Posted: April 19, 2017 Contributor: administrator
Does Your Period Actually Sync Up With Your Friends?
“We totally synced up,” my friend said to me when I asked to borrow a tampon a few weeks ago. Almost every woman can tell you a story about how her period synced up with her roommate, coworker, sister, or friend. As weird as it is, it almost feels like a little bond between us as we complain and share a pint of ice cream. It’s nice knowing that someone else is going through the same miserable experience.
Is syncing actually a thing?
However, according to a new scientific study, it turns out that period syncing isn’t actually a thing. Clue, a fertility app, partnered with the University of Oxford to track three consecutive cycles of 360 pairs of women that live together. They found that not only did the women’s cycles not sync, but the majority of participants also had a greater difference of start dates at the end of the study than they had at the beginning. Meaning, the women’s cycles were actually getting out of sync.
Study suggests that it’s just a coincidence
“It’s very unlikely that cycle syncing is a real phenomenon,” Clue’s data scientist, Marija Vlajic, shared with The Guardian. “We’ve also done some statistical tests and found that the difference in cycles actually grows. This doesn’t mean that pairs go out of sync—it means they were never in sync in the first place.” Vlajic goes on to explain how our brains are always looking for patterns, which is why she believes this myth exists in the first place.
We’re sorry to burst your bubble, but it looks like syncing up doesn’t exist, period.