Today, you’ll learn about a study linking the Covid vaccine to slightly longer menstrual cycles. How being social could actually hurt people who are lonely, and why you won’t find any kangaroos outside of Australia.
Today, you’ll learn about a study linking the Covid vaccine to slightly longer menstrual cycles. How being social could actually hurt people who are lonely, and why you won’t find any kangaroos outside of Australia.
Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/vaccine-menstrual-length-lonely-in-a-crowd-aussie-roos
Vaccine Menstrual Length
Lonely in a Crowd
Aussie ‘Roos
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[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about a study linking the Covid vaccine to slightly longer menstrual cycles, how being social could actually hurt people who are lonely, and why you won’t find any kangaroos outside of Australia.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: A recent study has confirmed that women who received a COVID-19 vaccination experienced longer menstrual cycles.
CALLI: Great. Got any good news?
NATE: I know, I know.
CALLI: Do you know?
NATE: Okay. I don’t know. But I will say that the study itself was actually pretty cool, and the results are actually less scary than they sound. But let’s start with the study. Earlier research of women in the United States suggested the link between the vaccine and longer cycles, but for anyone who’s ever listened to Curiosity Daily before, you know…
CALLI: …more research is needed?
NATE: Exactly. More research. So for this new study, the National Institutes of Health decided to go big. Like… pretty massive. It included nearly 20,000 people from Canada, the UK, the US, Europe, and other parts of the world.
CALLI: So, this is kind of a no-brainer for me and a lot of other people out there but for those who don’t know: how on Earth do you monitor that many menstrual cycles?
NATE: Good question. You use an app.
CALLI: Oh man. Vaccines causing longer menstrual cycles. Period tracking apps. This story has all the makings for a juicy conspiracy theory.
NATE: I suppose it might seem so, but the researchers used the fertility tracking app called “Natural Cycles,” and users had to opt in to be a part of the research, and then they were de-identified. In other words… this was all anonymous. They would record their temperature and their cycles for at least three consecutive cycles before being vaccinated, and at least one cycle after.
CALLI: Got it. The before and after. Hit me with the bad news. What did they find?
NATE: Actually - it really wasn’t all that bad. On average, the first dose of the vaccine was linked to an increase of .71 days.
CALLI: .71? Like…not even one full day?
NATE: And the increase after the second dose was even less - around half a day.
CALLI: Wait - so what if you took both doses during the same cycle?
NATE: Good question - the average increase goes up if you get both doses in the same cycle to about 3.91 days. And there was a small percentage in the study whose cycles increased 8 or more days.
CALLI: Ugh. That sounds awful, an 8 day period?!
NATE: Actually no. The study looked at the duration of the entire menstrual cycle. In fact, they found no link to longer periods at all.
CALLI: Oh. Okay so, for those of you who aren’t familiar with how this works, a cycle is about 28 days to a month or so, so when we’re talking about this, we’re talking about expanding the entire cycle, not just the period itself. You kinda buried the lead there a little bit. That makes this story not so scary. Especially since the average increase was so small.
NATE: Right. Scientists consider any change in cycle length less than 8 days to be within the normal range of variation.
CALLI: So we usually talk about studies with HUGE, REVOLUTIONARY results, but this one seems…I mean important, yes but a little bit meh. What’s the big deal?
NATE: When I first read about this, I had the same thought. The findings are pretty unremarkable on the surface. That said, for women trying to conceive, any change in cycle can be pretty anxiety-inducing. If women believe that a vaccine might affect their ability to become pregnant, or is significantly messing with their menstrual cycles…
CALLI: They might not get the vaccine.
NATE: Yeah. Healthcare providers and researchers might not find the changes in cycle length meaningful, but it can sure be scary if you think the jab is going to ruin your chances of having a baby. There are all sorts of reasons people cite when deciding not to get vaccinated, but this doesn’t have to be one of them.
CALLI: I guess that’s also why it’s important to have the kind of accurate data that a study this size can offer.
NATE: Bigger, well-designed studies lead to more accurate results. And that should make everyone feel a little better. Of course, the researchers do note that…
CALLI: Lemme guess: more research is needed?
NATE: You got it. They want to know why this happens, and they want to see if there are any other effects they might have missed.
CALLI: I mean I at least give ‘em credit for being thorough.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: A new study is suggesting that the most common cure for loneliness might actually just make people feel worse.
NATE: Hang on. Isn’t the most common cure for loneliness just…hanging with your friends?
CALLI: You’d think, right? The idea that being around people helps heal loneliness is called the “buffering account” theory. And research has shown that our social bonds are pretty good predictors of our emotional well-being.
NATE: I mean…yeah. I can see how just being around people, and not necessarily people you’re close to might not help that much.
CALLI: You’re right. It’s a totally different story for those folks who are considered chronically lonely. The opposite of the “buffering account theory” is the “amplifying account theory.” It says that all those bad feelings bubbling around in us when we’re lonesome are actually made worse when we’re with other people.
NATE: How can that possibly be? If the cause of being lonesome is…well…being alone, then the cure should be not being alone.
CALLI: This study, conducted by researchers Olga Stavrova and Dongning Ren, turns that idea on its head. They examined data sets from Germany and the UK and found that chronic loneliness can make us crave solitude. It makes the world of people and friends and social interaction feel threatening.
NATE: It's like pouring gasoline on a fire instead of putting it out. Maybe it’s sorta like when you’re feeling depressed and someone makes a joke to cheer you up.
CALLI: Right. And it’s like…why are you trying to be funny at a time like this?!
NATE: I mean…we’ve all been there.
CALLI: It’s actually worse than that, even, because loneliness can make us approach being social cynically. It’ll make you distrust the people you’re with and fear rejection. And that can lead to being sorta ostracized, or stigmatized, which leads to…
NATE: …more loneliness. More bad feelings.
CALLI: It's like loneliness creates a negative spiral, and being around others might just make it worse. And, sadly, the results of these new studies seem to confirm the amplifying account theory. And gender and age didn’t matter at all. When we’re highly lonely, forcing social situations just makes things worse.
NATE: That's a lot to take in. But what does this mean for our listeners who might be feeling lonely?
CALLI: The researchers aren’t totally sure, honestly. They say they need more data, more research, and that a more nuanced approach is probably needed. And it's important to remember that everyone's experience with loneliness is different.
NATE: That's a good point. So, how do we fight loneliness, if not by being around people?
CALLI: That’s a great question. Like I said, this series of studies doesn’t really make recommendations. But other researchers suggest that building meaningful and quality social connections, rather than simply increasing social contact, might be a better way to do it. It's more about quality, not quantity.
NATE: Ah, so it's like having a few close friends who really understand and support you rather than a large group of acquaintances?
CALLI: Yeah, exactly.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Scientists have finally figured out why there aren’t any kangaroos in Asia - or anywhere beside Australia, for that matter. Any guesses?
CALLI: You know what? I’ve never actually thought about that. If I had to guess why, I’d probably say it has something to do with Australia being so far away from everything else?
NATE: That’s a great guess, until you consider the fact that Australia is full of animals that originated in Asia, like goannas, some rodent species, and even the old kookaburra. But you can search Asia up and down, and you won’t come across a single kangaroo or koala.
CALLI: Wait a second? So you’re saying that somehow Asian animals made it to Australia, but Australian animals didn’t go to Asia? I’m confused. What’s going on there?
NATE: It has everything to do with…Antarctica.
CALLI: Hate to say it, but that did absolutely nothing to solve my confusion.
NATE: Yeah that’s fair. And it’s actually a problem that has confused biologists for a long time. They’ve constructed this imaginary line between Australia, New Guinea, and bits of Indonesia from Southeast Asia. It’s called the Wallace Line, and at least for the most part, animals really only migrated one way across that line - they crossed into Australia. Not much crossed the other way.
CALLI: So where does Antarctica come into this?
NATE: In a new paper published in the journal Science, researchers looked at a massive set of data of some 20,000 species of animals to try to detect a pattern, and their research took them all the way back to the beginning, like, 45 million years ago. It turns out, Australia was much further south back then. So far south, it was actually connected to Antarctica.
CALLI: Oh okay. Here’s where Antarctica comes in, although I’m still not seeing how that affected migration between Australia and Asia.
NATE: Around 35 million years ago, Australia broke off and headed north and basically smashed into Asia, which is the continental crash that created Indonesia.
CALLI: Wow. Okay. So Antarctica and Asia have two vastly different climates. That’s like moving from Alaska to Phoenix.
NATE: Totally. At that point, all kinds of creatures could use the Indonesian islands as a sort of stepping stone to go either way. But as we know, they kinda only went one way - into Australia. It gets a little complicated here but basically we can boil the reasoning for this down to climate. Species that originated in Asia were better suited to adapt to the Australian climate than species that originated in Australia were to the Asian climate.
CALLI: So Australia sorta retired to a warmer climate when it moved north?
NATE: Yea. And while that was happening, Antarctica became surrounded by a massive ocean because Australia was no longer connected to it. So that cooled off the whole planet. It was an Australia-sized climate change catastrophe. The continents dried out and there was a mass extinction event. Except in the region around Indonesia. It kept on being a hot, wet, tropical delight for creatures great and small. The thing is, animals like the koala and our friend the kangaroo were adapted to climates more in line with antarctica. Dry and cool. As Australia heated up, they adapted to that, but they just couldn’t adapt to the wet tropical conditions in Asia.
CALLI: But the Asian animals like the goanna could adapt to Australia?
NATE: Yep. They could tolerate a pretty wide range of conditions, so a bunch of them bought a ticket and made the move Down Under.
CALLI: Wow. So that means the kangaroo stayed in Australia because…
NATE: …of Antarctica. Or - to put it more precisely - because of plate tectonic shifts and global climate change millions of years ago. Our Aussie friends had less biodiversity throughout their evolution than Asian animals, so they stuck close to home.
CALLI: So kangaroos were given the chance to go walk-about, but chose to stay close to the billabong, eh mate?
NATE: That’s amazing. I think your Australian accent has migrated to another planet.
CALLI: I don’t even know where I went with that.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. A massive study has confirmed that COVID-19 vaccines cause slightly longer menstrual cycles, although the average changes are less than a single day, well within the normal range of variation.
CALLI: A new study on loneliness found that being around people and in social situations actually increased the negative emotional effects of extreme loneliness. The study called for a more nuanced approach to understanding the mechanisms behind chronic loneliness so that better treatments can be found.
NATE: Biologists in Australia have solved an age-old mystery: why some animals that originated in Asia were able to move to Australia, but Australian animals didn’t move to Asia. The cause of this asymmetry, it turns out, was tectonic shifts that triggered a global cool-down. Kangaroos adapted to drier climates couldn’t hack the rainforest. But tropical creatures found Australia to be just lovely.