5 New Studies That Could Transform Women's Health In The Years Ahead

In honor of International Women's Day, we're highlighting a few impactful examples of female-focused research from the last few months, complete with insights from our science and health team. Here's to getting one step closer to discovering why women experience increased rates of autoimmune disorders, sleep disturbances, and more—and how we can change this in the future.

As mindbodygreen's assistant health editor Hannah Frye reports, "While researchers don't have an explanation for the correlation just yet, it could have something to do with preexisting hormone levels or imbalances in women, given that PMS is believed to be caused by a dramatic drop in estrogen and progesterone... [It's] critical for health care providers to take PMS symptoms seriously and consider working toward hormonal balance to address the root cause rather than just alleviating symptoms for the time being." (Read the research here1.)

Since women have two X chromosomes, as our bodies develop, we essentially need to "shut down" the cellular activity of one X chromosome to prevent overproducing certain proteins. Researchers found that RNA that regulates this process may be an important driver of sex-biased autoimmunity. (It's worth noting that we are just learning this now because, for several decades, researchers used a male cell line as the standard of reference in autoimmune susceptibility.) This is a potentially groundbreaking finding, as it could improve our ability to predict autoimmune disorders—currently affecting 19 to 40 million women in America—before they occur. (Read the research here3.)

Women are severely underrepresented in sports and exercise research, and most of the studies that do focus on women are senior authored by men. (Sigh.) A new analysis, "Invisible Sportswomen 2.0," digs into the urgent need for more sports research by women for women. It reiterated that between 2014 and 2020, as little as 6% of sports and exercise science research in the most popular journals was conducted exclusively in female participants. It also found the women's sports studies that did have women authors tended to be of higher quality across all journals. (Read the paper here.)

This research on the unseen factors affecting sleep suggests that something as simple as upping vitamin D and iron intake could help premenopausal women achieve more restorative rest. (Read the research here5.)

When over 1,000 women in the UK filled out a survey on the benefits of their cold-water swimming routines, the majority of them (63.3%) reported that they swam specifically to relieve period or menopause symptoms. Menopausal women noted improvements in anxiety (46.9%), mood swings (34.5%), low mood (31.1%), and hot flashes (30.3%) after a chilly dip, while premenopausal women said swimming reduced menstrual symptoms like anxiety (46.7%), mood swings (37.7%), and irritability (37.6%). Cold plunging often has a macho biohacking connotation, but this research shows the unique ways women can benefit from braving freezing temps, too, both mentally and physically. (Read the research here6.)