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Did you know that your day-to-day lifestyle can influence your menstrual cycle, affecting the challenges and symptoms you experience? We didn't.

What's so powerful about this insight is that it means we can use our lifestyle as a tool to positively influence our cycle, helping to manage and reduce most menstrual-related symptoms. Changes to your lifestyle can therefore help alleviate many hormonal imbalances linked to the menstrual cycle, which is empowering as it puts you in control of how you feel. By living in sync with your cycle, you can feel your best, whatever the day of the month.

So, what does 'lifestyle' actually include? We break it down into four key areas: nutrition, physical activity, recovery, and environment. Each of these influences your menstrual cycle in different ways. Once you understand more about these elements and their impact, you can start using them as tools to work with your cyclical changes, rather than against them.

Nutrition and the menstrual cycle are closely linked. If you think about it, have you ever noticed your appetite and cravings change depending on where you are in your cycle? We certainly have. This is completely natural and part of being a woman. Throughout the menstrual cycle, hormonal shifts occur which can affect hunger, cravings, and nutritional needs during its different phases.

If you eat too little, consume nutrient-poor food, or if your body can't absorb the nutrients from what you eat, it can't produce the hormones needed for optimal function. This can lead to various menstrual-related issues. The key is to provide your body with enough energy and proper nutrition, giving it the building blocks required for hormone production so you can feel your best all month long.

In addition to getting enough energy and a varied diet, a well-functioning gut is crucial for eliminating excess and used hormones. Otherwise, they can continue to circulate in the body, disrupting the natural hormonal balance. Consuming foods that may contribute to inflammation, such as a high intake of white sugar, white flour, and heavily processed foods, can also affect gut flora and hormonal balance. This can manifest in symptoms ranging from tender breasts to mood swings and heavy bleeding.

As hormones shift throughout the menstrual cycle, our physical capabilities change too. This means we might experience exercise and how our body feels differently during each phase. By adapting your training to these phases, you can help manage menstrual-related issues and optimise your workouts for performance while reducing injury risk. For example, in phase two, our physical capacity is often at its peak due to higher testosterone levels, making it a perfect time to challenge yourself a little more. During phase three, when you might experience PMS symptoms, it can be beneficial to listen to your body and adjust your exercise based on how you feel that day.

Recovery is incredibly important for a well-functioning menstrual cycle and for our overall wellbeing—physically, mentally, and emotionally—throughout the month. Stress has a huge impact on our hormones, so it's vital to learn to listen to your body during the different phases and adapt your recovery to its needs. Can you see any patterns in your own life when it comes to sleep needs and energy levels in the different phases? How can you tailor your recovery based on what your body is signalling? Remember that recovery comes in many forms. What type works for you? Is it meditation, painting, or a walk in nature? Tune in to what makes you feel best and make space for it in your calendar.

The environment we're in and the products we use daily expose us to a variety of chemicals and toxins. Many everyday products contain substances that can negatively affect our hormones, which in turn can impact our fertility and menstrual cycle. To avoid these chemicals interfering with our natural hormones, it's best to choose organic and toxin-free alternatives for intimate products, skincare, and haircare, as well as for food containers, water bottles, and clothing.

How Your Lifestyle is Linked to Your Menstrual Cycle

Hur din livsstil är kopplad till din menscykel

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How to Benefit from the Phases of Your Menstrual Cycle

Hur du kan dra nytta av menscykelns faser

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Have you ever noticed your mood, energy levels, hunger, cravings, and self-confidence change throughout the month? Have you considered that this could be linked to where you are in your menstrual cycle? Today, you'll learn more about the menstrual cycle and how key female hormones work. By understanding yourself better, you can get the most out of yourself on a personal level, from a health perspective, in your training, relationships, work, and life in general.

The Menstrual Cycle – Your Inner Rhythm

For those with female biology, the menstrual cycle is your natural inner rhythm. Depending on where you are in your cycle, it's natural to feel different from day to day and from phase to phase. The menstrual cycle is largely predictable, with a similar pattern repeating month after month in a regular cycle. This allows you to start using your menstrual cycle as a source of information and a powerful tool.

The menstrual cycle is individual, and everyone has cycles of different lengths. From a health perspective, a 'normal' menstrual cycle is between 26-32 days. Womensync uses 28 days as a baseline because it's the average for a healthy cycle, although only 13 percent of women regularly experience a 28-day cycle. Ovulation is the central event of the menstrual cycle, and it's before and during this time that the egg can be fertilised. If the egg is not fertilised, it leads to a period approximately 12-16 days after ovulation.

Which hormones control the menstrual cycle?

The key hormones that influence your menstrual cycle are oestrogen, progesterone, testosterone, luteinising hormone (LH), and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), which rise and fall in a specific pattern throughout the cycle. Oestrogen dominates the first half of the cycle, with a sharp peak at ovulation. After ovulation, progesterone is dominant, and oestrogen remains at a medium-high level until your period, when it is at its lowest. Testosterone peaks at ovulation. The hormone FSH contributes to egg production and is highest during your period and ovulation. The hormone LH contributes to ovulation and is highest just before and during ovulation.

How is the menstrual cycle reflected in daily life?

Your sex hormones affect how you feel, your energy levels, your self-confidence, focus, how hungry you are, and your desire for intimacy. These hormones influence whether your body burns or stores fat, they play a role in the quality of your sleep, and they impact your mood. The different sex hormones affect whether you feel calm or anxious, social or withdrawn – which in turn influences your self-talk, the food choices you make, and how you choose to act or react in daily life. When you experience menstrual-related issues, it can mean that one or more of your sex hormones are higher or lower than their optimal balance in relation to each other. Therefore, different symptoms are signs we can learn to read and manage through lifestyle tools.

How to Understand Your Menstrual Cycle

Så förstår du din menscykel

When we talk about lifestyle and health, most advice, tips, and studies are presented as general and aimed at everyone, regardless of whether we have female or male biology. It often seems as though all findings have the same effects regardless of sex. We're so used to this being the case that we don't question it. We've learned that health and lifestyle advice is applicable to both with the same effect, regardless of symptoms or methods. But is it really true that everyone can live the same way and expect the same results? The answer is no. The female and male bodies simply don't always react the same way to the same input. Let us explain.

What turned everything on its head for us, what made us start questioning the 'normal', was the realisation that 

the menstrual cycle is actually the fifth vital sign for women

. This means that for women, the menstrual cycle is as important a health indicator as breathing, heart rate, body temperature, and blood pressure. We've been taught that 'periods' (we haven't even learned to look at the menstrual cycle as a whole) are separate from our overall health, only related to fertility. But the fact is, the menstrual cycle is a comprehensive health indicator for women.

So, what does this actually mean? Besides the fact that menstrual cycle-related symptoms should be taken as seriously as a fever or an irregular heartbeat, it means that a woman's hormones are different from a man's. A woman's sex hormones fluctuate throughout the month, which means that the input the body receives (such as nutrition, exercise, and even medications) can have different outcomes depending on where we are in the cycle. The body may also have different needs depending on the phase. The graphs below show how female and male sex hormones differ over a month.

The hormones oestrogen and progesterone are central to female biology and the menstrual cycle. These hormones follow an approximate monthly rhythm, with levels rising and falling throughout the cycle.

In male biology, the hormone testosterone is fundamental and prominent for men's fertility. Testosterone follows a 24-hour cycle, where it is high in the morning, decreases towards the evening, and rises again the next morning. It doesn't change much from day to day and does not fluctuate over the month.

What template are you trying to fit your body into?

As we can see in the graphs above, men's sex hormones follow a 24-hour cycle, while women's follow a monthly cycle. It is therefore more natural for men to eat, exercise, sleep, and feel similarly every day. For women, whose sex hormones fluctuate throughout the month, it's natural to eat, exercise, sleep, and feel differently depending on where they are in their menstrual cycle. It's not natural to adhere to a linear lifestyle with the expectation of having the same energy, stamina, and desire regardless of where we are in the cycle. We are simply different.

Unfortunately, research today is almost exclusively based on male biology as the 'standard'. This means there is no research data on what the results would look like if tests were conducted on female biology in different phases of the menstrual cycle. We women are simply living according to a template based on male biology, which can lead to different health outcomes than those men can expect.

What would it look like if the female body shaped the template for what is considered 'standard'? Imagine a world where your female biology, your body, as it's designed to function, was the starting point for how you shaped your lifestyle.

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How Your Lifestyle is Linked to Your Menstrual Cycle

How to Benefit from the Phases of Your Menstrual Cycle

How to Understand Your Menstrual Cycle

Female vs Male Biology

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