Over the last two years or so, my girlfriend identified her cycle as having a unusually strong and very predictable effect on her mood/affect. We tried a bunch of interventions (food, sleep, socializing, supplements, reading the sequences, …) and while some seemed to help a bit, none worked reliably. Then, suddenly, something kind of crazy actually worked: Hair loss pills.

The Menstrual Cycle

Quick review: The womenfolk among us go through a cycle of varying hormone levels over the course of about a month. The first two weeks are called the “Follicular Phase”, and the last two weeks are called the “Luteal Phase.” The first week (usually less) is the “period” (“menstrual phase”, “menses”) where the body sloughs off the endometrial lining in the uterus, no longer of use to the unimpregnated womb, and ejects it in an irregular fountain of blood and gore. After that is a [...]