Orientation > Optimization
Where/who/how are you today?
As a cycle coach, you wouldn’t believe how often I get asked a variation of this question in every-day small-talk situations: “Which supplements or herbs should I take for my cycle?”
I understand the urge behind that question. We’ve been trained to believe that health lives outside of us. That there is always something to add, something to fix, something to optimize. But when I ask them back—“Are you experiencing any symptoms? Any patterns that feel off?”—the answer often is “I’m not sure, but I heard about cycle syncing online and I think I should optimize something...”
This is where we need to pause and re-orient.
Because if there is no symptom or no disruption from the body, what exactly are we trying to optimize? Or, similarly, if we’ve been told that what we experience isn’t even a problem (or ‘normal’), how can we know where to start?
We are living in a moment where self-trust has been systematically eroded. Where your feed delivers a constant stream of “solutions” to problems you may or may not even have. Where your body becomes a project before it is ever experienced as a place.
We have to remember that our algorithms were never meant to be diagnostic tools, even when they so often support us in getting to the root of our experiences. It has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between apps, protocols, and practitioners who are genuinely pointing us in a direction we hadn’t thought to look in from those who are just using clever marketing techniques to persuade (/coerce) us into whatever “solution” they’re trying to sell us. Nothing can replace your own lived data.
Orientation has to come first.
That means starting in the body. Noticing what is actually there. Learning the language your physiology is already speaking. Only then does anything like “optimization” begin to make sense. And even then, the word itself starts to lose its grip.
What the Research Is Actually Showing
Since around 2020, research across neuroscience, endocrinology, and trauma studies has started to converge in a way that challenges the entire cycle optimization narrative.
This seems to indicate that we are finally seeing a re-orientation in the scientific community: away from the cycle as pathology towards the cycle as a kind of metronome, an inner clock that governs our overall health in more ways than just as it relates to reproduction.
Here are a few of the most relevant findings:
The menstrual cycle is a brain cycle
Hormonal shifts across the cycle measurably alter brain structure and connectivity. Estrogen supports synaptic growth, learning, and cognitive flexibility, while progesterone modulates inhibitory pathways in the brain. These shifts are substantial enough to influence how the brain processes, integrates, and responds to information across the cycle.
(e.g. Dubol et al. 2021; Avila-Varela et al. 2024; De Filippi et al. 2021).
The nervous system shifts across phases
Stress resilience, recovery capacity, and threat sensitivity are not static. Many people experience higher parasympathetic tone and flexibility in the Inner Waxing Moon (follicular phase), and increased sensitivity or reduced recovery in the Inner Waning Moon (luteal phase). This pattern reflects normal physiological variation rather than a sign of dysfunction.
(e.g. Schmalenberger et al. 2019).
Trauma processing is hormone-sensitive
Higher estrogen levels, especially in the follicular phase, help the brain process and update emotional experiences. As hormone levels shift in the luteal phase, sensitivity to stress can increase. This can make certain emotions or past experiences more likely to resurface before menstruation.
(e.g. Seligowski et al. 2020; Kaczmarczyk et al. 2024).
Neuroplasticity is cyclical
The brain’s capacity to rewire varies across the cycle. Some phases are more supportive of learning and cognitive change, others of emotional integration and pattern recognition. This has implications for therapy, habit formation, and healing work.
(e.g. Taxier et al. 2020; Dubol et al. 2021; Avila-Varela et al. 2024).
Symptoms are not always pathology
Especially in the premenstrual phase, reduced cognitive filtering can make underlying needs, stressors, or relational dynamics more visible. This is often framed as instability or even dis-ease (just think about how we call it “Premenstrual Syndrome” or “Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder.”) It may be more accurate to understand it as increased signaling.
(e.g. Eisenlohr-Moul et al. 2020).
Taken together, this research points to something simple but radical:
Your menstrual cycle (& the different hormonal phases you go through each month) creates the landscape in which your symptoms can be contextualized. Without orienting to these hormonal and nervous system shifts, any attempt at healing risks missing the conditions in which those symptoms are actually occurring.
When “Women’s Health” Becomes a Market Category
Recently, PwC published a report titled “From margin to mainstream: The future of women’s health.” The central argument is familiar: health tied to ovarian cycles and female physiology is underfunded, under-researched, and therefore represents a massive market opportunity.
And while all of that is true, once again, the framing matters. When decades of neglect get reframed as a “$600 billion market,” the language starts to smooth over what actually happened. Entire areas of care were deprioritized, dismissed, or never developed in the first place. Naming that as opportunity shifts attention away from the conditions that created the gap, in the first place, and does nothing to change them.
I always find it strange when menstrual and reproductive health are presented as niche concerns affecting only “half the population,” when they are foundational to all human life. But we know that western medicine has been built on male-default models, leaving vast gaps in research, diagnostics, and treatment.
So even when reports like this talk about “expanding markets” and “new revenue pools,” (which could technically move us in the direction of more research and better health outcomes), it is worth asking:
Who is defining the problem?
Who benefits from the solution?
And who is still not being listened to?
An increase in funding can expand visibility and access, but it does not inherently build deeper understanding of the body. Without that layer of understanding, new products and solutions tend to accumulate around the same unresolved gaps rather than addressing them at the root. Without a shift toward embodied literacy and patient-led insight, we risk scaling the current status quo, just more efficiently.
Where This Leaves Us
If the research is pointing toward cyclical neurobiology, and the market seems to be accelerating toward more interventions, then the questions becomes:
Where do you locate your authority?
How do you practice agency over your health?
And how do you orient to your body?
Orientation is a skill we can re-learn.
This means:
tracking your cycle as lived experience, not just calendar data
noticing patterns in mood, energy, and physiology
understanding biomarkers like cervical mucus or basal body temperature if you choose to track them
building a relationship with your nervous system across phases
From there, decisions become specific. Grounded. Yours.
A Few Places to Start
If you want to build that kind of literacy, here are a few entry points:
Our newest app update is a cute and useful mix of a design glow-up and fresh pattern recognition across your cycle: no predictions or optimization tips, but lots of orientation support for you to check in with yourself.
The new guided check-in meditation inside the app supports your nervous system awareness and daily orientation to yourself.
On Substack: Menstrual Health Tracking 101 walks you through how to begin tracking in a way that is actually practical and informative.
On the blog: Healthy habits for cyclical beings explores how to build habits that work with your biology, not against it.
And if you want support in learning how to actually interpret your patterns, connect symptoms to physiology, and build a practice that fits your life, I offer personal one-on-one cycle coaching.
In an external landscape that is rapidly expanding with new products and promises, staying oriented in your own body becomes a form of protection and a practice of agency. This work supports you in reading your own patterns, understanding their physiological context, and building a grounded, ongoing relationship with your health.