The quality of your menstrual cycle - the quality of your bleed (or abscence there of), your PMS symptoms, your pain levels, your physical changes - It all forms a symptomatic picture of your health status over the past few months.

Your period is quite literally your monthly report card. 🩸👸🏻

Your period is actually considered to be a 5th vital sign, along with your temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and respiratory rate. A vital sign, in medical terms, is described as a clinical measurement that indicates the status of essential functions of the body required to maintain life. To put it simply, a vital sign determines the vitality - or life force - of your body in any moment of time. If a vital sign is struggling, you can bet your body is not in an optimal place of health. 

When it comes to your period, it takes roughly 3 months for an egg to grow and fully mature before it is released from the fallopian tube and implanted into the uterus (to either support pregnancy or to be shed as of the next 10-14 days if no implantation occurs).

This essentially means that your bleed on any given month is releasing an egg that has been maturing within your body for 3 months prior to it being released. And as this egg has been developing, it has been exposed to the same environment YOU have been exposed to for that same amount of time. So any stressors (internal or external), toxins, nutrition (or lack there of), alcohol, medications, etc. has been impacting the quality of the growth and health of this egg. 💪🏼

*This is why it is important to clean up your diet and lifestyle, and potentially start taking pre-natal medication in the months PRIOR to conceiving, for the best chance of growing a healthy baby. 👶🏻

Back to periods - Basically the symptoms that you are experiencing on any given cycle are a tell-tale sign of your health status, stress status, nutrition status, medical status over the past 3 months.

An easy way to tell is - Say you have a randomly painful and heavy bleed. In those moments, you can probably trace back to a particularly stressful situation you experienced 3 months prior. (I’ve done this and can say this works). 🗓️

Your body is ALWAYS talking to you. And if you believe you struggle to understand your body’s cues, this is actually a really easy opportunity for you to start building that connection with your body. I recommend you start tracking your cycle 🗓️ including symptoms experienced across the entire cycle, for 3 months minimum. It only needs to take 20 seconds each night or a few minutes each week. This is an AMAZING tool to start to build your relationship between your physical body and how it is responding to your lifestyle, to stress, and to your nutrition status. *I will link my downloadable trackers at the end of this blog.

Tracking your cycle and noticing symptomatic changes is also an amazing opportunity to take empowered ownership of your health and start working WITH your body. You get to adjust things that may need adjusting, to improve the quality and status of your monthly cycle (and of course your life and health in general). 💃🏻💃🏻💪🏼

Things to look out for include:

🩸 PMS symptoms varying between cycles

🩸 The colour and textural consistency of your bleed

🩸 The heaviness of your flow

🩸 The intensity of cramping especially around the time of your bleed

🩸 Bloating, cravings, sore breasts

🩸 Mood fluctuations

🩸 Skin changes e.g. acne

🩸 Anything else that feels relevant to you! This is your body and your experience, after all 😉

A note on contraception (e.g. the pill, rod etc.): Although you are manually influencing your hormones here, I still invite you to track what you can of your cycle. Your shifts may be more subtle, but they may still exist. Alternatively, perhaps this is your sign to come off contraception so you can start to build a healthy, connected relationship with your body on your terms!

Extra downloadable resources for you to deepen your understanding of your cycle and allow easy tracking:

• Guide to Living in Feminine Cycle Flow

  • The information within this guide is ✨ GAME-CHANGER ✨ and allows for you live a life of empowerment and flow, all while maintaining structure and organisation so you can get the most out of each cycle!

• Period Tracker - Yearly and Monthly

  • Track your cycle across each month and across the entire year with ease.

Leave any questions in the comments below! 🧡

Mon xx