Menstrual cycle of food types has been found between PMS sufferers and non-sufferers. The different levels of ovarian hormones at different stages of the cycle have been used to explain eating behaviour changes. Progesterone has been shown to promote fat storage, causing a higher intake of fatty foods during the luteal phase when progesterone levels are higher. Additionally, with a high estrogen level dopamine is ineffective in converting to noradrenaline, a hormone which promotes eating, therefore decreasing appetite. In humans, the level of these ovarian hormones during the menstrual cycle have been found to influence binge eating. It is theorized that the
Menstrual synchrony of northwestern California, according to one ethnographic study, "all of a household's fertile women who were not pregnant menstruated at the same time..." The phenomenon of menstrual synchrony is the closeness in time of the menstrual cycle onsets of two or more women. The phenomenon is not synchronization in the strict sense of concordance of menstrual cycle onsets but the term "menstrual synchrony" is still used perhaps misleadingly. As an undergraduate, Martha McClintock published the first study on menstrual synchrony; her report detailed the menstrual synchrony of undergraduate women living in a dormitory in Wellesley College. Since then, there have