Maisie Hill

Time off can feel impossible and is a luxury that many cannot afford. But can you find ten minutes to give yourself and start from there? Can you gift yourself thirty minutes of quiet time, to turn away from the world and tune into yourself to see what happens, without scrolling on your phone?

If your period takes a while to get going, you might be confused as to what counts as day 1. The first day of your cycle is one where you experience your period in full flow. Spotting a light amount of blood before your period starts is the tail end of a cycle, even if it continues for several days before your blood flow increases and your period actually begins.

We don’t sync up with each other. Research conducted by the menstrual app Clue found that rather than menstrual synchronicity occurring among menstruators who live together, their periods were more likely to diverge over time. If there are periods of time when you menstruate at the same time as someone you live with, it’s likely because cycles vary in length for some individuals as well as varying between different individuals, so it makes sense that there will be periods of overlap when you’re bleeding together.

I am a huge believer in the health benefits of having a menstrual cycle as well as how it can benefit your life

But anything that you choose to do for your mental or physical health, or situation in life, is up to you. It’s your body, and your life, and I encourage you to tune in to your own wisdom.

Yes, we are hormonal, and that’s a very good thing

Hormones rule the lives of all humans – not just women. They are the chemical messengers, secreted by the glands in your body, which travel through your bloodstream to their target organs and tissues, giving instruction on processes that need to be carried out in order to regulate your health and behaviour. When you feel hangry (hungry and angry) they tell you that you need to eat something, when you’re stressed they get your blood pumping so that you can put up a fight or do a runner, and at the end of the day they let you know that it’s time to go to bed. They also control your menstrual cycles and cause or contribute towards the variations in energy, mood, sexual desire, and changes to your body and behaviour that you experience as you transition through each menstrual cycle.

Unlike sperm which are produced regularly from puberty onwards, if you’re born with a female reproductive system, then you’re born with all the eggs you’ll ever have. That means that the egg which produced you existed when your grandmother was pregnant with your mum. That means part of you was once inside your granny.

Only around 400 of them end up being released as mature eggs at ovulation, accounting for the number of periods you’re likely to have over your lifetime. The rest don’t make the grade and undergo a process known as atresia, in which thousands of follicles in each cycle die off. You might find that only using 0.1 per cent of what you started out with depressing, but I find it incredible that our bodies do such a great job of selecting high quality eggs

There are two pivotal moments in your menstrual cycle: menstruation, the discharge and movement of blood; and ovulation, the release and motion of an egg.