"Menstrual health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in relation to the menstrual cycle.”

Menstrual health: a definition for policy, practice, and research

Why we need to create confident conversations about menstrual health

Learning about menstrual health should be easy, but mostly its not. We could spend many hours debating why that is, but I will jump over the complexities for now and explore a practical solution.

When I reached the age of 47 I finally recognised that I was in a part of the menstrual health timeline called perimenopause - which up until then I did not know was a thing.

Of course I now know, based on biology and time, I had entered the phase of perimenopause many years before and had no idea.

It turns out globally many of my age group were discovering the same thing.

What we do know is that for decades, lack of education around the topic of menstrual health has left people who menstruate in a complete black hole about their own physiology, and since we left school nothing has changed for future generations.

Why has nothing changed?

We are taught about menstruation and the menstrual cycle in a limited capacity within a biology class. The focus is on reproduction. No one mentions the role the ovaries have in total physical and mental well being. The role of the ovaries beyond reproduction and the multitalented oestrogen hormone called, estradiol have been known about by scientists for over 50 years, but still nothing has changed in the education curriculum.

You may receive a lesson on periods and how to mange them but that’s it.

• What we learn about menstrual health in school is - 0

• What we learn about menstrual health after school is - 0 - until it affects us negatively.

There is no lesson, formal or otherwise that explains how to live in a state of positive menstrual health or even how to optimise it.

Why do we need to learn about menstrual health?

- which as a side note when I talk about menstrual health I am referring to the definition shaped by the global menstrual collective which was formally adopted by WHO in 2021.

Menstrual health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in relation to the menstrual cycle.

We need to learn about Menstrual health, because it is the 5th vital sign - like blood pressure, body temperature, breathing rate and hear rate.

From the day periods start we travel a menstrual health timeline that plays a fundamental role in our entire physiology, every single day. When ovaries switch on around the age of 8 their role far out reaches the narrow view of only creating a period or a pregnancy.

The hormones they make are essential to health and wellbeing.

Estradiol (one of the oestrogens)

• is classed as a happy hormone

• supports the 11 functional networks, and

• it acts like a neurotransmitter which is a posh word for brain chemical.

When you think about how many ways in which the sex hormones work as part of the hormone collective, asking the question how are your periods? becomes the most obvious thing to ask, because if the answer is ‘well they are a bit irregular,’ or ‘they are very heavy’, we have a concern.

We don't learn any of this!

So, when our ovaries have been operating for say 30 years they look at their watched and say right only 10 more to go - that’s it 40-45 years of activity. We have that many years and opportunities to learn about the biology and how it changes across life stages. However, it doesn’t work like that, and that’s the bit we need to do differently.

When we get to perimenopause taking on all this information and how to manage the impact of the changes that occur is super intense.

What we need is a way to learn about menstrual health, from periods to perimenopause and beyond, in bitesize pieces, in a safe, sensible and supportive way.

The people who are there to create these confident conversations need to be equipped with the knowledge and skills to help others.

That's why I created The Menopause School

We are transforming menstrual health experiences, by making it easy to learn the biology behind the story of menopause, and how to navigate the timeline in a positive and effective way. We enable all our students to become both menstrual health informed and menopause aware.

Our training courses are designed for holistic health and well being practitioners of all modalities, to become the much needed touch points in the lives of menstruators where they can learn about all the different elements along the hormone highway in a calm, clear way, without the overwhelm we see today.

It's time to learn, think and talk differently about menopause, close the education gap and make a lasting change.