I have been looking for a book like this for some time. A boom that talks about the menstrual cycle and the hormonal impact on body and brain.

As a biochem and neuroscience student, I do know a little bit about the complexities of these topics already, so I was hoping for a book that can deal with uncertainty and nuanced findings.

This book had a lot of potential and a few great passages. I especially enjoyed when the author was able to explain the research process and why menstruating people are so severely understudied.

But the big issue I had with the book was the discriminating and non-inclusvie language. While the author made a disclaimer in the first part of the book, about not including trans or queer women and men, this was by no means sufficient.
There was also strong TERF motives at points.

It could have been so simple to make this book more inclusive. A few word changes, a few passages removed andba few others added. Tbh, I would love to rewrite this book.
The more I read, the more Inhad the feeling that the author was deliberately excluding certain groups of people. Not cool.


Another problem of mine was the intransparency about the scientific process at times. Other experts on the field have been commenting on the book, mentioning that the author is speculating a lot. And I can not do, but feel like the speculating parts all had an agenda. If you speculate in this direction, why don't you also include the other?
This behaviour unfortunately made me question the entire book.


But still. I think a good book, if read with caution. The best Inhave found so far on this topic.

Maybe a little like "Why We Sleep" were some results were also extrapolated. But the overall idea was important. It's just hard here to get the overall idea without being incorrect. I feel like a basic scientific training is necessary to make up the bad part from the good parts 😢