How Mood Drugs & Sleep Problems Affect Women’s Hormones

…and other items from this week’s health news:

Sleep, drugs, and mixed messages

Most people know that irregular sleep, shift work, jet lag, and artificial light at night can disturb one’s circadian rhythm, but menstrual cycles? Yes, that too!

How this happens: it’s because the timing systems are deeply connected; the brain’s “master clock” interacts with reproductive systems, linking daily and monthly cycles. Furthermore, shorter daylight lengthens reproductive cycles, while longer daylight shortens them, showing sensitivity to seasonal changes—or anything your body might reasonably mistake for a seasonal change (given the ubiquity of bright lights these days).

The same study also found that mood stabilizers have hormonal side effects: lithium, used for bipolar disorder, can lengthen circadian rhythms and disrupt hormonal cycles.

You may be wondering: is this of any relevance to me, postmenopause? And the answer is: it depends, because if you’re on HRT, chances are your body will still adapt to a monthly cycle—even without ova to ovulate (and so forth), the hypothalamus will still regulate the metabolism of your estrogen, no matter whether that estrogen came from your ovaries or a pharmacy. However, the symptoms should be much less severe, and you shouldn’t experience bleeding after the first 6 months or so.

Read in full: How disrupted sleep and mood drugs impact women’s hormonal and mental health

Related: The Other Circadian Rhythms

Long COVID extra bad for many women

Long COVID, short end of the stick? It certainly seems so:

Researchers (Dr. Jacqueline Maybin et al.) have found that women with long COVID face higher risk of abnormal uterine bleeding, with symptoms like fatigue, headaches, and muscle pain worsening during perimenstrual and proliferative phases.

How this happens: Dr. Maybin and her team found a cluster of immune cells in the endometrium of affected women, pointing to inflammation as a likely mechanism rather than ovarian hormone disruption. Which is not too shocking, all things considered (long COVID being an ongoing systemic response to an infection long after it should have been necessary), but it’s good to know.

And, in terms of “what we know”, the science for this one is about as sure as science ever is about anything, as it came from three approaches—data from 12,187 women, a three-month clinical follow-up of women with long COVID, and an analysis of blood and endometrial samples.

Since long COVID affects 3–7% of the global population and is twice as common in women, this is pretty important—not just as trivia, but for practical reasons too; it means that menstrual cycle phases should be factored into long COVID biomarkers (something the researchers also called for in their paper).

Read in full: Study reveals bidirectional relationship between long COVID and menstrual disorders

Related: What Can Be Done About Long COVID?

A reasonable, yet unexpected, extra cancer risk

Researchers (Dr. Mariah Bilalaga et al.) found that nonadherence to cervical screenings (i.e., simply not getting it done when invited/recommended to do so by healthcare providers) went up since the pandemic—most likely a side effect of people initially consciously avoiding unnecessarily going to places where one might get infected, and then developing a new habit around same, whether or not the habit is consciously upheld or just habit now for many.

However, while COVID does continue to be risk, so is cancer, and recommendations are to go get screenings when invited/recommended all the same.

Somehow, awareness of the HPV vaccine (that helps prevent cervical cancer, because most cervical cancer is caused by that virus) also dropped, which hasn’t helped cervical cancer numbers stay under control, either:

Read in full: Nonadherence to cervical cancer screening increased after COVID-19 pandemic

Related: Everything you need to know about cervical cancer

Take care!