FemTech is offering new and potentially helpful options when it comes to tracking your fertility and your period, but what are you missing out on when you automate body literacy with apps and wearable devices?
This episode talks about the pros and cons of digital contraceptives and period predictors, and also touches on how the latest dietary recommendations encourage us to ignore our intuition and continue outsourcing body literacy.
Listener perk: Get $100 off Cycle Magic, a cycle-syncing course for menstrual misfits, with the code LUNARLOVE.
View all podcast listener perks here.
Referenced in this episode:
How you can work with me:
Keep in touch!
Thanks for listening!
FemTech is offering new and potentially helpful options when it comes to tracking your fertility and your period, but what are you missing out on when you automate body literacy with apps and wearable devices?
This episode talks about the pros and cons of digital contraceptives and period predictors, and also touches on how the latest dietary recommendations encourage us to ignore our intuition and continue outsourcing body literacy.
Listener perk: Get $100 off Cycle Magic, a cycle-syncing course for menstrual misfits, with the code LUNARLOVE.
View all podcast listener perks here.
Referenced in this episode:
How you can work with me:
Keep in touch!
Thanks for listening!
Hello and welcome to the Lunar Body, I'm your host, Kristen Ciccolini, period priestess, nutritionist, and the founder of Good Witch Kitchen. Welcome to Season 2, I am thrilled that you’re here. We have a lot more listeners this time around, things picked up a little bit over the last few months while I was gone, and I want to thank you all for being here. Thank you for all the wonderful feedback and the emails and the reviews. Coming back to this season took a little longer than I expected, but really, has anything gone as we’ve expected in the last couple years? It’s a lesson in learning how to surrender.
Well we’re back, I’ve got a great topic to dive into today, we’ll be talking about outsourcing body literacy, what that means, the femtech trends that I’ve seen, and my thoughts on it all.
Before that, of course, know that this information is for educational purposes only, it is NOT medical advice and it is your responsibility to speak to a qualified health care provider about your unique needs. The final decision when considering any diet or lifestyle changes, whether it’s discussed on the internet, in a podcast, or prescribed by your doctor, is always your own.
Ok, let’s get into it.
What is body literacy?
This is a term used in the Fertility Awareness Method, that’s a natural method of family planning and birth control which I will touch on a bit later, but in this method, it means self-knowledge about your signs of observable fertile signs. I also use it as a more general term, self-knowledge and intuition about your own body, knowledge about your personal cycle and the natural fluctuations in emotional and physical feelings throughout your cycle, knowledge about food that makes you feel good and what doesn’t. It’s a cultivated awareness of your body and its needs that helps you to be a strong advocate for your health.
This takes work, this takes time, and intention. And we live in a culture that really likes convenience. We love Uber Eats, it’s a lifesaver when we're feeling too tired to cook, Amazon shows up at your doorstep within hours of ordering, we shudder at the thought of something taking longer than two days to arrive. We like convenience, and speed, instant gratification. That’s the opposite of work, time, and intention, so already we’re resisting something that used to come more naturally because there’s more distraction.
Outsourcing is a way of life for many people, especially since the pandemic started. Convenience is great, I too am an impatient customer who likes to order takeout when I’m burnt out, and I too ordered groceries from Amazon all throughout 2020. Also these things are so important and necessary for disabled people who rely on these services to make life easier.
What I'm interested in (and slightly concerned about), is what this all means for the health space, as tech companies aim to digitize every measurable aspect of our lives. I’m talking about FemTech. I hate the term, but FemTech refers to software, apps, and other technology that focuses on women’s health. Thing like your period-tracking app, fertility monitors, birth control telemedicine, wearable devices — any tech related to our reproductive and sexual wellness.
I dislike the term Femtech for the same reason that I dislike that women’s health is considered a specialty. Something that serves half of the earth’s population shouldn’t be considered a niche market. This makes it easy to dismiss or overlook. And while this area is growing, it’s still not funded nearly as much as general digital health services and products nor as highly as tech focused on men’s health.
But I do want to talk about some recent technology that caught my eye and got me thinking.
What started all this was when my friend Sarah sent me an email from Clue, one of the period-tracking apps that I like to recommend because I like its functionality and gender-neutral design and educational resources. The email from Clue was announcing that it received FDA approval to launch a digital contraceptive. Digital birth control. Intriguing, right? How could that possibly work?
I dove into all the literature that they had available for it, it’s called Clue Birth Control and I’ll link to it in the show notes. The way it works is that it predicts your risk of pregnancy based on your period start date, and you need to abstain or use protection on high-risk days, high-risk meaning your risk is high for pregnancy, your fertile window.
When you first start tracking with Clue Birth Control, you’ll have 16 high-risk days. This right off the bat is confusing, because we only have a six-day fertile window — when you ovulate, the egg survives up to 24 hours, and sperm can survive in the body for up to five days, so that’s how we get the six-day fertile window. So 16 days is a lot, but it’s really to cover your ass if you don’t have that body literacy.
The more cycles that you track, the more data the app will have to work with to give you a more accurate picture of your fertile window. Clue says that the number of high-risk days will shorten to about 12 after it has more information from your tracking. Again, still longer than your actual fertile window, but, better safe than sorry.
Now to be eligible for Clue Birth Control, you do have to go through a checklist of requirements, one of those being that you need to have a predictable cycle, one that’s about the same length of time every month. So if you have an irregular cycle, if you have PCOS or difficulty with ovulation, you’re not going to be able to use this type of digital contraceptive.
Personally, I don’t think a period-start date alone is enough to track your fertility, but knowing that this is how the app predicts your fertile window, it does make sense that there is such a high amount of high-risk days.
This method feels like a bare-bones Fertility Awareness Method (FAM), without any actual personal awareness, you’re outsourcing the ability to tell you when you’re at risk for pregnancy.
I worry about two things with this:
The first, obviously, is incorrect predictions leading to unplanned pregnancies. That’s a big worry.
I always recommend that people using period-tracking apps turn off the prediction feature if they can. Especially when getting started, they are almost never correct and end up confusing users. Of course, this is why Clue requires you to have a regular cycle to be eligible to use it, they’re trying to limit any error on their end. There could also be user error if you forget to track or if you input the wrong date.
Many people rely on an app to tell them about their bodies, but what if something changes? What if your cycle is typically regular, but longer one month due to stress or illness, or another factor that can impact ovulation and menstruation? Would users know what to look for?
Predictions rely on users to properly log period start dates and to keep up with tracking religiously. A lot of people have told me they don't know what to do with the information they've logged in their app, and I feel like this just keeps that autopilot tracking going.
I do think Clue Birth Control will be accurate for those who use it properly and have a working knowledge of their cycles, but I wonder what percentage of users that really is. They do have really great educational resources, they have a great blog, they have a podcast, so I think it could work, but again, I worry about potential errors with the predictions.
And then the second worry I have is the whole point of this show — outsourcing body literacy. Body literacy is about being in tune with your personal rhythms, observing its signals, and understanding what to do with that information.
The Fertility Awareness Method that I mentioned helps you develop body literacy. It doesn't rely only on a period-start date. It also relies on observable fertile signs like cervical fluid or discharge, which tells you that your body is working up to ovulation, and your basal body temperature, which is your temperature first thing in the morning that can confirm for you when ovulation has occurred. These two things help you know your fertile window regardless of how long your cycle is each month.
It does require more effort than Clue Birth Control, but you learn so much that you can take with you for life. You can begin to make your own predictions based on the info you've tracked — even when things go awry and delay ovulation — and your high-risk days drop to six. An app isn't going to know if your ovulation is delayed based on a period-start date alone.
Your cycle is SO EXCITING! Or at least I think it is, you can tell me all about it if you want, but typically when my clients and students start learning about it, they do get pretty excited and are amazed at the insights that they come up with. When you pay attention to it, you get such valuable information about your body and your personal rhythms that you can use to your advantage to live your life according to your own needs.
I talk at length about this in my cycle-syncing program, it’s called Cycle Magic and it’s designed for people who feel like misfits in the world of wellness, whose PMS and period problems are routinely dismissed by doctors when tests come back “normal,” who are prescribed birth control as a solution, who are sick of recycled advice online that never felt right to follow, who are seeking guidance from a source that considers your humanity, and for those who live in the liminal space between the practical and the mystical. If you like this podcast, it’s right up your alley.
The course is 100% online. And it’s located in Notion, which is my favorite productivity tool that has literally changed my life, so much that I moved my entire course over there throughout the summer. But Cycle Magic is designed to be a self-study program so you get all the content at once to go at your own pace. If you prefer to have it organized week-by-week to avoid overwhelm, I’ve included a suggested “course schedule” for you.
The course moves through three areas:
Lunar Body Basics (science class vibes): Learn the fundamentals on nutrition for happy hormones, how your menstrual cycle works, what the moon has to do with it, and how to tame PMS.
Intuitive Expansion (philosophy class vibes): Dive into the patriarchal societal structures that keep us from connecting with our bodies, and learn how to develop your intuitive superpowers and apply them to food and movement.
Making Magic (art class vibes): Decipher your body’s signals and start creating the masterpiece that is your cyclically guided life!
There is also a robust resource library for you to comb through if you feel called to go deeper, including lunar self-care rituals and phase-specific recipes.
This course teaches you how to understand your body from a feminist perspective, instead of the patriarchal version you likely got in health class.
By paying attention to how your body feels throughout the month, tending to your needs accordingly, and really nurturing yourself through supportive nutrition and self-care practices, you not only align with your cycle and feel a hell of a lot better, but you develop a stronger connection to your intuition, too.
These lessons stay with you for life. It’s body literacy, it’s what we’re talking about today.
To celebrate Season 2 of the podcast returning, I’m giving my listeners $100 off the course until with the code LUNARLOVE, so just enter that on checkout when you go to goodwitchkitchen.net/cycle-magic. I’ll link it in the show notes.
Ok so that’s Clue Birth Control. A little after I did a deep dive on that, I heard about the Oura Ring, which is a $300 wearable device, it’s a smart ring, fitness tracker, sleep tracker that came out with a period prediction feature in beta. This is another way to automate tracking, but this one uses your basal body temperature, which is one of the observable signs that we use in the Fertility Awareness Method.
Because it’s a ring that stays on you and it constantly monitors you, you don’t have to remember to check your temperature in the morning and then log it in your app, it’s already being done for you, which is convenient. They do note that this will only be useful for people with normal temperature patterns, so if you have any issues in that area, perhaps a thyroid issue that impacts your body temperature, the ring may not work for you for period prediction.
And that’s a key thing to note is that this is for period prediction only, not for birth control. Basal body temperature can only tell you when ovulation has occurred, so after it’s already happened, your temperature has a clear shift because progesterone begins to rise and naturally warms your body slightly. From there, a normal luteal phase is 12-16 days long, so the app can predict your period that way after the temperature shift. If after 16 days your temperature is still high… well then the ring can also probably tell you that you’re pregnant because after 18 days of high temperatures you’ll want to go get a pregnancy test. If that’s something you’re looking forward to, excellent, if not, then you will need another form of birth control, and Oura says that if you are using hormonal contraceptives (the birth control pill or an IUD), the algorithm will not be able to accurately predict your period. So again, this is just for period prediction purposes.
Both of these things to me feel like half of what we want. Clue Birth Control offers the birth control without the body literacy, and Oura offers automated body literacy without the birth control. I want both, I want birth control and body literacy. Though it is pretty cool what Oura does, the company says its “temperature sensor generates 1,440 data points each day and is validated to measure changes as precisely as (0.234°F),” which allows the algorithm to predict your period up to 45 days out, which is awesome if you’re planning a vacation or are mapping out your cycle phases on your calendar and syncing your activities, because that’s what cycle syncing is all about — but again that requires some knowledge of your body and your personal rhythms. So there are pros and cons to all of this.
I do think the idea of a digital contraceptive is really cool and I'm interested to see how this goes for Clue and Oura and other companies that are trying to get in this space, AND I think it's so important for people to learn about their bodies because it’s knowledge you can take with you for life and apply it to so many areas of your life. So I'm not 100% sold, but I'm glad that there are other options out there.
Another aspect of outsourcing body literacy that I want to touch on are some new nutritional guidelines that came out recently that are just, frankly, kind of absurd. If you don’t already, I take an intuitive approach to health, I love the intuitive eating framework, I think there is a time and place for all foods, I think that we are smarter than diet culture convinces us that we are when it comes to making food choices, we’re taught we can’t trust ourselves and that we have to follow the advice of people who claim to be experts when it comes to our own bodies.
And my spidey senses tingled real hard when Tufts University recently came out with a new food-scoring system that, according to the press release, ranks the “healthfulness of foods from first to worst.”
Oh boy. Tufts University, sounds pretty official. They have a well respected school of Nutrition Science and Policy, which is really misleading with this new nutrient-profiling system they came out with called the Food Compass.
It covers individual foods, and meals combining multiple foods, so like individual ingredients and then meals that have a combination of certain ingredients. Scores are calculated by a system that accounts for macronutrient ratios (so the amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrates), also their vitamin and mineral content, ingredients, additives, processing, and "other characteristics of public health concern."
Before I go further, let’s talk about why this is already an issue.
Think about supplementation. Sometimes supplementation can be an issue because it can be reductive, or improperly used. The thought process is that a food is helpful because of the individual nutrients we know it has, so we isolate those nutrients, separate them, and put them in capsule form, hoping it'll have the same effect as eating the whole food.
That's not always how it works. It's a simplistic understanding of nutrition that ignores other factors that contribute to overall health.
With that in mind, this scoring system strikes me as the same idea, and honestly some of the scoring is completely illogical — for example, the cereal Lucky Charms scored higher on this healthfulness scale than red meat).
Tufts says that its Food Compass can provide a “nuanced” approach to promoting healthy eating, but I have several questions.
If a person eats something on the low-scoring end of the scale, should they be afraid it will collapse their health? The score implies a certain moral status — higher on the scale = good, lower on the scale = bad. What is the purpose of assigning moral value to these foods?
What about food access? How do you know if that's their only access to food and what if, instead of policing what people have access to, we look at why that food insecurity exists in the first place? Is it helpful to a person's health to scare them this way?
How do you know if they're eating it all the time or if it's an occasional thing, and why doesn't that contribute to the score?
Why are we still vilifying fat and cholesterol, which contribute to lower scores? If you want more about that I did an episode last season on easing fears around food where I talked about how decades of poor dietary advice convinced us we need to be afraid of these things, which clearly is still happening, and why we don’t have to fear them. A couple reasons being that fat helps us absorb certain nutrients, and cholesterol is required for good hormone health. Listen to that episode for more on that.
To call this system nuanced is laughable honestly. “Nuanced” to me would be accounting for a more holistic picture of health determinants. Science, although very important, doesn't always provide a complete solution. Numbers are not nuanced.
And, you know, education is why I got into this industry. I learned first-hand how food could enhance my health, and I believe it's everyone's right to know about nutrition and how food works in the body, and whether a certain food will contribute to their health or not. I also believe it's everyone's right to develop their own awareness around how foods feel in their body, and also to do what they want with that information.
Another big problem here is that Tufts is recommending that this system influence food policy.
Food policy impacts government health programs, school cafeterias, what's allowed to be taxed.
When someone or some group is lobbying for policy change, you gotta look at who benefits. So I have more questions.
Why are branded items like Cheerios and Frosted Mini-Wheats at the top of the list? Higher than actual whole grains that don’t have additives? Why are branded items on the list at all?
Why are vegetable oils, which are known to be pro-inflammatory, ranking higher for healthfulness on this list than other known anti-inflammatory oils? Is it because the vegetable oils are made with government-subsidized ingredients? Just curious, asking for a friend.
Why are whole, nutrient-dense foods like beef and eggs ranked lower than processed cereals, and lower than meat and egg substitutes?
Ahh, I’m glad you asked. If you look at the competing interests section of the Nature study, where this Food Compass was published, you'll find that the lead author accepts money from Barilla, which is a pasta company, and the vegan meat company Motif FoodWorks. He also previously served on the scientific advisory board of Unilever, which is one of the world's largest manufacturers of vegetable oils.
On top of this, something not listed in the competing interests section, is that Tufts recently received a $10 million grant from the US Department of Agriculture to help develop cultivated meat, so a meat alternative grown from cells.
Erin Holt from The Funktional Nutritionist Podcast did a much deeper dive here on the Food Compass and its shortcomings but one thing she pointed out was that in the press release it states that the team at Tufts that is working on this project is also going to be working on “consumer acceptance of cultivated meat”, and what better way to “improve acceptance of lab-grown meat than to tell people that real meat is unhealthy.”
So I’ll take off my tinfoil hat, but it’s information worth considering. A lot of dietary guidelines are and have been in the past, influenced by money over science, unfortunately.
And the reason I bring this up in a conversation about body literacy is that it’s so important to gain awareness around your body, and what feels good to you. And that can be so hard to do with the onslaught of information and recommendations that are constantly being thrown your way. Everything is conflicting and everything is healthy or unhealthy and you never know what to do with your shopping list. It can be overwhelming and confusing, especially when there's bias involved that you don’t even realize is there.
But you already kinda know what to do. It’s very simple — whole foods have all the nutrients you need, already in there.
For your sanity and your health, remember that you are the expert in you. Practicing intuitive eating helps you ignore these conflicting messages and focus on what's true for you and your body, and what makes you feel best.
Okay, that was juicy, that was fun, and that’s a wrap on our first episode of Season 2. I hope this conversation was eye-opening and could offer another perspective on why getting in tune with your body is so important, on the gift of being able to trust yourself and how thatt can enrich you with knowledge that can help you have more control over your family planning, your personal life, and your overall health.
Remember to celebrate Season 2 of The Lunar Body returning, I’m offering $100 off my Cycle Magic online course, all the details are in the show notes, just use the code LUNARLOVE at checkout.
Thank you so much for being here, I’m glad to have you back.