‘Blood of My Blood V’, 2022 from a series entitled ‘Moon Blood’ created by Charlotte J Ward
How Hormone Tracking and Menstrual Cycle Awareness Saved My Life
Dear Two Moons Readers,
My name is Zahava Rose. I’m a teacher, writer, and menstrual health educator based in Brooklyn. My journey into hormone tracking and Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA) wasn’t something I sought out - it found me.
In 2020, my Autonomic Nervous System stopped functioning properly. I was unable to walk more than a few minutes per day for over a year; I couldn’t read or watch TV, and most days I could barely speak. I had to learn the ebbs and flows of my energy, and it took several years to understand that it is directly related to my hormone health and menstrual cycle. Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA) has been one of the most crucial tools in my personal healing, continuously supporting me through chronic illness and paving a pathway to optimal health so that I can now work again, dance with my friends, and share what I have learned with women around the world. It was an initiatory journey of illness that brought me deep into my body and led me to found The Rose School.
What is Hormone Tracking and Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA)?
I invite you to take a moment to reflect: What are your associations with your menstrual cycle? What does your cycle mean to you?
This is the foundation for stepping into the world of Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA), which includes the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) and hormone tracking. Understanding and tracking your menstrual cycle involves monitoring your health data in relation to hormonal changes.
“There are no shoulds with the menstrual cycle experience. Not prescriptive. There is no perfect cycle... It’s a custom-built path that serves you if you cherish it and honour the intimacy of your own experience.”
~ Wild Power (Pope & Wurlitzer) ~
MCA, a term created by Red School, is a tool and a practice of tracking our physical, emotional and psychological states throughout each cycle. Your hormones shift throughout your menstrual cycle every day. Tracking your cycle and fluctuating hormones is the act of being aware and remembering that you are intricately a part of the fabric of this world. It is a reminder of your deep connection to nature. You are nature.
Understanding Hormonal Imbalances
Hormonal imbalances occur when the body produces too much or too little of a particular hormone, shifting the delicate balance of the endocrine system. This imbalance can manifest in different ways such as weight gain, mood swings, and irregular periods. You might notice unexpected weight gain despite maintaining a healthy diet and exercise routine, or experience mood swings that seem to come out of nowhere. Irregular periods are another common sign, a message from your body, indicating that your hormone levels may be imbalanced.
For years, every time I had my period I was unable to work and would cry in bed with a heating pad as pain shot through my entire body. I could even feel the pain in my toes. I know I am not the only woman who has felt this pain, not to mention the mood swings. Menstrual symptoms have become completely normalized; however, it is not normal at all to be continuously and predictably uncomfortable.
Many of us were taught to view our cycles as burdens rather than as an integral rhythm of our bodies. We were not taught that symptoms are the language our body speaks when it is asking for our attention. Tracking your hormones is the first step in learning the language of your body.
Listening to my body transformed my relationship with my cycle. Menstrual cycle tracking isn’t just about fertility; it can be a tool for balancing your health and stepping into your power. Women on average have 450 cycles in their lifetime. No woman is creating 450 babies. When you are not creating a human life, what are you doing with all of that creative power?
Tracking can guide us to achieve ongoing flow states in our creative lives. Having awareness of the innate creative power in you and learning how you can align with it is how MCA and hormone tracking revolutionizes the way we interact with our bodies.
How to Hormone Track: Are Apps the Best Way?
Almost every woman I know uses a menstrual cycle app. A study in 2023 estimated that 50 million women worldwide use apps to track their cycle. While these apps provide convenience, they often don’t accurately capture the complexities of hormonal health.
Most women use apps to track when they have their period but not much else. I used to do this as well; however, through illness, I realized my app was just informing me when the pain would arrive every month. I had no understanding of why I was experiencing so much pain, what to do about it, and how it connected to my overall health.
I learned that tracking your cycle is not just about knowing when your period is coming. It’s also about:
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Overall Health Monitoring: Observe the cycle as a 5th vital sign. Irregularities could indicate underlying health issues like PCOS, endometriosis, or thyroid dysfunction. Hormonal shifts influence your mood, energy, and mental clarity.
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Fertility Awareness: Understand fertile and infertile windows to achieve/avoid pregnancy.
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Body Sovereignty: Empowers you to make informed health choices. Cycle data helps healthcare providers recommend personalized care and supports you in being an active participant in decision making processes.
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Spiritual and Creative Practice: Reawakens primal intelligence and creative, wild power. It is a template for the creative process and actualizing your calling.
- Eco-Feminism: Connects you to your natural body; we are nature. When we support ourselves, we are more attuned to supporting nature.
Apps are useful tools. They make our lives more convenient in a plethora of ways; however, they do not cover the full gamut of what tracking has to offer us as cyclical beings. Nothing will be as accurate as getting to know your own body.
Why Apps are Not Enough for Hormone Tracking
1. Apps Rely on Algorithm Predictions, Not Your Actual Cycle
Most apps rely on algorithms that assume cycle regularity and exclude human variabilities, such as stress, diet, sleep, travel, medication, and overall health. A study found that menstrual cycle tracking apps are often inaccurate in predicting ovulation and fertile windows. If an app tells you when you "should" be ovulating without taking into account real-time signs, it can be misleading.
Most apps also work by calculating averages based on past cycles. If you typically have a 28-day cycle, the app will assume that your next period will come on day 28, and that ovulation will occur on day 14. But, that’s not how human bodies work. In a study of 32,595 women, 87% had menstrual cycle lengths varying between 23 and 35 days. Many women experience cycle fluctuations due to lifestyle factors, such as stress and illness and the follicular phase, in particular, is highly variable, making cycle predictions based on past data unreliable.
Again, we are nature, ever changing and shifting, and app algorithm predictions do not factor this in.
2. Ovulation can’t be confirmed on an app
An app alone can’t confirm that you have ovulated; they tend to predict when you ovulate. Ovulation is the most important part of the cycle to track as it is a reflection of your overall hormone health. Ovulation is a sign that you have reached sufficient levels of hormones.
A client of mine was tracking her cycle with an app for months with the intention to conceive. She felt as if something was wrong with her since she was not achieving pregnancy. After teaching her how to track her menstrual cycle by observing her natural biomarkers, she confirmed ovulation and successfully conceived during her next cycle.
To truly understand hormone health, we need to move beyond digital tracking and reconnect with our bodies through holistic observation.
3. Emotional and Energetic Changes Aren’t Considered
Hormonal health isn’t just about fertility. It’s also about how you feel. Your energy levels, libido, mood, creativity, and mental clarity all shift throughout your cycle. Certain hormones act as messengers that impact various aspects of physical and mental health, and their fluctuations can affect your mood and energy. Again, our cycle is every day. Some apps include symptom tracking, but they rarely offer deeper insights into how these changes correlate with hormone fluctuations or how to support yourself accordingly.
A few examples of hormonal fluctuations affecting mental and emotional well-being are that estrogen supports serotonin and dopamine, contributing to possible higher energy and sociability in the follicular and ovulatory phases, and high progesterone levels are linked to increased amygdala reactivity, which can trigger moodiness in the luteal phase. Tracking mood and energy levels allows for better lifestyle adjustments, calendar planning, and relationship building, something most apps don’t incorporate in the algorithms and predictions.
4. Health Data Privacy Concerns
Many period tracking apps have come under scrutiny for selling user data or lacking privacy protections. When we outsource intimate knowledge of our cycles to an app, we risk giving away personal information without fully understanding how it’s being used.
So, if apps aren’t enough, how can we track our hormonal health in a way that is both accurate and empowering?
Solution: Biomarkers as a Tool for Cycle Tracking
A client of mine shared how she had collected ten years of biological data through hormone tracking apps and hormone monitoring devices; however, she was only able to truly understand her cyclical patterns after learning how to understand and track her biomarkers herself. She now knows her baseline hormone health. So, even though she is continuing to use a hormone tracking device, an oura ring, she has a deeper understanding of what the data is telling her. She has a new partnership with the technological tool.
Knowing your biological data is a goal of MCA and hormone tracking. It is a way to learn the language of your body. Learning a new language does not happen overnight, and it takes at least three cycles to track a pattern. It is important to practice making observations without judgement; remembering to be gentle with yourself as you shift into a new habit of being aware of different parts of yourself.
Below is a detailed downloadable guide on how to use your biomarkers as a tool for cycle tracking (see below).
Here's an overview of how to learn the language of your body and track your cycle naturally:
1. Cervical Position
The cervix changes in texture and position throughout the cycle. By observing the texture and position of the cervix, you can track your hormone levels and menstrual cycle at home.
2. Cervical Mucus
Cervical mucus is one of the most telling signs of where you are in your cycle. The different sensations and observations of your cervical mucus can tell you when you’re progesterone or estrogen dominant. It is a powerful indicator of fertility, with research showing the correlation between peak mucus days and ovulation.
3. Cycle Syncing: Mood, Energy, and Emotional Patterns
When holistically tracking your cycle, it’s important to track things that might vary your cycle:
- Status of overall health and immune system
- Lifestyle: nutrition, travel, sleep, stress, exercise, self care practices.
- Social life: relationships, children, community
- Larger cycles of nature: moon, seasons
Additionally, throughout your cycle, each phase has potential energetic shifts.
Once you track your personal shifts and align your work, exercise, and social activities with your natural rhythms, it can transform how you experience your cycle.
Other Tools that can be used Holistically for Hormone Tracking
4. Basal Body Temperature (BBT)
BBT is your body’s lowest resting temperature, taken first thing in the morning before you get out of bed. It shifts in response to hormonal changes, offering a reliable marker for ovulation. BBT tracking confirms ovulation by detecting a temperature rise due to progesterone.
5. Ovulation Strips
With ovulation strips you can test if you are positive for Luteinizing Hormone (LH). This can confirm ovulation by testing if your estrogen increased enough to activate LH, which initiates ovulation.
How to use Data from Biomarker Hormone Tracking as a Learning Tool to Understand Your Body
When you start listening to your body and tracking hormones yourself, you can better listen to your body’s signals instead of overriding them. Anticipating mood shifts supports us to be forgiving with ourselves. It helps prepare and avoid self-criticism during more challenging phases. Pattern tracking biomarkers inform what imbalances exist to customize lifestyle, routines, and nutrition for hormone balancing.
Some suggestions that have helped me and my clients are:
- Seed cycling for hormone balancing
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Reducing stress and prioritizing sleep since cortisol, a stress hormone, can affect cycle regularity
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Eating cycle-supportive foods (e.g., magnesium-rich foods for luteal phase supporting progesterone levels, iron-rich foods for menstruation)
- Practicing nervous system regulation such as gentle movement, breathwork, and being in nature
Tracking isn’t just about knowing when your period will arrive; it’s also about understanding your body, honoring its rhythms, and responding with care.
Hormone tracking apps are a tool, not a complete truth. By gathering and understanding data ourselves through MCA and hormone tracking, we can use apps as a place to input and organize our information, instead of outsourcing and relying on them to predict, not always accurately, for us.
Seeking a finer compass? Connect with your innate barometer: your own intuition, backed by education.
Download this detailed guide to start tracking your hormones using biomarkers as a tool for cycle tracking.
While this blog discusses health topics, it is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor or other qualified healthcare provider regarding any question you might have regarding your health.
About the Author
Zahava is a trauma informed and certified reproductive health teacher from New York with an MA in Education. She founded The Rose School to weave together the science and energetics of the menstrual cycle using evidence based data and personal experience. The Rose School holds international workshops, in person and online courses, and 1:1 offerings, supporting people of all ages in their processes of embodiment, healing, fertility, Rites of Passage, and intimacy. Connect with her on Instagram and sign up to The Rose School updates and resources.
Works Cited (in order of appearance)
Pope, A., & Wurlitzer, S. H. (2017). Wild Power: Discover the Magic of Your Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power. Hay House UK.
Kelly, B. G., & Habib, M. (2023). Missed period? The significance of period-tracking applications in a post-Roe America. Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 31(4), 2238940. https://doi.org/10.1080/26410397.2023.2238940
Worsfold, L., Marriott, L., Johnson, S., & Harper, J. (2021). Period tracker applications – are they giving women accurate menstrual cycle information? Human Reproduction, 36(Supplement_1), deab130.468. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deab130.468
Soumpasis, I., Grace, B., & Johnson, S. (2020). Real-life insights on menstrual cycles and ovulation using big data. Human Reproduction Open, 2020(2), hoaa011. https://doi.org/10.1093/hropen/hoaa011
Sacher, J., & Pletzer, B. (2024). The impact of estradiol on serotonin, glutamate, and dopamine: A comprehensive review. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 18, 1348551.
Gonda, X., Telek, T., Juhász, G., Lazary, J., Vargha, A., & Bagdy, G. (2008). The role of estrogen and progesterone in the regulation of mood and behavior in humans: A review. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2(4), 206–210. https://doi.org/10.3389/neuro.01.034.2008
Fehring, R. J. (2002). Accuracy of the peak day of cervical mucus as a biological marker of fertility. Contraception, 66(4), 231-235. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0010-7824(02)00355-4
