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Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

SocietyAugust 12, 2021

All hail the Alpha Uterus? Separating fact from fiction on period syncing

Guest writer
Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

Ask almost anyone who menstruates: when you’re living with other people with periods for long enough, your cycles will become aligned. But are period syncers just fooling themselves? Asia Martusia King investigates.

This story was first published in Critic, the University of Otago student magazine.

The Alpha Uterus. A uterus so formidable, brimming with such sheer hormonal force that it annexes the uteri around it, pulling them into orbit and causing them to sync up. Does such a legendary power really exist?

Period syncing is based on the idea that when a bunch of menstruating folk live together for long enough, their cycles coincide. One person — the Alpha Uterus — determines when this occurs. Anecdotally, period syncing has been accepted as a real thing, but there’s a lack of medical data supporting this. We have exactly one study from the 1970s that confirmed period syncing in dorms. Since then, with the advent of period tracking apps, massive studies have been undertaken that suggest it’s likely a myth. There’s a disconnect between established and folk science, and we still have no real answer.

Luckily, we have Otago University students as guinea pigs. Critic asked students through a very scientific Facebook poll whether or not they’d ever synced up in flats or halls. The results: 169 (nice) people said that they had synced. Exactly one person said that they hadn’t.

That’s a big fat ratio. Maybe science is wrong.

Anna is a student whose flat has been meticulously tracking their periods since March. “We first put the calendar up because we thought it would be cute to see when each other had our periods, so we could get each other chocolate or something,” says Anna, who’s the most wholesome bitch in the world. “Now it’s kinda like, let’s see if it’s gonna sync.”

They haven’t fully synced yet, but there’s an increasing overlap. There is also a clearly defined Alpha Uterus at play. Interestingly, the Alpha Uterus’ influence seems to go even beyond syncing. It has also reportedly induced cramps amongst the other flatmates.

“In the first month when we moved into the flat, we all had our periods at the same time,” Anna says. “One of our flatmates gets pretty bad cramps. The rest of us don’t — but then we all got really bad cramps, and they’ve been bad ever since. We were like, ‘it was you!’ Maybe it’s some weird sympathy pain.”

This could be witchcraft, or it could be legit. A 2017 study called “Women Living Together Have a Higher Frequency of Menstrual Migraine” reported exactly that. One woman in the study had a migraine, and it spread throughout the participants. Why shouldn’t this include cramps as well? One comment on the Critic poll said that in their home, “mood swings and breakdowns definitely got in sync”; “group cry sesh” was the response.

It looks like period syncing could encapsulate much more than just bleeding. A similar thing called Couvade syndrome has been reported in men whose partners are pregnant. They can experience sympathy pregnancy symptoms, such as nausea and back pain. Empathy and hormones are suggested to underlie this. “Ew, bullshit,” I thought. “You aren’t pregnant, shut up.” But maybe I’m being too quick to judge. Ruby, a student living with five women and one man, reports that her male flatmate also gets moody when the women are menstruating. This could also possibly be because he’s living with five moody menstruating women though.

Anna mentioned another interesting phenomenon. One of her beta friends said she would “catch” periods off menstruating friends after sleepovers. “I still think she was wrong and it was a coincidence, and she just had a weird cycle, but she had it every two weeks and always when she had stayed over at a friend’s house she’d get her period the next day if they had it. She was adamant it was happening. Pretty intense.”

Molly’s periods were regular until her flatmate came off contraception. “I noticed after getting my IUD that my periods are very consistent. I also noticed that after about four months, when my friend changed her contraception, the timing of my period starting changing. Now at this point we’ve been synced up for the last two months. I don’t know who the Alpha was, but it might have been her since it overrode my IUD.

“My theory is that it’s hormones, the extra level of oestrogen, that make you susceptible to the other person’s periods. Whoever has the Alpha Hormones is the Alpha Uterus. Different contraceptives have different levels of progesterone. I have no hormonal contraceptive right now and I’m the beta uterus.”

Supposedly, the closer you are to your menstruating pals, the closer you sync up. I decided to consult the council of lesbians for answers. Thirty percent of lesbians surveyed were synced up with their girlfriends, while 70% weren’t. This isn’t including my dad, who also voted “yes” on my Instagram poll.

Local lezzie Joanne has been with her girlfriend for four years, and lived together for two. Despite lesbians being the ultimate gal pals, their periods only synced twice until a new flatmate moved in. The Alpha Uterus strikes again.

Joanne has no qualms about the Alpha Uterus usurping their sapphic bond. “The Alpha Uterus was very handy, as you knew when to prepare. She dragged us into her orbit. You can buy your pads and get your fucks out.

“There are benefits of syncing. You can all go to the Red Tent and have fun. We could all commiserate with each other, and share our tears and period snacks. The cons are that you’re in too much pain to have fun in the Red Tent. Everyone’s kind of grumpy at the same time. You can’t do favours for each other because you’re also on your period. Then there’s nobody to do nice things for anybody.”

Ruby’s flat has a different Alpha Uterus every month, a domino effect during a wave of periods where the Alpha starts and betas follow. “Whoever is Alpha gets bragging rights for the month. Chocolate consumption goes through the roof, as does the making of pudding, and usage of heatie wheaties.”

However, there is still a reigning Alpha who dominates the playing field. Ruby believes there are certain qualities that make an Alpha Uterus. One flatmate in particular can be pinpointed, Ruby says, as she “has the strongest sexual aura out of everyone and she’s very influential. People want to be like her. They like to imitate. I’ve seen tomato sauce stains, I think people have been faking.”

I recall my floor in first year syncing up. We made a special trophy for the Alpha Uterus. If this is the case, why aren’t university halls worldwide scrambling for tampons at the same time every month? There’d be a severe shortage. Maybe it’s because we were a small group of close friends. Maybe it’s because I have always had a feeble, beta uterus that cowers and whimpers in the Alpha Uterus’ wake.

Period syncing, whether real or not, has been established in menstruation canon. Anna muses why this might be. “When I was younger, it was almost a fact everyone talked about. It was stuck in my head,” she says. “When I actually Googled it, there was no science behind it. Maybe it’s just been a coincidence, or a historical thing that’s been around for a while.”

“If you’re living together in a hall, you’re bound to sync up with at least a few people,” Joanne says. “I don’t know if it necessarily means you bleed at the same time, or if your cycles coincide in a regular and reliable way.”

Ruby, despite her flat’s Alpha Uterus bragging rights, is a staunch anti-syncer. Like Joanne, she has been with her girlfriend for years and never synced up once. “People think that periods have a spiritual connection, that you’re best friends and sync up and are on the same wavelength, but I watched a Buzzfeed video when I was very young that said it didn’t exist.

“Women’s cycles vary and sometimes those match up. Sometimes we’d sync up perfectly, and sometimes they wouldn’t at all, and we just pretended that never happened. We’re a coven so we like to pretend we’re connected.”

Adds Anna: “It’s probably one of those things where they haven’t studied women’s anatomy over the years as much as they have men’s. Maybe there is something there.”

Conclusion and recommendations:

We don’t know if period syncing is real, but it’s a bit sus that only 0.5% of students surveyed said they hadn’t synced up. It also looks like lesbians don’t sync up with their girlfriends very often. Having a beta uterus may be a sign of homosexuality.

In Critic’s poll, 84 Alpha Uteri were tagged in the comments. Critic recommends placing all of them in a room for five months to determine the True Alpha Uterus. There can only be one.

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A scene from April, when the Tasman bubble opened. Photographer: Brendon O’Hagan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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SocietyAugust 12, 2021

Siouxsie Wiles: We all want to open up to the world. Here’s what we need to do first

Contributing writer
A scene from April, when the Tasman bubble opened. Photographer: Brendon O’Hagan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A scene from April, when the Tasman bubble opened. Photographer: Brendon O’Hagan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As the forum on ‘reconnecting’ gets under way, Siouxsie Wiles explores the critical factors we need to consider.

Spinoff coverage of the Covid-19 response is made possible thanks to support from members. Click here to learn more.

One of the big questions I’ve been asked a lot over the last few months is this: What does the future look like for Aotearoa New Zealand if Covid-19 continues to rage overseas? It’s a question tackled in a report released yesterday by the expert advice group chaired by Sir David Skegg, which will be the centre of discussion at today’s Reconnecting New Zealanders to the World Forum.

I think we can all agree that different people will have different ideas about when and how we should be opening up to the rest of the world. And those ideas will depend on many things, including their beliefs and understanding about the seriousness of Covid-19 and the level of risk they are willing to accept. 

To my mind, there are two main issues at stake. The first is at what stage can we safely abandon our elimination strategy and how does the vaccine rollout figure in all that? The second is, if we can’t safely abandon our elimination strategy just yet, how can we safely begin to open up our borders?

Does the vaccine rollout mean New Zealand can soon abandon the elimination strategy?

If there was one silver lining from the pandemic, it would have to be the development of safe and effective vaccines to protect people from Covid-19. It has been incredible to see just what can be achieved, and how quickly, when money is no object and the world’s research community race to jump on board. And while the vaccines really are remarkably safe and remarkably effective, none of them is 100% effective. We also know, both from the clinical trials and the real-world deployment, that the different vaccines offer varying levels of protection. So, while any vaccine is better than no vaccine, some offer better protection than others. Of course, we also still don’t know how long the vaccines protect us for either and whether this will be impacted by new variants of the virus evolving.

But putting those uncertainties aside, and focusing on the fact that no vaccine is 100% protective, what do vaccines mean for us abandoning our elimination strategy anytime soon? Before I tell you what I think, it’s important to recognise that most countries rolling out vaccines are doing so against a backdrop of widespread community transmission. That means every person vaccinated is a potential life saved and a move towards hopefully less community transmission. New Zealand is not in the same position. Because we currently don’t have community transmission (fingers crossed for Tauranga …), the issue for us is more around how many people need to be vaccinated to limit community transmission. I firmly believe we should be thinking about our responsibility to protect those in our community who can’t be vaccinated or who might have been vaccinated but haven’t mounted a protective immune response. This is what some people call “herd immunity”, though I prefer to call it “community immunity”. 

We can get some idea of the coverage we need for community immunity from modelling, but we can also watch what is happening with cases, hospitalisations, and deaths in countries that are rolling out the vaccines. Of relevance to us is Israel, because it is also using the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. It also can’t vaccinate everyone because the Pfizer vaccine has only just been approved for people over 12 and the trials on younger children haven’t finished yet. It’s looking like we’ll have data on the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine in 5- to 11-year-olds by September, but probably not until November for younger children. 

To date, Israel has recorded over 905,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and more than 6,500 deaths. To put this in perspective, Israel’s population is almost nine million people compared to around five million in New Zealand. The Middle Eastern country has experienced two major waves of Covid-19. The first peaked in mid-October 2020 with an average of about 6,200 cases per day and 38 deaths per day. The second wave peaked in late January 2021 with an average of 8,600 cases per day and 64 deaths per day. 

As well as using restrictions to bring the second wave under control, in December 2020 Israel also began rolling out the Pfizer vaccine to people over 16. As of Monday, 62.4% of the country’s population are fully vaccinated. Daily confirmed cases came down to a low of around 10 and daily deaths to between one and three. But after restrictions where loosened the seven-day rolling average for confirmed cases has started shooting up. They’re now back to almost 4,000 cases a day. Deaths have also started to increase, up to a seven-day rolling average of 10 a day.

While many children appear to be less at risk of having a serious Covid-19 infection, the risk isn’t zero and we’re starting to see reports of more and more children being hospitalised, especially in the US. According to official figures, the hospitalisation rate for under 17s among Americans is rising exponentially and is the highest it has been during the pandemic. 

I think it is safe to say that abandoning our elimination strategy before our children are able to be vaccinated means accepting that many of our children will get sick and some will die. And its highly likely that burden will fall disproportionately on Māori and Pasifika families. I think it would be abhorrent to allow that to happen. And if you think we can accept a small number of kids needing to be hospitalised, it might help to know that Starship’s Intensive Care Unit is the only dedicated children’s intensive care in New Zealand. It’s at critical capacity every 48 hours. And that’s without Covid-19 in our community. Right now they are fundraising so they can create space for 10 more beds.  

Can we maintain elimination but still open up?

Sticking to our elimination strategy for now means two things: limiting introductions of the virus into the country and stamping out community transmission if it happens. I think what’s happening in New South Wales shows that if we do get community transmission with the delta variant we really can’t mess around. I was relieved to hear the Covid response minister Chris Hipkins say the government’s response to finding delta in the community here was likely to be “swift and severe”. While we’ve managed for a year to stop Covid-19 using alert level three restrictions, given how much more infectious the delta variant is, we should definitely prepare ourselves for the fact it’s likely to take alert level four restrictions to bring a delta outbreak under control.

Of course, that will depend on the size of the outbreak. But the less often people use the Covid Tracer App, wear masks, and get tested if they have symptoms that could be Covid-19, the longer it may take to identify a community case – and so the bigger an outbreak is likely to be before we realise it’s happening. That means its on all of us to do our bit.

So what about limiting introductions of the virus into the country? Obviously, the big bottleneck for us is the capacity within our managed isolation and quarantine system. The great hope was that vaccines would protect against people getting infected and being able to spread the virus, and that would mean that vaccinated people could have skipped MIQ. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the vaccines work like that. Or at least not 100% of the time. In which case it would be extremely risky to allow vaccinated people to skip MIQ, or even have a shorter MIQ. Other countries are trying this out, so I guess we’ll soon see how successful a strategy it is.

For now, though, I think we need to be patient a little longer. I would desperately love to see my family overseas or to have them be able to come to New Zealand. But our priority should be to keep Covid-19 out until our children can be vaccinated. And we’ve all embraced the regular wearing of face masks. 

Until then, we need to remember that we are privileged to be living without community transmission of Covid-19 and with a safe and effective vaccine being made available to us all over the next few months. Most of the rest of the world doesn’t even have one of those things.

Society