Menstrual health isn’t just about cycles and fertility — it’s a vital marker of whole-body health.

What Cycles Reveal About Whole-Body Health

When most people think about menstrual health, they think about periods. Whether they are painful, heavy, irregular, or absent. The conversation usually begins when something feels difficult, and that frames menstrual health as a problem to be solved.

But menstrual health is not only about periods or fertility. It is a marker of how the whole body is functioning. This is why leading clinicians describe menstrual health as the fifth vital sign, alongside temperature, pulse, breathing rate, and blood pressure.

Cycles are not random. They reflect the brain, the nervous system, the immune response, the liver, and the musculoskeletal system. Every phase of the cycle is a conversation between brain and ovarian hormones, alongside the body’s operating systems. That means changes in the cycle aren’t isolated events; they are information.

Why this matters for holistic professionals

Here’s the baffling truth: most holistic practitioners were never taught how to connect their work with menstrual health. Massage therapists weren’t shown how cycle phases can influence tissue repair. Yoga teachers weren’t told why energy shifts across the month. Nutritionists weren’t taught how ovarian rhythms affect digestion and metabolism.

Most practitioners were simply never given this knowledge. Menstrual health was left out of training, so the links were never made. As a result, clients don’t expect their practitioner to ask — and practitioners don’t know what’s there to notice.

The opportunity

Seeing menstrual health as a vital sign changes everything. It doesn’t mean diagnosing or treating — it means noticing. It means recognising that a cycle carries clues about stress, energy, resilience, and ageing. It means being able to join the dots between the body in front of you and the timeline it’s moving through.

Imagine if every holistic therapist, yoga teacher, or coach had this awareness. Imagine if menstrual health was as normal to track as breath, sleep, or pulse. The ripple effect would be profound — for clients, for communities, for how we age well.

Because menstrual health was always a vital sign. We just weren’t taught to see it.