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Privacy and your data · 9 min read

The Most Private Period Tracker: What Actually Protects You

Most privacy claims are promises. A few are architecture. This is how to tell which one you are being offered — and the seven questions that separate them.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 8 min read

When Will I Get My Period? What a Quiz Can and Can't Tell You

Every quiz that promises a date is guessing. Here is what the signs actually mean, what the timelines usually look like, and an estimator that gives you a range and admits it.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

The Moon and Your Menstrual Cycle: What the Research Actually Found

Two rhythms of about twenty-nine days, and a very old story about why. Here is what the studies actually found — including the ones that found nothing.

Read it Privacy and your data · 9 min read

What Data Do Period Apps Actually Collect?

Three layers of collection, and only one of them is the layer you chose. What a tracker holds, what it works out from that, and what a store privacy label can and cannot prove.

Read it Privacy and your data · 9 min read

Who Can See Your Period Data? An Honest Map

Not a name, but a list of routes. The seven ways cycle data can reach somebody else, which of them your app leaves open, and the one that catches almost everybody.

Read it Privacy and your data · 9 min read

Period Tracker Privacy Check: Judge Any App in Ten Minutes

Six checks, ten minutes, one score out of ten. The drill for judging any period app yourself — and an honest account of what it can and cannot tell you.

Read it Privacy and your data · 9 min read

Period Tracking Without an App: The Paper Method That Still Works

One date a month, a pen and any calendar is a complete tracking system. Here is what to write down, how to read it back, and where paper genuinely loses.

Read it Privacy and your data · 9 min read

How to Delete Your Period Tracker Data — Properly

Deleting the app is the weakest of the three things people mean by deleting. Here is the order that reaches the copy a company holds, and what the published rules say about how long it takes.

Read it Privacy and your data · 9 min read

Does Deleting the App Delete Your Data? Usually Not

It depends entirely on whether there was an account, and if there was, the answer is no. What uninstalling really removes, and what has to be asked for separately.

Read it Privacy and your data · 9 min read

Anonymous Period Tracking: What It Means, and What It Cannot Mean

One word covers three very different promises, and only one of them can be tested from the outside. Here is how to tell which you are being offered.

Read it Privacy and your data · 9 min read

Offline Period Tracker vs Cloud Sync: The Honest Trade

Local-only removes the server, the account and the subpoena. It removes the backup with them. Here is the trade, argued against this site's own app.

Read it Choosing a tracker · 9 min read

Flo Alternatives: Honest Options, Including the Ones That Are Not Apps

People leave Flo for four different reasons, and each one points at a different replacement. Here is the honest field, described only from what each company publishes about itself.

Read it Choosing a tracker · 9 min read

Clue Alternative: What Changes If You Switch

Clue publishes a comparatively strict position on your data, so the useful question is what a move would actually gain you. Three real reasons to switch, what each one costs, and how to go without losing your history.

Read it Choosing a tracker · 9 min read

Flo vs Clue: What Each One Publishes About Your Data

A head-to-head built only from published, checkable statements. It compares documents rather than experiences, marks the questions neither company answers, and does not pick a winner.

Read it Choosing a tracker · 8 min read

Apple Cycle Tracking: What the Health App Does, and What It Does Not

The period tracker already on your iPhone, judged on what Apple publishes about it. What it logs, what it predicts, what the deviation alert means — and the two things it cannot do for anyone.

Read it Choosing a tracker · 9 min read

Period Tracker Without an Account: What to Look For

An account is the mechanism by which your cycle data comes to live somewhere other than your phone. How to tell whether an app has one, and what going without honestly costs you.

Read it Choosing a tracker · 9 min read

Period Tracker Without a Subscription: What Free Actually Costs

Every way of funding an app leaves a fingerprint on the product. Here are the five ways a period tracker gets paid for, and how to work out which one is paying for yours.

Read it Choosing a tracker · 8 min read

Period Tracker Without Ads: Why the Business Model Is the Feature

An advert has to be aimed, and aiming it is what gives your data a reason to travel. How to read the store labels, and what "no ads" does and does not cover.

Read it Choosing a tracker · 8 min read

The Best Period Tracker for Teens: A Privacy-First Answer

Early cycles are irregular for years, so a first tracker's job is memory, not prediction. Here is what to look for, what the store labels actually mean, and a short section for the parent reading over a shoulder.

Read it Choosing a tracker · 8 min read

Open Source Period Trackers: What Being Open Actually Buys You

Open source turns a privacy promise into something somebody can check. That is worth a lot, and it is not proof — here is exactly where the line falls, and what drip and Euki actually say about themselves.

Read it Choosing a tracker · 7 min read

Paper vs App Period Tracking: An Honest Comparison

A notebook and a phone fail in different places. Compared on the axes that matter, with an honest verdict and the readers for whom paper alone is the better answer.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

The Menstrual Phase, Explained: What Is Actually Happening While You Bleed

Day one is the first day of full flow, and every number on this site is built on that one date. What the bleeding days are, what commonly comes with them, and where the ordinary ends.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

The Follicular Phase: The Half of Your Cycle That Does the Moving

The first half of the cycle is the part that stretches. What happens in it, why a long cycle is usually a long first half, and what that does to every date a calculator prints.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

Ovulation Explained: The Signs, the Timing, and What the Evidence Shows

Ovulation is a distribution, not a date. What each sign can genuinely see, how far ahead it sees it, and how strong the evidence under it is.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

The Luteal Phase: How Long It Really Lasts, and What Moves It

The textbook says fourteen days. The measurement says 12.4, with 18% of cycles under 11. What happens in the second half of a cycle, and how to work out your own.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 6 min read

Cycle Length: What Is Normal, and What the Numbers Actually Say

Four respectable bodies, four different answers, all on one chart. Then the numbers from 612,613 real cycles, and what to do with your own.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

Irregular Periods: When Normal Variation Is Worth a Conversation

Almost everybody thinks their periods are irregular, and most are describing ordinary movement. Here is what the word means to the NHS, to ACOG and to NICHD, and where each of them draws the line.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 6 min read

Why Is My Period Late? The Ordinary Explanations, and the Ones to Check

A late period is nearly always a late ovulation, which is why the delay sits in the first half of the cycle. The ordinary explanations, in prose, for somebody who wants to understand rather than count.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 8 min read

Periods After Stopping the Pill: What Comes Back, and When

What comes back is ovulation, and the period follows it. Here is what the NHS says by method, what one matched study measured, and the number nobody can honestly give you.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 6 min read

Stress and Your Cycle: What Stress Can Actually Do to a Period

Stress is the explanation everybody reaches for, and it is both real and over-used. It moves the timing of a cycle; the studies that show that also show what it does not move.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

Period Pain: What Is Normal, What Is Not, and When to Ask Someone

More than half of women who menstruate have some pain for a day or two each month. Here is the shape ordinary pain takes, the shape worth an appointment, and the thresholds the NHS puts between them.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 8 min read

PMS: What the Evidence Says About the Symptoms, the Timing and the Relief

PMS is defined by when symptoms arrive, not by which ones. Here are ACOG's criteria, the overlap nobody prints, and why two cycles of dated entries beat any symptom list.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 8 min read

PMDD: An Honest Overview of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder

A recognised condition, the diagnostic criteria a clinician actually applies, prevalence figures that disagree with each other, and the NHS's emergency advice printed high rather than buried.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

Heavy Periods, Honestly: What Counts as Heavy and What to Do About It

Nobody can see anybody else's period, so heavy usually gets judged against friends who are also guessing. The NHS answers it with seven concrete tests, and this page prints all seven.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 6 min read

Spotting Between Periods: The Honest List of What Causes It

Blood you were not expecting has a long list of causes, ordinary and serious, and the bleeding itself does not tell them apart. The urgent exception first, then the honest list.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

Your Cycle and Sleep: What Changes, What Does Not, and What Helps

Reported sleep gets worse before a period; measured sleep barely moves. What that gap means, what does change in the laboratory, and why none of it says the tiredness is imaginary.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 8 min read

Your Cycle and Exercise: What the Evidence Supports, and What It Does Not

A meta-analysis of 78 studies found a trivial effect and refused to write guidelines. An umbrella review found no strength difference in 9 of 10 quality studies. Here is what that leaves you with.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 8 min read

BBT Charting: How to Take a Basal Body Temperature and Read the Chart

The method done properly, and its ceiling in the same breath. A temperature chart records what has already happened — and against hormone-confirmed ovulation across 193 cycles, the shift showed up in under a quarter of them.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 7 min read

Cervical Mucus Tracking, Honestly: What It Shows and What It Cannot

The one sign that looks forwards, with both of its numbers. Beginners identified a peak day in 63% of cycles; the figure everybody quotes comes from women who had been taught. That gap is the article.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 6 min read

The First Ovulation After Periods Start: What the Early Years Look Like

A period is not proof that an ovulation happened. Half of all cycles in the first two years are anovulatory even when they arrive on time — what the early years look like, and the two numbers worth carrying.

Read it Understanding your cycle · 6 min read

Period Myths, Debunked: Fifteen Things That Are Not True

Fifteen things repeated everywhere that the evidence does not support — the 28-day cycle, day-14 ovulation, the fixed second half, the Moon — each with the correction and the study it came from.

Read it First periods and practical life · 9 min read

Your First Period: A Complete Guide to the Day and the Year After

It is far less blood than you are expecting, every kind of product is safe from the first day, and the year that follows is meant to be untidy. Here is the day, the hour after it, and the two lines worth knowing.

Read it First periods and practical life · 5 min read

How to Tell a Parent About Your Period: What to Say, and When

Six words will do it, and you can send them as a text. Scripts for saying it, an option for when a parent is not the easiest adult, and the two things you actually need from one.

Read it First periods and practical life · 9 min read

Period Products Explained: Pads, Tampons, Cups, Discs and Period Underwear

Five kinds of product and no order of merit. Here is what each one is, how much each one holds, and the long list of things — comfort, ease, which one suits somebody starting out — that nobody has ever measured.

Read it First periods and practical life · 7 min read

How to Use a Tampon: A Plain Guide, and the Safety Part Told Straight

The NHS describes a tampon in about three lines, and the rumour about toxic shock is much longer than the evidence. This page prints the symptoms, the emergency line and the measured numbers, and refuses to invent the one figure everybody else gives you.

Read it First periods and practical life · 8 min read

Menstrual Cups, Honestly: What Forty-Three Studies Actually Found

Forty-three studies sounds like settled science. Only three of them were of moderate-to-high quality — so here is what they found, with that caveat attached to every number.

Read it First periods and practical life · 7 min read

Period Underwear, Honestly: How Much It Actually Holds

The most marketed period product has the least measurement behind it. One trial of twenty people is the whole evidence base, and its most useful finding is a warning rather than a review.

Read it First periods and practical life · 5 min read

Swimming on Your Period: What Works, and What Nobody Has Actually Studied

The question everybody types has no citable answer, and that is worth saying out loud rather than filling in. What can honestly be stated here is short; the rest is a rule somebody invented and nobody ever checked.

Read it First periods and practical life · 7 min read

Sport and Your Period: What the Research Says About Training and Competing

For the fixture that lands on a bad day, the coach who wants a plan, and the training group where everybody has a theory. Plus the two NHS lines that people good at ignoring their bodies walk straight past.

Read it First periods and practical life · 7 min read

Periods at School: The Kit, the Toilets and the Awkward Bits

Nearly every school problem is one of three: no pad on you, a lesson you cannot leave, or pain in the middle of one. A kit you pack once, and the NHS line on who to ask when you have nothing.

Read it First periods and practical life · 7 min read

Period Leaks: How to Make Them Less Likely, and What to Do in the Moment

A saturated super pad holds about 5ml. A whole period is 20 to 90ml. That is the entire explanation — and then the part nobody writes down, which is what to do in the ten minutes after it happens.

Read it First periods and practical life · 7 min read

How Much Does a Period Cost? Honest Arithmetic, and What Nobody Has Measured

Every page ranking for this question prints a grand total built on invented assumptions. This one shows the arithmetic, prints the single published price range, and leaves the slots only you can fill blank.

Read it First periods and practical life · 8 min read

Tracking Your First Year of Periods: What to Write Down and What to Ignore

A messy first year is the expected result rather than a fault. Here is the one thing worth writing down, the things that are not, and the two thresholds that are worth an appointment.

Read it First periods and practical life · 8 min read

Talking to a Doctor About Your Periods: What to Bring and What to Say

Bring dates, and say what your periods stop you doing. Those two things turn a vague ten minutes into a useful one — and neither needs you to know anything medical.

Read it First periods and practical life · 8 min read

Is My Period Normal? Clots, Colour, Length and the Things That Look Alarming

Most of what looks alarming is ordinary, and each one has a line where it stops being ordinary. Here are both halves, with the NHS's own numbers attached.

Read it First periods and practical life · 8 min read

When to See a Doctor About Your Period: The Thresholds, Not the Worry

Three different speeds, and telling them apart is most of the answer. Every line here is quoted from the NHS or ACOG, and almost all of them are an ordinary appointment.

Read it First periods and practical life · 7 min read

Periods and Sleep for Teenagers: What Actually Changes and What Does Not

Bad nights and bad periods turn up in the same girls. The one study of the right age group says it cannot tell you which is causing which — and that honest answer is more useful than the confident one.

Read it First periods and practical life · 7 min read

PMS in Teenagers, or Just Being a Teenager? How Anyone Actually Tells

The symptom list cannot separate PMS from an ordinary bad fortnight, because everything on it belongs to both. What separates them is where the bad days land — and that is only visible going forwards.

Read it First periods and practical life · 7 min read

Do Periods Sync With the Moon? And Five Other Things You Will Hear at School

The lunar month is about 29.5 days and the average cycle about 29, so half of everybody bleeds near a full moon by chance. That, and five more corridor stories with the numbers put back in.

Read it First periods and practical life · 6 min read

PE and Periods: Getting Through Gym Class Without Dreading It

The research does not support sitting out: pooled across 78 studies the effect was trivial and the interval crossed zero. That is not the same as "so stop complaining" — pain is real, and this page covers both halves.

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