Understanding our bodies and their natural cycles plays a crucial role in maintaining our overall well-being. One key aspect of this understanding is tracking our menstrual cycle. Our hormones are changing daily, which means our moods change daily too. And the better you understand, the easier your monthly cycles will be.
By aligning your activities with your energy levels and leveraging your heightened awareness, you can ultimately enhance your overall productivity, happiness, and self-care throughout the month with the use of the following apps below.
Understanding and staying connected with our bodies is an essential aspect of overall well-being. The advent of technology has paved the way for numerous apps that help us in various ways, and when it comes to tracking menstrual cycles, they serve as invaluable tools. Moreover, by integrating other apps that complement period tracking, we can gain a deeper understanding of our bodies.
Empower yourself with knowledge and control over your hormones rather than letting them dictate your life. Dive into my favorite apps that I’ve personally tested and currently use, and take the first step toward a more informed and balanced lifestyle.
Period Trackers
The first step in understanding your menstrual cycle is to accurately track it. Once you begin tracking your cycle and comprehending your phases, you can apply this newfound knowledge to various aspects of your daily life, including work, fitness, nutrition, and sleep. Utilize the apps listed below to further enhance this understanding and integrate it seamlessly into your routine.
The Hormona app is a cutting-edge tool designed to provide women with personalized insights into their hormonal health. By leveraging data from daily hormone tests, the app offers tailored advice on how to balance your hormones effectively. Discover your individual symptom patterns, understand how they’ll affect you, and anticipate which symptoms are likely to appear during your next cycle—and when. Learn how your cycle changes on a daily basis, and benefit from Hormona’s unique tips and advice for living your best hormone life. The app also features wellness programs and recipes tailored to your cycle, helping you make informed decisions in various aspects of your life—from optimizing work productivity to choosing the best workouts and dietary choices. With Hormona, you gain a deeper connection with your body, empowering you to manage your health proactively and holistically.
Lively guides you through the four phases of your menstrual cycle, helping you understand how you might feel on each day and suggesting ways to either rest or harness your energy. By updating your daily symptoms, the app learns about your body and tailors its support to your unique needs. It provides daily insights based on your hormones and current phase, offering: 1) tips on daily activities, self-care, and work tasks aligned with your cycle's rhythm; 2) personalized food recommendations to nourish your body in sync with each cycle phase; and 3) suggestions for sports or physical activities that match your energy levels and cycle stage. By offering personalized guidance and support throughout your menstrual cycle, Lively empowers you to optimize your well-being and performance according to your body's natural rhythms.
Work Life
Integrating my period cycle data with a productivity and goal tracker app has been immensely beneficial. Understanding how my energy levels fluctuate throughout my menstrual cycle helps me plan my work, set realistic goals, and prioritize tasks. By recognizing that I am more focused and energetic during certain phases of my cycle, I can optimize my productivity levels and achieve better results.
Moleskine Journey: One of the standout features of Moleskine Journey is its versatility. Unlike other goal tracking apps that restrict you to pre-defined categories, this app allows complete customization. You have the freedom to tailor your goals and track progress in any area of your life. From health and fitness to professional development and personal relationships, this app enables you to take charge of your life.
Launching Moleskine Journey first thing in the morning has become an essential part of my routine. With its intuitive design, I can easily plan my upcoming day, aligning my daily goals with my morning routine. It helps in setting the right intentions and ensures I stay focused and motivated throughout the day while paying attention to my cycle phase. Having a clear roadmap enhances my productivity, allowing me to make significant progress towards my broader goals.
Energy Levels
To optimize your energy levels throughout the day, it's crucial to understand your menstrual phase. To gain deeper insights into your energy patterns, start by using a reliable period tracking app and combine with the app suggested below.
One of the most reliable and effective tools to decipher your energy levels on any given day is the Rise Sleep App. This app not only tracks your sleep duration but calibrates your energy fluctuations based on the amount of sleep you've had. Upon waking up, the app provides you with valuable insights regarding your energy patterns for the day.
According to the app, the first 90 minutes after waking up can be a challenging period marked by grogginess. Recognizing this, the app advises users to take it easy during this time, allowing themselves to gradually transition into the day.
After the groggy period, the app notifies you when your energy levels are expected to peak. This is the opportune time to engage in activities that demand focus and attention, such as intense workouts or important work tasks.
Just as energy peaks occur, the app also alerts you when energy dips are approaching. During these periods, it suggests activities such as scheduling a walk or engaging in relaxation techniques to help boost your energy.
Later in the evening, the app signals your next energy peak. It advises you to avoid late meals, caffeine, and intense workouts during this time. Instead, it suggests winding down and preparing your body and mind for restful sleep. By following these recommendations, you can enhance the quality of your sleep, ensuring that you wake up feeling refreshed with optimal energy levels.
Fitness
The ebb and flow of our hormones significantly influence our physical performance and exercise tolerance. Maximize your workouts by aligning them with your cycle. During the follicular phase, capitalize on your increased energy levels and push yourself during challenging cardio or strength training sessions. Conversely, during the luteal phase (premenstrual phase), opt for exercises that focus more on maintenance and recovery, such as yoga, pilates, or gentle stretching.
Alomoves - This app offers a comprehensive library of classes led by renowned instructors, guiding users through various stretching techniques and fascia release exercises. It also boasts a wide range of classes such as yoga, Pilates, HIIT and mobility training from renowned instructors.
Cindy Prado - this app offers an array of features designed to support progress tracking. It allows users to upload before and after photos, tracking measurements of various body parts along with daily meal plans and customized workouts. As an added bonus, she offers a debloat guide designed to reduce bloating and enhance digestion. This helpful resource provides tips, tricks, and actionable steps to combat bloating, ensuring you can feel your best both mentally and physically.
Health
Oura Ring - Cutting-edge wearable technology that seamlessly integrates health tracking into users' daily lives. By wearing the ring, individuals can monitor various aspects of their health, from sleep quality to activity levels, and even menstrual cycles. Through advanced sensors, the Oura Ring can detect subtle changes in body temperature, allowing it to pinpoint key events in the menstrual cycle such as ovulation. Additionally, the ring tracks stress levels and other physiological markers, providing users with valuable insights into their overall well-being. By utilizing the accompanying app, users can access detailed data and personalized recommendations based on their individual health metrics. This holistic approach to health tracking enables users to better understand their bodies, optimize their routines, and make informed decisions to support their health and well-being.
Nutrition
Menstrual cycle tracking can aid in understanding and managing food cravings and hunger levels. During the luteal phase, many women may experience cravings for sweets or salty foods due to hormonal shifts. Supplementing your diet with nutrient-rich foods and regulating portion sizes can help you maintain stable energy levels, prevent mood swings, and avoid unnecessary bloating.
Lumen - It’s a portable device that measures your metabolic fuel utilization in real-time by analyzing your breath. Using carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, a key indicator of metabolic activity, Lumen determines whether your body predominantly burns carbohydrates (sugar) or fats for energy.
By utilizing Lumen, individuals can achieve metabolic flexibility, which refers to the body's ability to switch between carbohydrate and fat fuels efficiently. Metabolic flexibility is closely related to hormonal balance, and improving it can positively impact the overall menstrual cycle. When women maintain stable blood sugar levels and optimize their metabolism through personalized nutrition guidance, they can potentially alleviate symptoms related to PMS and restore regularity to their periods.
Achieving metabolic health and balanced hormonal cycles through Lumen can improve overall well-being, including increased energy levels, better mood stability, and better sleep quality.
Zoe - This app is a revolutionary tool that empowers us to tailor our diet to our unique body needs, based on personalized responses. It provides valuable insights into our gut health, allowing us to make informed decisions about our dietary choices and promote hormonal balance through a holistic approach.
The Zoe app assesses our gut microbiome, providing a deeper understanding of digestive health and how it relates to our menstrual cycle. A healthy gut is crucial for hormone metabolism and absorption of vital nutrients. By incorporating gut-friendly foods and probiotics into our diet, we can support optimal hormone production and enhance overall well-being.
Sleep
The quality of our sleep plays a vital role in our overall well-being, and our hormonal fluctuations during the menstrual cycle can influence it. During the luteal phase, some women might experience disturbances in their sleep patterns. Incorporating relaxation techniques, such as meditation or a warm bath before bedtime, can promote better sleep. Additionally, embracing a regular sleep schedule and creating a calming sleep environment can prove beneficial throughout your cycle.
Sleep Cycle - This app tracks various parameters such as snoring, breathing, coughing, and even farting, providing a vast range of data to analyze your sleep quality. The Sleep Cycle app ensures a more refreshing awakening by analyzing your sleep phases and gently waking you up during the lightest sleep stage within a predetermined time frame.
The app meticulously reports your sleep duration, time taken to fall asleep, quality of sleep, and sleep efficiency. By measuring ambient noise levels in your surroundings, you gain insights into factors that may be disrupting your sleep.
The app syncs seamlessly with popular health accessories like the Oura Ring or Fitbit. This enables the app to monitor additional data points such as heart rate, body temperature, and respiratory rate, further enhancing the accuracy of sleep analysis.
Better Sleep - This app works by detecting your movements during sleep, and gauging your sleep quality. It also offers a gentle and soothing wake-up feature that helps you rise naturally and peacefully. Using a timer, the app determines the ideal moment in your sleep cycle to wake you up, ensuring that you feel well-rested and rejuvenated instead of groggy and tired.
For those who find it challenging to unwind and fall asleep, the Better Sleep app provides a collection of bedtime stories. Allow the gentle words to transport you to a world of tranquility, easing you into a deep and restful sleep. Another powerful feature is a selection of hypnosis and meditation stories.
Tracking Menopause
I have started using a menopause tracking app to prepare for future changes in my body. These apps allow users to record symptoms associated with perimenopause and menopause. By keeping track of any changes and comparing them to the existing data accumulated through period tracking, I can identify patterns and seek appropriate medical advice if needed.
Oova - It’s is an at-home hormone testing platform designed specifically for women. With just a few simple steps, it allows you to measure a comprehensive panel of hormones that influence your menstrual cycle, fertility, and perimenopause. By analyzing and interpreting the data through their algorithm, Oova provides personalized insights into your reproductive health, allowing you to make informed decisions about your well-being.
This app offers a range of hormone tests that can help you gain a deeper understanding of your menstrual cycle. These tests include tracking luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol levels. With regular monitoring, you can identify hormonal imbalances, ovulation patterns, and perimenopausal changes that may affect your reproductive health.
Menostage - This app is a revolutionary tool that offers women valuable insights into their perimenopause journey based on accurate testing of crucial hormonal markers found in urine.
Perimenopause is a gradual process that unfolds over several years. It is characterized by fluctuating hormone levels, irregular periods, and various physical and emotional symptoms. Being able to identify the specific stage can help women gain clarity about their body's changes and make informed decisions about managing their health.
Meditation
Stress can impact your menstrual cycle, so integrating meditation apps can help combat unwanted hormonal imbalances. The app below provides guided meditations and mindfulness exercises that alleviate stress, enhance relaxation, and promote hormonal stability.
Calm - This app is a powerful tool for meditation and mindfulness, offering a range of resources to help users manage stress and cultivate a sense of peace and clarity. It can also be used to help support women through their different menstrual phases. By practicing mindfulness and meditation with Calm, users can effectively reduce stress levels, promote emotional balance, and enhance overall well-being during each phase of their cycle. Calm empowers women to navigate their menstrual cycle with greater ease and mindfulness, ultimately promoting a healthier relationship with their bodies and emotions.
Gut Health
Gut health plays a vital role in menstrual cycle phases by influencing hormone regulation and overall well-being. The gut microbiome's balance affects estrogen metabolism and the gut-brain axis, impacting stress levels and mood, which in turn can affect hormonal balance and menstrual regularity. Maintaining a healthy gut through a balanced diet and gut-supporting practices can support optimal hormone regulation and menstrual health throughout the cycle phases.
Flore - Specialized app designed to improve gut health by providing insights into the balance of good and bad bacteria in the gut microbiome. By analyzing users' symptoms, dietary habits, and lifestyle factors, Flore offers personalized recommendations to optimize gut health. Understanding the composition of gut bacteria is crucial as it can impact various aspects of health, including digestion, immunity, and inflammation levels. In the context of menstrual cycles, a healthy gut microbiome is essential for proper hormone metabolism and overall well-being. By incorporating gut health management into menstrual cycle care, Flore empowers users to take a holistic approach to their health and well-being.