"Menstruation is a phenomenon ignored by science despite what it affects women"

The number of euphemisms we use to mention a concept is often directly related to the degree of obscurantism surrounding that issue.. We use veiled formulas to refer to what we do not want to name, what is intimate, what is secret, what is offensive or what is hidden.. We do it, for example, with menstruation.

Try to compile all the ways we have in Spanish to talk about periods. “I'm sick”, “I'm unwell”, “in those days”, “my cousin has come”, “with the woman in red”, “the communist tenant”… The countless list, similar to what can be made in other languages, shows the taboo that continues to surround a phenomenon that, on the other hand, is very everyday.. Half the population bleeds once a month for about half their lives.. But tampons are still quietly requested from the colleague next door at work.

This invisibility of the period also affects the eyes of science and medicine, which have barely focused on the characteristics and anomalies of the menstrual cycle.. “It is an ignored phenomenon despite the great impact it has on millions of women,” denounce journalists María Zuil and Antonio Villarreal, authors of The Half That Bleeds (KO Books), a work that reviews how and why we have historically ignored the menstruation.

For decades, research has looked the other way when it comes to the menstrual cycle and, although there has been some progress in recent years, we still have not resolved such basic questions as why women, unlike other primates, discard your endometrium every four weeks; why some suffer terrible pain and others barely realize it or why the first period sometimes arrives at eight years old and on other occasions at 15.

A matter of life or death?

“These are questions that do not yet have a clear answer, and the worst thing is that we are still far from having one,” write the authors.. “A common reasoning is that periods, no matter how annoying or painful, are not fatal and that funding should be invested in those life-and-death areas, such as cancer.”. However, male baldness does not threaten the lives of its patients either and the funding allocated to this area of medicine multiplies not only that allocated to research on menstruation, but also that dedicated to alleviating malaria,” María Zuil recalls. and Antonio Villarreal.

The idea to address this lack of interest from science and medicine in everything related to menstruation arose in 2021. The journalists decided to collaborate from their different areas of specialization (scientific-medical Villarreal and social and data focus Zuil) first in a report that was published in 'El Confidencial' and had a lot of impact and, later, through this book for the who have counted on the testimony of 915 women, have reviewed the scientific literature and spoken with the main experts in the field.

“One of the reasons for starting to work on this issue was that as a result of the administration of the first doses of the Covid vaccine, many women began to indicate that they noticed changes in their periods,” recalls Zuil.. Science, at first, ignored those testimonies, in a “paradigmatic example of the bias that medicine has towards the female population and menstruation.”. And although, subsequently, the accumulated evidence on the side effects of the Covid vaccine became quite solid, it did not serve to change the clinical guidelines and start asking women what phase of the cycle they are in to try to administer the vaccine in a moment in the cycle that does not cause alterations.

“The problem is not only that there is hardly any research on menstruation, but there is also a disconnection between what is studied and what later reaches clinical practice, as has happened in this case,” says Zuil..

The danger of downplaying pain

This indifference of science towards everything related to menstruation has also had an impact “on women's perception of what is or is not normal with respect to periods,” says Villarreal.

We find an example with pain. «Considering it as normal is often a learning that has been inherited. Often the only references that women have are the experiences of their mothers, grandmothers or their closest circle, which what they convey is that they have endured it all their lives.. It is seen as something that must be endured, when it is not.. What the experts say is that it is not a symptom that should be normalized, but rather that we must investigate the possible causes of this pain and find a solution.

Unfortunately, on the other side of the consultation, menstrual pain is also often trivialized, which creates a dangerous cocktail.. The normalized perception of pain, together with the little attention that has traditionally been given to the symptom in the healthcare environment, has contributed to the fact that problems such as endometriosis continue to be disorders that are often diagnosed late and poorly, journalists point out.

Lack of knowledge about what constitutes a normal period or how the menstrual cycle occurs also contributes to the perpetuation of false beliefs and myths about periods.. In the book, Villarreal and Zuil review the historical roots of prejudices and hoaxes, some of which survive today.

«Perhaps in our environment some ideas such as that a woman who has her period cannot make mayonnaise because she cuts herself or that she should not shower or wash her hair are no longer so widespread.. Fortunately that is already disappearing,” says Zuil.. “But in Spain many false beliefs are still widespread, such as the one that says that you should not have sexual relations during menstruation.”

The myth that the period is synchronized in women who spend a lot of time together or that it is directly linked to the phases of the moon is also very popular.

The latter is a very widespread myth, “although there is no evidence to support that lunar cycles influence menstruation,” says Villarreal.. «An effect is attributed, however, to the number of hours of sunlight that a woman receives. The literature identifies two specific components: calcium and vitamin D3, which are not acquired through diet, but rather through exposure to the sun or through supplements,” the journalist clarifies.

Another mantra well established in popular knowledge refers to its duration: many people are convinced that the menstrual cycle has exactly 28 days.. But several recent investigations have revealed not only that cycles are much more variable than previously thought, but that the average duration is not exactly four weeks, but 29.3 days.

These are not the only hoaxes that circulate about the rule nor the most dangerous. We must not forget, both remember, that in some places in the world girls and women continue to be isolated during menstruation or that today some religions consider women who are on their period “impure.”. “That taboo remains there,” they emphasize.

«In The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner defined menstruation as the delicate balance of periodic impurity suspended between two moons. The purpose of this book is to make you see that it is neither delicate, nor in balance, nor periodic, nor impure, nor suspended between two moons,” summarize Zuil and Villarreal in this work that, remember, is not only aimed at those menstruate. “We know that the majority of people interested will be those who bleed every month, but we did not want to fall into the idea that menstruation only concerns those who have it,” emphasizes Villarreal.. “We also want them to talk about periods and know what it means and how it affects those who do not menstruate so that it stops being a silenced and forgotten topic,” agrees Zuil.. «There is no law that prohibits talking about your period, but in a conversation, premenstrual syndrome is not discussed with the same naturalness with which flu symptoms are discussed. There is something that continues to keep menstruation in a circle of intimacy, modesty and darkness. And this silence continues to hinder medical research around menstruation,” they conclude.