Charting Your Cycle: A Foundation for Fertility and Whole-Body Health
What if you had a window that looked into your hormonal health, your fertility, and even your stress levels, right in your own body?
That's what fertility awareness methods offer. They're not just for women who are trying to conceive. Fertility awareness is also for women who want a better understanding of their cycle, their symptoms, and their overall health. Today, I'm talking about why cycle charting is one of the most powerful tools we have in the field of Restorative Reproductive Medicine and why it might be the missing piece in your health journey.
Lila’s Story
My patient Lila was a 30-year-old marketing manager. She had recently gotten married and they were not yet trying to conceive, but she wanted to stop the pill and get to know her cycle a bit better. Prior to going on birth control, her periods had been irregular and she had lots of symptoms that she thought were related to her hormones, but she decided to go on birth control to try and get better control of her cycle.
Lila had been on hormonal birth control for over a decade, and when she stopped, her cycles were very unpredictable. She was anxious and confused and didn't know if that was normal. Was this just part of coming off the pill, or was this actually what her cycle was doing on a regular basis? She didn't know if she was even ovulating, and she went to see her OB doctor who dismissed her, telling her to give it time or go back on the pill.
Lila was frustrated with these options, and that’s when she found Radiant Clinic. We paired her with a fertility awareness instructor, and within two cycles of charting and guidance from her instructor, she saw that she wasn't ovulating consistently and that she had a short luteal phase (the time from ovulation until her next menstrual cycle started).
Her chart gave her clarity she hadn't found anywhere else, and she was able to identify what was wrong with her cycles, as well as what needed to be done in order to move things in the right direction. With targeted medical treatment and ongoing support from her instructor, we were able to help Lila's cycles become more regular.
She was now able to clearly identify ovulation, and she felt empowered to make healthcare decisions even before trying to conceive. She felt confident, calm, and in sync with her body, something she had never felt while she was on the pill.
Seven Reasons Why Charting Your Cycle Matters
Charting is a daily window into your hormonal health, and your ovulation and cycle patterns are a monthly report card of what's going on. Here are seven ways cycle charting can help you to know your body better and to make more informed decisions about your health:
Know When You Ovulate
Ovulation is a predictor of good health. Knowing if and when ovulation is occurring helps us to understand what's going on at the cellular level. Being able to identify your ovulation pattern and see what's going on with your cycle helps us to have a deeper understanding of what's going on from a hormone balance perspective, notably estrogen and progesterone. Seeing what's happening with your ovulation also tells us so much about your stress levels or things like thyroid or metabolic issues. When something is going awry with your cycles, there's likely something that's causing that, and we want to understand and get to the root cause of that.
Charting helps us detect things that are red flags, like irregular ovulation, not ovulating at all, or short luteal phases like Lila had. When we find that the luteal phase is short (from the time you ovulate until the next menstrual cycle occurs), it's often a sign of low progesterone or other hormonal or metabolic abnormalities that can alert us to a bigger problem.
Understand Late Periods
Charting helps us understand why in cases of delayed menstruation. Many women will oftentimes be scared if their period is late, wondering if they are pregnant or if they just didn’t ovulate. But if you are charting your cycle and can identify when ovulation occurs, then you can see that you ovulated later this month. Perhaps there was a stressful situation, or you had an illness – both of which can delay ovulation. A later ovulation typically means your menses is coming at a later time.
Achieve or Avoid Pregnancy
Fertility awareness helps to improve your chances of conception. As we know, not every woman ovulates on day 14 of her cycle, so charting your cycles will help you to identify your true fertile window.
Most of the fertility awareness methods that we utilize have you track cervical mucus observations, and this will help to identify your fertile window (when you're able to conceive if you time intercourse during those days). It also helps to avoid unnecessary waiting or mistimed intercourse. So if you're specifically trying to get pregnant, you can utilize what you know from your cycle to try to conceive.
And when used correctly, most fertility awareness methods that are evidence-based have a 99% efficacy at avoiding pregnancy naturally.
Timed Lab Testing
Charting can help to guide precise timing for labs and hormone support. So often we find that women are told to get their labs drawn on cycle day 21. Now, this assumes that you've ovulated on day 14, and that seven days afterwards is typically when your progesterone levels in particular should hit their highest point.
However, if you don't ovulate until day 20 or 21, and then you get your labs drawn on that day, your levels are going to seem like they're low. So instead we say, if you've ovulated on day 20, we want to check your labs seven days after ovulation. And because we know that ovulation day changes every cycle, we don't time your labs just based on your cycle day. We time it precisely to your ovulation.
Symptom Identification
Although many women use cycle charting when they're trying to conceive, it’s also useful for so many other things. Charting is incredibly vital when it comes to symptom identification.
So often women are told their symptoms must be hormonal or from their menstrual cycle, which is often why many women are put on birth control. They may come in complaining of headaches or acne or feeling irritable or moody, and they're told it must just be hormonal, so here, take birth control.
But the reality is if we can teach women how to chart their cycles, then to overlay their symptoms on top of that, it helps them to have a better understanding of is this truly hormonal or is this a chronic issue that may not be related to their cycle at all? For example, cycle charting can track symptoms like PMS, acne, or anxiety patterns, and help us to discern if those symptoms are truly hormonal.
Disorder Management
Charting your cycle is also helpful for the management of chronic conditions like PCOS, or conditions like hypothalamic amenorrhea, which is when your period just stops happening, typically from a combination of increased stress on your body, lack of calories, and excessive exercise. Charting your cycles also gives us a really good insight into what's going on with painful periods, pain with intercourse, endometriosis, and thyroid issues.
Body Literacy
Cycle charting, most importantly, gives women autonomy and the body literacy to be able to fully put words to what is going on with their cycles, with their symptoms, and to have those conversations with healthcare professionals who can help them.
How To Learn a Fertility Awareness Method
Although fertility awareness methods are fairly straightforward to learn, we always recommend working with a certified instructor, especially if you are trying to avoid pregnancy or understand irregular cycles.
At Radiant Clinic, we pair every patient with a certified instructor who teaches the method that fits your lifestyle and your needs the best. The evidence-based methods that our instructors teach include the Creighton model, NeoFertility, Marquette, Billings, and Sympto-Thermal. Our instructors will teach you how to identify your fertile signs, using cervical mucus, basal body temperature, or urinary luteinizing hormone surges with the LH strips. We utilize many apps like the ChartNeo app to help make tracking simple, and you will receive the personalized support you need.
Most importantly, you will be able to take those fertile signs and identify what those patterns mean to track accurately and confidently with a method that you're able to utilize for all of your reproductive days.
Our instructors also work closely with me so that your charting can inform your medical care, if necessary. Now, not all women who learn charting instruction need to seek medical care, but if there are concerns or problems, then you can come in with a very clear picture and we're able to hit the ground running and know what needs to be done based on your cycles. This helps us to target your lab timing appropriately, as well as provide personalized treatment planning based on your unique cycles.
And it gives us a great tool to watch your ongoing progress. We want to see that the changes being made are showing up in your cycle patterns and getting things back on track.
Every Woman Deserves To Know How Her Body Works
Fertility awareness is a foundational tool in the field of restorative reproductive medicine, and we believe every woman deserves to know how her body works. If your cycle feels confusing, or if you're tired of being told just wait and see, or if you simply want to stop guessing and start understanding, then charting is the first step.
Whether you're hoping to conceive, get off the hormonal rollercoaster, or just want to understand if your symptoms are even related to your hormones at all, we can help you uncover what your body is telling you. Our trained instructors walk with you step by step, and your charting becomes a powerful tool in your personalized care plan.
Imagine if your cycles finally made sense. Imagine having answers about your symptoms, your fertility, and your hormones, and knowing exactly what to do next. Book a free discovery call with our team. We're here to help you connect the dots, find real answers, and feel at home in your body again.