Menstrual cycle for painful periods is "Dysmenorrhea". The menstrual cycle can be described by the ovarian or uterine cycle. The ovarian cycle describes changes that occur in the follicles of the ovary whereas the uterine cycle describes changes in the endometrial lining of the uterus. Both cycles can be divided into three phases. The ovarian cycle consists of the follicular phase, ovulation, and the luteal phase, whereas the uterine cycle consists of menstruation, proliferative phase, and secretory phase. The follicular phase is the first part of the ovarian cycle. During this phase, the ovarian follicles mature and get ready to release an
Menstrual cycle with test scores. When completing empathy exercises, women in the follicular stage of their menstrual cycle performed better than women in their midluteal phase. A significant correlation between progesterone levels and the ability to accurately recognize emotion was found. Performances on emotion recognition tasks were better when women had lower progesterone levels. Women in the follicular stage showed higher emotion recognition accuracy than their midluteal phase counterparts. Women were found to react more to negative stimuli when in midluteal stage over the women in the follicular stage, perhaps indicating more reactivity to social stress during that menstrual cycle phase. Overall,