“It’s that time of the month – stay away from her!” The process of shedding the uterine lining with vaginal bleeding every month has an obvious reproductive focus, but it has also long been linked with changes to mood and behaviour. Unfortunately, this has often been an attempt to consign women to a “biologically” determined place of inferior mental functioning. In recent times, we have learnt more about the connections between the “reproductive” or gonadal hormones and the brain, and how they affect not only women but men as well. Gonadal hormones (oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone) are produced by the gonads (the ovaries and testes) in response to other precursor hormones found in...
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