Probably the greatest period-tracking apps on the market, Clue, lately introduced a characteristic that ought to be groundbreaking for individuals who do not menstruate however nonetheless expertise cyclical well being adjustments. The app claims to be the one well being app that tracks your cycle even once you don’t bleed. This could imply individuals who do not have intervals resulting from surgical procedure, hormonal drugs, gender transition, or life levels like post-menopause can observe their cycles, too.
The premise is strong and much-needed. Even once you don’t expertise bleeding, your cyclical adjustments in temper, power, and bodily signs do not simply disappear. These patterns matter for understanding your physique, managing well being circumstances, and making knowledgeable selections about your well-being. Clue deserves credit score for recognizing this hole in reproductive well being monitoring.
However this is the place the joy deflates, and the place there is a basic flaw all through the interval monitoring trade: These apps are nonetheless glorified diaries. If you can begin a brand new “cycle” everytime you really feel prefer it, then your monitoring is predicated on vibes, primarily. This is the problem with customers manually figuring out their very own patterns, even when the expertise to detect cycles robotically already exists.
How interval monitoring presently works (and the way it does not)
Conventional interval monitoring apps function on a easy premise: you inform the app when your interval begins, and it makes use of that information to foretell future cycles and fertile home windows. This works moderately effectively for folks with common menstrual bleeding, however it fully excludes anybody who does not bleed—a large inhabitants together with folks utilizing hormonal contraception, those that’ve had hysterectomies, folks on gender-affirming hormone remedy, and post-menopausal people.
Clue’s new characteristic makes an attempt to resolve this by letting customers manually begin a brand new “cycle” at any time when they need, primarily based on how they’re feeling. However this is not basically totally different from current interval apps—it is simply changing “I am bleeding” with “I believe I am beginning a brand new cycle.” Customers are nonetheless required to self-diagnose their cyclical patterns slightly than having expertise detect them.
The issue is that if you do not have common intervals, you usually do not know when your cycles start or finish. That is exactly why you’d need monitoring within the first place.
The expertise is on the market
What makes this notably irritating is that the expertise to detect cyclical patterns with out handbook enter not solely exists—it is already constructed into the units tens of millions of individuals put on day by day.
Beth Skwarecki, who has been testing wearables that supply girls’s well being options, captures this completely: “I do not get common intervals however I do not know whether or not I’ve a cycle—some folks on my type of contraception do and a few do not. So I get excited each time I hear {that a} system can use physique temperature to foretell ovulation, or {that a} system appears to be like for patterns in your physique’s metrics. However I have not discovered a single one which even makes an attempt to do cycle monitoring with out you manually flagging days that you’re bleeding.”
The science is simple: Physique temperature sometimes rises about half a level through the second half of your cycle in comparison with the primary half. The day your temperature rises coincides with ovulation, and the day it drops aligns with once you’d sometimes have a interval.
Oura, Whoop, most Garmin watches, Apple Watch, and nearly each premium smartwatch already monitor physique temperature for these precise variations. And plenty of of those wearables will establish the dates they assume you might be ovulating—however provided that, and after, you manually flag the dates you seen bleeding. As Beth factors out, this looks like an awfully restricted use of this information given the trouble these platforms put into analyzing and detecting patterns in all of the different information they acquire. Whoop will inform you whether or not you sleep higher on nights you are higher hydrated. Oura will inform you when your physique temperature and different metrics appear to counsel you are getting sick. But someway, none of them apply this information to detect cyclical patterns independently.
“With the entire effort Oura (and Whoop, and different wearables) put into detecting patterns in your private biometrics,” Beth explains, “it looks like an enormous omission that they do not level their algorithms on the query of ‘Does this consumer have a cyclical month-to-month sample of their temperature information?‘”
What do you assume thus far?
Apart from, temperature is just the start. Fashionable wearables observe coronary heart price variability, sleep patterns, exercise ranges, and stress indicators—all metrics that can fluctuate cyclically in folks with hormonal cycles, no matter whether or not they menstruate.
Who this actually impacts
As somebody squarely in Clue’s goal demographic for this characteristic, I do not need to guess when my cycle begins—I would like the app to inform me primarily based on the signs I am logging. If I knew when my cycles started and ended, I would not want specialised monitoring within the first place. The entire worth proposition of cycle monitoring apps is sample recognition that people may miss.
Give it some thought: for those who can arbitrarily declare a brand new cycle primarily based on how you feel, what’s stopping you from simply logging “bleeding” in an everyday interval app and getting the identical performance? What’s desperately wanted—and what continues to elude each main well being app—is clever sample detection. An app that may analyze your logged signs (temper swings, power dips, complications, sleep adjustments, no matter your physique does) and say, “Hey, primarily based in your information from the previous few months, it appears to be like such as you could be beginning a brand new cycle round now.”
Individuals who do not menstruate however nonetheless expertise hormonal cycles usually wrestle with signs that medical doctors dismiss or do not absolutely perceive. Having data-backed proof of cyclical patterns may validate their experiences and inform higher healthcare selections.
I do assume Clue is midway there by encouraging customers to log temper, power, and well being experiences to “join the dots” and “observe patterns.” The flexibility to trace well being patterns “in your phrases” with out the stress of menstrual bleeding is effective. But it surely’s nonetheless asking customers to do the connecting and observing themselves. If my Oura or Whoop or Apple Watch is monitoring all these metrics anyhow, why is not it discovering patterns associated to my cycle?
And admittedly, if I need to analyze my very own symptom patterns, I will simply use an everyday note-taking app and save myself the privateness issues.
