Does menstruation and the moon cycle coincide in any way?
Auxillaryly
Or did it before modern tech made the moon obscured? and…
- does this affect males in any way?
2_… what are the official names for leg pits and toe pits?
The Earth’s moon has a regular cycle. Some women probably do have a cycle that matches the moon, but every woman I know has a cycle of a different length. That is, their cycles can vary from one woman to the next, and even the same woman might have cycles of various lengths. The average human cycle (as opposed to the average chimp cycle, for instance) is about 28 days, whereas the lunar cycle is about 29.5 days. So a woman might start her period on a full moon for a few months, but gradually she’ll start her period earlier and earlier in the lunar cycle, and she’ll eventually find her period starting during the waxing gibbous moon, then the first quarter, etc.
For most women, the length of their cycle and the length of the lunar cycle is only a coincidence.
As for affecting males, males are advised to speak softly and avoid irritating females during the premenstrual phase. Also, offering chocolate helps. A lot. 
I have no idea about leg pits and toe pits.
Women who live together… I know because I’ve lived with some “not a dudes” over the years, aaaaand I double checked. Yon Cecil has an article about it Does menstrual synchrony really exist? - The Straight Dope
The word menstruate is derived from mensis Latin for month which is derived from mene Greek for moon
before artificial light became available to the masses, female humans tended to menstruate around the full moon
OK pretty weak post so far, but I have a theory, which may be mine…
Humans are Humans everywhere and through the ages don’t actually change that much. You know similar intelligence, emotions, wants and needs.
I can imagine a group of hunter gatherer types. As we know the ladies tend to do a lot of the gathering with the children. While the chaps prefer to hang with their mates and errr “discuss ways in which we can improve our hunting skills, yeah!” (high fives!) The ladies will then roll their eyes and go hmm righto, we’ll see.
After the Moon’s first quarter the guys start thinking, the girls are going to get the visit they don’t like us much at that time, be a nice bright night for hunting in a couple of days … “Bye Darling going hunting with the chaps, be back in a week or so.” and bugger off to find something to kill. If all goes well, bring home a couple of mammoths of whatever to the ladies who have finished their thang and are a little iron deficient maybe. Enter the men stage left
“Hi Honey I’m home and look what I’ve got, BBQ!” smiles all round.
After a lovely dinner, sitting around the fire the guys look across at the girls…
profit!
that ended up more long winded than i thought it would, hope it’s ok
We’re gonna need a cite for that, or are you just speculating?
I had a g/f who believed it coincided, and hers did. Perhaps because of power of the mind and her belief that they were to match made it so. She (and I) took it as she was ‘one’ in spirit with mother earth as she was very into native American beliefs which has a lot to do what that type of stuff (oneness with the earth as a living entity)
If I can wade my way in here through the hip-deep pile of woo that’s spilled all over the place, what on earth does this mean?
Perhaps he is referring to the weather-control domes over all our major cities, which have caused the inhabitants to stop believing in the existence of the stars.
Are there any actual women in this thread at ALL? It’s so cute when men tell us all about how our bodies work!
I’m pretty sure Lynn is a woman.
And if there were some fundamental reason for the menstruation cycle to match up to the lunar cycle, then you’d expect to see that matchup in all animals, not just humans. In actuality, you see a matchup in only a small fraction of animals, about as many as you’d expect just from coincidence. So far as I know, the only practical implication of the cycles being close to the same length is that it led cultures around the world to conclude that the deity of the moon must be female.
I’m a woman, though I no longer menstruate. I had my uterus and ovaries taken out in 2001, but they were functional, I menstruated (and my cycle varied, too) and got pregnant and gave birth.
On the other hand, I play video games and drink beer, so some people think I should turn in my woman card. And on the gripping hand, I LOOOVE dark chocolate.
There’s a theory that, were we in a natural environment with no nighttime light stronger than moonlight, we women would find our cycles matching with the moon cycles. Long cycles would get shorter, short cycles would get longer, and we’d all be in kumbayatic bliss. It’s only because of artificial light that we’re no longer using the Red Tent at the same time.
…I think maybe they get the notion from chickens or something. Y’know, how they didn’t lay eggs during the winter before we had electric lights because of the lack of stimulation to their uh, pineal glands, is it? Some gland, somewhere between their beady little eyes, that needs long days of light to trigger egg laying.
Anyhow, it’s an interesting hypothesis, but I don’t know that anyone’s tested it. Really, it shouldn’t be that hard - find a third world country without electricity and start tracking cycles.
Bwawk bwawk bwawk…
I should have said modern society. I.E. we spent most of our nights indoors nowadays, and when we do go out, there are lots of other bright lights, such that most people don’t really notice the moon cycle unless they are in a rural area.
So what you’re asking is whether or not moonlight or lack of it has some effect on women’s menstrual cycles? The answer is no. Even in societies when and where there was a lot of nocturnal activity under natural lighting, women had cycles of different lengths, and those cycles were at different times for different women.
There are quite a few cultures where the moon god was/is male.
'Cos, of course, men can know all about any amount of biology and medicine and so on, except for stuff about women’s bodies - knowledge about the female reproductive system is located directly in the ovaries!
Really? Which ones? The only mythology I’ve ever seen with a male moon-god was Tolkien’s, and who knows what elf cycles are like.
To broaden things, are there any lifeforms affected biologically by the moon cycle?
Some coastal organisms are certainly affected by the tidal cycle, which is in turn (partly) determined by the lunar cycle.
I kept charts for over 7 years (of my cycles, ovulation, menstruation, etc…) I also usually noted the phase of the moon. What I noticed was that my cycles tended to do exactly as you suggest: move backwards through the lunar cycle in a very regular fashion (my cycles are very regular, with rare exceptions, and 28 days as a rule).
However, at times when my exposure to artificial lighting was minimal and/or exposure to moonlight was a regular occurance (for a while, I slept near a window through which the waxing moon was visible, for example, and during summers when the need for indoor electric lights was minimal AND I tended to spend lots of time outdoors at night and otherwise) my cycle would tend to shift, sometimes dramatically, and align itself with a moon phase (I would have to check my notes…have no idea where all those old notebooks are…but either the dark of the moon or the full, I can’t recall, but it was one or the other, never at the half or first quarter or something.)
We know that light, natural spectrum and otherwise, affects bodily rhythms. It makes sense that it would have some effect on menstrual cycles.
Just my anecdotal input, for whatever it’s worth.
And my daughter, when she was younger, used to call them “knee pits” (never called the spaces between her toes anything but “between my toes”). I have ho idea if there is a proper name. 
Yeah, cause the early half of this thread had so much biological and medical information in them.