By Aleena Ashraf, neuroscientist, published author and part of Véa’s Clinical Advisory Board

Menstrual data is missing a critical layer: the mind.

The menstrual cycle won’t be fully understood until we track the mind alongside the body.

We measure the body exceptionally well.

Just three period-tracking apps, Clue, Flo and Period Tracker, have been downloaded over 200 million times combined.

Dates, symptoms, mood and fertility windows are all diligently monitored.

Still, logging when a period starts doesn’t document what it’s like to live inside a cycle.

A recent survey reported 61.9 per cent of participants used period-tracking apps for more than two years, yet only surface-level data could be observed.

Mental clarity, motivation, resilience, mental load, none of this gets recorded.

Which is why the data can’t answer one of the most common questions women ask themselves: why does the same task feel manageable one week and impossible the next?

Get this right and the payoff is significant: more precise, predictive and personalised care.

Neuroscience and the menstrual cycle

The menstrual cycle isn’t only a reproductive process.

It’s a neurobiological rhythm that the brain actively regulates.

Ignoring that means overlooking the system driving much of what gets logged as “mood”.

After menstruation, rising estradiol lifts serotonin and dopamine, sharpening mood, motivation and mental efficiency.

This is the phase where pushing hard toward a goal tends to feel the easiest.

Later, progesterone takes over and increases GABA, the brain’s calming neurotransmitter.

The body shifts toward rest and recovery: slower pace, more introspection and less drive for risk.

The brain isn’t weaker in one phase and stronger in another. It’s continuously realigning to match hormonal change.

This isn’t a drop in capability but a shift in cognitive mode.

Hormonal changes aren’t disruptive – they’re informative.

The subjective experience of every woman living through them is exactly where current data systems fall short.

The lived experience is missing

What it actually feels like to think and function differently across the month remains almost entirely undocumented.

Women keep pushing through their cycle to meet constant demands at work and at home.

The cost doesn’t show up immediately but builds quietly, then surfaces as burnout, anxiety or withdrawal.

The turning point is rarely dramatic. It lives in small, recurring thoughts:

“Why does this feel harder today?”

“Why can’t I think straight?”

“Why is everything triggering me?”

During the luteal phase, irritability is usually treated as a symptom to control or tolerate.

There is lower tolerance for social demands, heightened sensitivity to routine tasks and occasional emotional outbursts.

But tracked over time against the cycle’s stages, it stops looking random.

It becomes a measurable signal of cognitive and emotional load.

The same is true for the urge to withdraw.

Read in isolation, it looks like disengagement, a dip in performance or a personal shortcoming.

Read longitudinally, it frequently lines up with the phase where the brain is shifting toward introspection and recovery.

Rather than seeing it as avoidance, it’s regulation.

Picture a professional in a high-pressure role.

In one phase of her cycle she is sharp, decisive and efficient.

In another, she is re-reading the same email, struggling to focus and disproportionately overwhelmed by routine tasks.

Without context, that looks like inconsistency.

With context, it’s a pattern that can be understood, anticipated and supported.

Journaling reveals the missing layer

Journaling is already a proven way to surface this deep layer.

It’s well established for improving mental health and stress regulation.

A 2022 systematic review reported a 9 per cent decrease in anxiety levels through writing.

But its potential goes further than that.

Journal entries build a longitudinal record of how someone’s inner state and hormone-linked rhythms evolve across the cycle, across roles, across time.

The problem is journaling can be hard to sustain without structure.

It’s also tricky to know what to write, as it’s self-directed.

Insights end up buried in raw writing, disconnected from the neurological pattern actually driving it.

Véa is a digital platform that guides women to document their lived experience over time, surface recurring trends and put words to what they’re going through.

It develops freeform writing into systematic self-reflection through a framework supported by neuroscience.

This captures snapshots of how women are thinking and feeling across different phases of the cycle.

Guided support peels back layers of cognition and emotion, surfacing what current menstrual data misses.

No single narrative gets imposed on every user.

Instead, the method leaves room for genuinely different perspectives of productivity to emerge.

Performed well, this turns journaling into a system of signals, not a pile of disconnected entries.

Done responsibly, privately and anonymously, this kind of data could help understand more about female health.

It isn’t diagnostic and it isn’t here to label anyone. But it can feed clinical understanding and future research alike.

What changes if we take this seriously

Treat the menstrual cycle as a neurological framework rather than a purely reproductive one, and the entire model of care begins to change.

It’s possible to identify strain earlier.

Work can be paced differently.

For clinicians, it means treatment plans that account for cyclical variation in symptoms and inner state.

For researchers, it gives a richer dataset that moves past static and linear measurements toward dynamic patterns.

For employers, it’s a chance to build more personalised ways of working around shifting cognitive load.

For families, it’s a reason to recognise and redistribute the invisible load carried by female homemakers.

This also fits within the broader shift toward preventative healthcare.

Catch the early signs and intervention can happen before burnout or more serious conditions take hold.

The menstrual cycle may be one of the richest data systems we have, if we are willing to read it correctly.

Learn more about Véa at veajournal.com

Menstrual cycle timing may affect vaccine side effects, according to a study involving 1,474 users of period-tracking app, Clue.

People vaccinated before ovulation were more likely to report side effects than those vaccinated after ovulation.

They also appeared to go longer before a subsequent Covid-19 infection, although the researchers said this finding was exploratory.

Amanda Shea, fractional chief science officer at Clue, said: “We know that immune function fluctuates across the menstrual cycle, yet it’s still rarely considered in mainstream health research.

“To truly understand women’s health, we need to stop treating the menstrual cycle as background noise and start recognising it as a fundamental part of human biology.

“Incorporating cycle data into research is essential to building the evidence needed for more personalised and effective care.”

In the study, participants vaccinated during the follicular phase had 35 per cent higher odds of reporting any vaccine side effect than those vaccinated during the luteal phase.

The follicular phase occurs before ovulation, when oestrogen is dominant. The luteal phase follows ovulation and is dominated by progesterone.

Sensitivity analyses produced similar findings after people vaccinated around menstruation were excluded, suggesting the association was not simply explained by menstrual or premenstrual symptoms.

A sensitivity analysis checks whether findings remain consistent when researchers change parts of their analysis.

The researchers found no evidence that vaccination during the follicular phase was linked to more severe side effects or a greater number of side effects.

Those vaccinated during the follicular phase went a median of 35 days longer before reporting a subsequent Covid-19 infection.

The median was 200 days among those vaccinated during the follicular phase, compared with 164 days for those vaccinated during the luteal phase.

However, only 82 infections were recorded across the sample.

The researchers said the result was exploratory and intended to generate a hypothesis rather than provide evidence that vaccination timing improves protection.

The study was led by Poppy Cooper at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Alexandra Alvergne at the University of Montpellier.

They worked with researchers from Oregon Health & Science University and cycle-tracking company Clue.

The findings add to growing evidence that reproductive hormones may influence immune function.

Oestrogen is generally associated with heightened immune activity, while progesterone tends to have a dampening effect.

Previous studies have found that women often develop stronger antibody responses than men after vaccines for influenza, measles, mumps and rubella, and hepatitis. They also often report more side effects.

Antibodies are proteins made by the immune system that identify and help fight infections.

Clue said research has been central to its work since the company was founded.

Its users have tracked more than 250m cycles and contributed more than 30bn data points with their consent, creating what the company describes as one of the world’s largest long-term menstrual health datasets.

Clue works with researchers at institutions including MIT, Oxford, Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley.

The company said the study was possible because users chose to contribute their tracked cycle data to research.

Rhiannon White, chief executive of Clue, said: “Every time the Clue community tracks their cycle, they’re helping answer a question about their own body that medicine has too often ignored.

“This study is a small example of something bigger: when women are given the tools to understand themselves, and the research catches up to meet them, real change becomes possible.”

Researchers surveyed Clue users about when they received their first Covid-19 vaccine dose, any side effects they experienced and subsequent infections.

The responses were matched with cycle information that each participant had previously recorded in the app, rather than relying on recalled estimates.

Of the 1,474 users included, 760 were vaccinated during the follicular phase and 714 during the luteal phase.

The researchers stressed that people should not use the findings to schedule vaccinations around their menstrual cycle.

They said receiving a vaccine when it is available remains far more important than the phase of the cycle in which it is given.

As the first study to investigate the association, further evidence is needed before any recommendations can be made.

The researchers said future vaccine and immunology studies should consider menstrual cycle phase as an important variable.

Type 2 diabetes is rising among women in their 20s in England, with experts warning of a worrying increase since the Covid pandemic.

The rise has largely occurred since the pandemic and is closely linked to increasing obesity levels, according to an analysis of NHS data from 2011 to 2024.

The condition is serious and can lead to severe complications, including heart attacks and strokes.

Diabetes UK said it tends to be more aggressive when it develops at a younger age, raising the risk of serious complications and shorter lives.

The charity said early diagnosis is vital for people at risk to help prevent long-term organ damage.

The condition can sometimes be put into remission through healthy eating and maintaining a healthy weight, without relying on glucose-lowering medicines.

Researchers said newer obesity treatments, including GLP-1 injections and pills, may also help alongside healthy eating advice.

About 90 per cent of the six million people living with diabetes in the UK have type 2 rather than type 1, or insulin-dependent, diabetes.

The risk increases with age, and older adults still account for the largest proportion of new diagnoses.

However, NHS England estimates suggest that 12,000 people under 30 are now living with the condition, with women making up more of the younger cases.

Common symptoms include feeling very tired, urinating more often than usual and feeling thirsty all the time.

Researchers at Imperial College London analysed NHS data from the English National Diabetes Audit to examine trends over time.

The figures showed that cases are falling slightly among older adults, who still account for the largest share of new diagnoses.

However, diagnoses are increasing rapidly among people under 40, with some of the sharpest rises among women aged 20 to 29.

Body mass index at diagnosis has also been rising more quickly among younger adults than in older age groups, pointing to obesity as a likely factor.

Body mass index, or BMI, is a measure of obesity based on a person’s height and weight.

Separate NHS data for England shows obesity rates have worsened since the pandemic, with nearly one in three people now affected.

The largest increases over time have been among younger adults.

Between 2019 and 2025, new obesity cases rose by 16 per cent among people aged 20 to 29 and by almost 20 per cent among those aged 30 to 39.

Rates fell among adults aged 60 to 79 over the same period.

Lead researcher Dr Shivani Misra said: “We think that the earlier onset of severe obesity in young people is increasing their type 2 diabetes risk in early life and pulling down their age at diagnosis.

“This is really worrying given the poor health outcomes from early-onset type 2 diabetes.”

Misra said much of the discussion about rising rates among younger people had focused on ethnic minority groups, which have traditionally been considered at higher risk.

However, the new data suggests the trend extends well beyond those communities.

She added: “We now see that incidence is also increasing in white populations too, showing that this public health challenge is broadening across the generations.”

Diabetes UK said better follow-up care is also needed for mums-to-be diagnosed with gestational diabetes during pregnancy because it raises the risk of developing type 2 diabetes after childbirth.

Some studies have suggested that the risk of developing the condition may also increase after being ill with Covid, although the evidence remains inconclusive.