The menstrual cycle and adolescent health.

Early reproductive characteristics, including menarcheal age, may have significant effects on later health outcomes. While early exposure to ovarian hormones may influence the risk for certain diseases, the degree to which this exposure is mediated by other factors is not well understood. Research on secular trends in age at menarche and subsequent outcomes in women's health across the lifespan can help to clarify the importance of age at menarche.

Is my period normal? How college-aged women determine the normality or abnormality of their menstrual cycles.

The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative study was to explore young adult women's conceptualizations of their menstruation experiences using a feminist approach. Grounded theory was used to understand how 15 college-aged women (ages 18-22 years, 86% white) evaluate their menstrual patterns as "normal" or "abnormal." Data analysis of the semi-structured interviews revealed four themes that the women used to judge the pattern of their menstruation (i.

The menstrual cycle:feminist research from the society for menstrual cycle research.

In this special issue, we present seven articles reporting on cutting-edge research on the menstrual cycle. The authors are all members of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research (SMCR) and the papers were presented at the sixteenth biennial conference of SMCR in Boulder, Colorado in June, 2005. The collection of papers taken as a whole demonstrates unequivocally that context affects not only the discourse surrounding menstruation but also how women actually experience it.

Women's sexual desire: a feminist critique.

This paper offers a critical feminist analysis of the biomedical conceptualization of women's sexual desire. The five major features of the biomedical model of female sexual desire examined and critiqued are: 1) use of the male model as the standard, 2) use of a linear model of sexual response, 3) biological reductionism, 4) depoliticalization, and 5) medicalization of variation. A "New View", an alternative to the biomedical model, is offered for reconceptualizing women's sexual problems.

Negotiating sexual agency: postmenopausal women's meaning and experience of sexual desire.

The purpose of this feminist grounded theory study was to understand the meaning and experience of postmenopausal women's sexual desire. Data collection from 22 postmenopausal women who were ongoing participants of the TREMIN Research Program on Women's Health occurred via audiotaped, telephone-based, semistructured interviews. Women's descriptions of their sexual needs and desires led to the discovery of the core category, negotiating sexual agency, which refers to women's ability to act on behalf of their sexual needs, desires, and wishes.

"Feeling frumpy": the relationships between body image and sexual response changes in midlife women.

This study investigated the relationships between self-rated attractiveness and self-reported sexual response changes (over the past decade) and current sexual satisfaction in 307 heterosexual, midlife women. Results indicated that regardless of the woman's specific age, she was more likely to consider herself more attractive when she was 10 years younger and her self-perceived attractiveness did not significantly differ based on her menopausal status. The more a woman perceived herself as less attractive than before, the more likely she was to report a decline in sexual desire or frequency of sexual activity.

Validating a pencil-and-paper measure of perimenopausal menstrual blood loss.

In the study presented here, we describe our efforts to develop and validate a new measurement tool for perimenopausal menstrual blood loss. We validate this simple-to-use, subjective pencil-and-paper scale, the Mansfield-Voda-Jorgensen Menstrual Bleeding Scale (MVJ), against an objective measure, the weight of used menstrual products. Thirty-one women from the Minneapolis-St.

Association between psychological stress and menstrual cycle characteristics in perimenopausal women.

In previous studies of the relationship between stress and menstrual cycles, stress has been found to be associated with longer cycles, to be associated with shorter cycles, and to have no association with cycle length. Some of the menstrual cycle changes that have been attributed to stress are similar to those experienced by women during perimenopause. In an effort to see whether an association between psychological stress and menstrual cycle characteristics can be detected in women approaching menopause, this study examines this relationship in perimenopausal women who are participants in the Tremin Research Program on Women's Health.

Staging the menopausal transition: data from the TREMIN Research Program on Women's Health.

The present study was conducted to test the assumptions of a staging system of reproductive aging that was proposed at the Stages of Reproductive Aging Workshop (STRAW) in 2001. Using longitudinal data provided by 100 women over a period of 3-12 years, we asked whether midlife women move in a uniform progression from pre- to peri- to postmenopause, as refuted by earlier studies but proposed by the STRAW model, or whether they differ from this assumed pattern. Participants were recruited from the TREMIN Research Program on Women's Health, the oldest ongoing study of menstruation and women's health in the world.

Husbands' support of their perimenopausal wives.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the social support provided by husbands to their perimenopausal wives. Ninety-six husbands of women who were participating in the longitudinal Midlife Women's Health Survey answered open-ended questions concerning how supportive they perceived themselves to be, what information they had concerning menopause, and what kinds of stress they were experiencing in their own lives. One-third of the husbands believed they were not supportive, but the majority said they provided mostly emotional support.

Reconciling messages: the process of sexual talk for Latinas.

Young Latinas' experiences and meanings of sexuality were explored through 31 interviews, with grounded theory used to provide theoretical understanding of sexual talk. The women's level of comfort with sexual talk and their explicitness influenced the kind of sexual talk they engaged in with partners. The analysis of being in a romantic relationship revealed similar descriptions of processes within the accounts that led to the discovery of the core variable reconciling messages.