christiane Northrup was one of them—or maybe she was in the before times.)
Thank you for being that voice and for using it with wit, kindness, and reverence for our bodies.
Gee, I remember reading (~40 yrs ago +/-) that a study was done on this (showing synchronicity), and that it was olfactory exposure to sweat that was the causative factor: swabbing one woman's sweat above the upper lip of another woman resulted in synching the cycles. Was that one based on faulty data too?
Yes, the methodology has since been challenged. Same author as the 1971 paper.
Got it.
This myth is annoying! The worst.
well it happened to me and my roommate freshman year in college.