“Menstruation is a phenomenon that science ignores despite its effect on women.”

amount Euphemisms What we use to mention a concept is often directly related to the degree of obscurantism surrounding the issue. We use veiled forms to refer to what we do not want to name, to what is intimate, what is secret, what is offensive or what is hidden. We do this, for example, with menstruation.

Try to compile all the ways we have in Spanish to talk about menstruation. “I am sick”, “I am ill”, “in those days”, “my cousin came”, “with the woman in red”, “the communist tenant”… The list is endless, the list is like one that could be made in other languages , shows the taboos that still surround a phenomenon that, on the other hand, is very common in everyday life. Half the population bleeds once a month for about half their lives. But tampons are still quietly requested from the co-worker next door.

This concealment of this period also affects the eyes of science and medicine, which have hardly focused on the characteristics of the menstrual cycle and its abnormalities. “It is a phenomenon that is ignored despite the huge impact it has on millions of women,” denounced journalists Maria Zoel and Antonio Villarreal, authors of the report. Half the bleeding (KO Books), a work of reviews How and why have we historically ignored 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 haven't resolved fundamental questions like why women, unlike other primates, shed their uterine lining every four weeks; Why some people experience terrible pain and others barely realize it or why the first menstrual period sometimes arrives at the age of eight and on other occasions until the age of 15.

“These are questions that do not yet have a clear answer, and what is worse is that we are still far from answering them,” the authors wrote. “The common logic is that menstruation, no matter how uncomfortable or painful, is not fatal and funding should be invested in life-or-death areas, such as cancer.” However, male pattern baldness does not threaten the lives of its patients either, and the funding allocated to this area of ​​medicine is not only doubling “Dedicated to menstrual research, but also to malaria alleviation,” recall Maria Zoel and Antonio Villarreal.

The idea to address this lack of interest in science and medicine in everything related to menstruation arose in 2021. Journalists decided to collaborate from their different fields of specialization (medical scientific Villarreal and social and graphic focus Zewail) first in a report that was published in El Confidencial and had a great impact, and later, Through this book, which they were credited with Testimony of 915 womenThey reviewed the scientific literature and spoke with key experts in the field.

“One of the reasons we started working on this issue is that after the first doses of the Covid vaccine were given, many women started reporting that they noticed changes in their menstrual cycle,” Zewail recalls. Science initially ignored these testimonies, in “a typical example of medicine's bias toward female populations and menstruation.” Although the accumulating evidence about the side effects of the Covid vaccine has become quite strong, it has not helped to change clinical guidelines and start asking women what stage of their cycle they are in to try to administer the vaccine in an instant. In the cycle that does not cause changes.

“The problem is not only that there is little research on menstruation, but there is also a disconnect between what is studied and what later makes it into clinical practice, as happened in this case,” Zewail says.

Villarreal says that science's indifference to everything related to the menstrual cycle has also had an impact “on women's perception of what is normal or abnormal regarding the menstrual cycle.”

We find an example with pain. “Taking it as normal is often inherited learning. Often women's only references are the experiences of their mothers, grandmothers or their closest circle, which they relay that they have carried throughout their lives. It is seen as something to be endured, when in fact it is not. What experts say is that it is not a symptom that should be normalized, but rather we should investigate the possible causes of this pain and find a solution for them.

Unfortunately, on the other side of counseling, menstrual pain is often minimized, creating a dangerous mix. The normal perception of pain, coupled with the little attention traditionally given to symptoms in the healthcare setting, has contributed to problems such as: Endometrial Journalists point out that these disorders are still often diagnosed late and poorly.

Lack of knowledge of what constitutes a normal menstrual cycle or how menstruation occurs also contributes to its persistence. False beliefs and myths About the period. In the book, Villarreal and Zewail review the historical roots of biases and deceptions, some of which still exist 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 bathe or wash her hair are no longer widespread. “Fortunately, this is already disappearing,” Zewail says. “But in Spain many false beliefs are still widespread, such as those that say you should not have sexual relations during your period.”

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

The latter is a widely held myth, “although there is no evidence to support that lunar cycles affect the menstrual cycle,” Villarreal says. “But the effect is attributed to The number of hours of sunlight a woman receives. The literature identifies two specific elements: calcium and vitamin D3, which are not obtained through diet, but rather through exposure to sunlight or through nutritional supplements.

There is another slogan well established in popular knowledge indicating its duration: Many people are convinced of this The menstrual cycle has exactly 28 days. But several recent investigations have revealed not only that cycles are 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 being circulated around Al-Qaeda, nor are they the most dangerous. And we must not forget, as we both remember, that in some parts of the world girls and women are still segregated during menstruation or that some religions today consider menstruating women “impure.” They assert that “this taboo still exists.”

“in Noise and furyWilliam Faulkner defined menstruation as the delicate balance of cyclic impurities suspended between two moons. “The purpose of this book is to make you see that it is neither precise, nor balanced, nor periodic, nor impure, nor suspended between two moons,” sum up Zewail and Villarreal in this work that, remember, is not only aimed at those who menstruate. Villarreal emphasizes: “We know that the majority “The people who would be interested would be those who bleed every month, but we didn't want to fall into the idea that menstruation only matters to those who have it.” “We also want them to talk about the menstrual cycle and know its meaning and how it affects those who do not even menstruate Stop being a silent and forgotten subject», agrees Zewail. “There's no law against talking about your period, but in conversation, PMS is not discussed in the same way that flu symptoms are discussed. There is something that continues to keep menstruation in a cycle of familiarity, modesty, and darkness. They concluded that this silence continues to hinder medical research on menstruation.