By WUKA sports ambassador, Hannah Miley MBE 3x Olympian & Commonwealth champion

I started swimming when I was really young, I just loved being in the water.

The pool quickly became my second home, the place where I felt most like myself. I wasn’t a natural swimmer, but I loved to work hard, and racing gave me that outlet for my competitive side.

There was something about the rhythm of the strokes, the smell of chlorine, and the quiet hum beneath the surface that made me feel free.

I got my first period around age 12, and it was daunting. My body was changing, and I didn’t know what that meant for my swimming.

Wearing a swimsuit every day made me feel exposed, and I just assumed everything I was going through (heavy bleeding that lasted up to two weeks, cramps so bad they left me doubled over) was normal.

There were moments that really knocked my confidence: not realising my tampon string was visible, or climbing out of the pool to find blood running down my leg.

At competitions, I’d sometimes sit on my towel because I’d leaked through.

The heavy bleeding left me anaemic and constantly tired, but I kept pushing through. I wanted to swim at the highest level I could even if it meant battling my body every month.

Competitions & The Pill

I’ll never forget the 2004 Commonwealth Youth Games. My period started mid-competition, and during one race, the cramps hit hard.

Swimming through that pain was frustrating, all that training felt wasted. When I saw my GP back home, I was told the best way to “fix my period problems” was to go on the pill.

Those two words, fix and problems, shaped how I thought about my body for years.

At first, the pill seemed like the perfect solution. No more painful, unpredictable periods! I ran packets back to back to skip bleeds during competitions, thinking I was being smart.

What I didn’t realise was that the seven day break wasn’t a real period at all, it was a withdrawal bleed. I thought I was in control of my cycle, but I was actually masking it.

I didn’t understand how important my hormones were for health, recovery, and performance.

On the surface, everything looked fine. Beneath that, I was struggling. Under-fuelling, getting ill before big meets, and picking up constant shoulder and knee niggles.

But I didn’t connect any of it to my hormonal health. The pill blurred the picture, and for years, I lived in fear of my period returning at the “wrong” time.

Nothing compares to the emotion you feel when you make an Olympic team.

When I realised I had qualified for my first Olympics in 2008, it was surreal the culmination of years of early mornings, long sessions, and relentless dedication.

Standing on the pool deck with “Team GB” on my kit felt like stepping into a dream that little Hannah could only have imagined.

Racing around the world, representing Scotland and Team GB, was the greatest honour of my career.

Each competition taught me more about resilience, discipline, and the incredible things the human body can do when you push it to its limits.

I went on to swim at three Olympic Games, and while each one was different, they all shaped me not just as an athlete, but as a person learning to listen to and respect her body.

It wasn’t until 2020, during lockdown, that I finally came off the pill after more than 15 years. I was speaking to Dr Georgie Bruinvels when she asked a simple but powerful question:

“When was the last time you actually had a period?”

That question stopped me in my tracks. The answer? Not since before I started the pill as a teenager, over 15 years ago.

I learned that I should have taken longer breaks to let my hormones reset after five years.

It was probably mentioned when I first started but at 15 the chances of me remembering were going to be slim. I wished someone had reminded me.

For the first time, I began tuning into my body, tracking my cycle, adjusting my nutrition, and paying attention to the signals I’d ignored for so long. The difference was incredible.

My periods now last about five days, my cramps are mild and manageable, and I finally feel in sync with my body instead of fighting against it. And no little pill to remember to take each day.

The knowledge I have now would’ve been game changing for me as a young athlete.

Finding Freedom Again — This Time, on My Period

WUKA Sports Ambassador

Becoming a WUKA Sports Brand Ambassador felt like everything coming full circle.

To work with a company whose values aligned with my mission, supporting and empowering female athletes was incredible.

As an athlete, I only ever used tampons because I thought that was my only option.

But discovering products like period underwear and period swimwear has completely changed how I feel about my body and my period.

The first time I tried WUKA period pants, I couldn’t believe how comfortable they were. No rustling, no movement, and no fear of leaks. I actually forgot I was wearing them!

And their period swimwear? Game changer. No more worrying about climbing out of the pool and noticing blood running down my leg just confidence and freedom.

I can’t help but think how different my experience as a teenager could have been if products like this had existed then.

They would’ve given me comfort, reassurance, and a sense that my period wasn’t something to hide or fear.

That’s why I’m so passionate about opening up conversations around periods in sport.

For so many young athletes, missing training isn’t an option, but competing while bleeding can be stressful and distracting.

Period-proof swimwear can take away that anxiety — letting you focus on your performance, not your period.

What I’ve Learned

My journey has taught me that periods aren’t a “problem” to be fixed, they’re a natural, powerful part of who we are.

With the right knowledge, support, and tools, we can work with our bodies, not against them.

Period proof swimwear might seem like a small thing, but for a young swimmer, it can mean the world. It can mean the difference between fear and freedom, between shame and Confidence.

Periods are not the enemy of performance.

Ignoring them is.

Find out more about Wuka at wuka.co.uk 

Despite Scotland’s free period products law, research finds reusable period products remain little used, with only 3 per cent in Scotland relying on reusables.

Dominique Haig, a master’s student at Queen Margaret University (QMU), has investigated why take-up of reusable menstrual products stays low, despite the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 encouraging their distribution.

The findings reveal multiple obstacles – from institutional issues to education gaps and poor infrastructure – that stop organisations properly understanding and meeting the Act’s goals around equity, sustainability, and choice. (Reusable menstrual products include menstrual cups and washable pads.)

Haig, a student in QMU’s Institute of Global Health and Development explained: “We found that while reusable products are technically available across colleges, universities and public organisations, they’re often out of sight – sometimes hidden behind reception desks or restricted to student unions.”

This type of gatekeeping, combined with poor signposting and limited education, means many students, who may be particularly vulnerable to period poverty, don’t even know they have the option of accessing the free sanitary products.

The research discovered that students most likely to benefit from reusable products – including low-income, disabled, and trans/non-binary individuals – encounter major obstacles.

These include:

• Patchy menstrual education and insufficient teacher training, leaving students unaware of their entitlements and product options.
• Parental influence, which can shape attitudes toward menstruation and product choices, especially when stigma or misinformation has shaped communication.
• Inadequate washing facilities and lack of private spaces, which make using reusables impractical in many institutions.

“One teacher told us that students often don’t receive menstrual education until halfway through the school year,” Haig explained.

“By then, their understanding is shaped mostly by what their parents have told them.”

Additionally, student input rarely influenced procurement practices which led to purchases of reusable products that didn’t match students’ needs for quality and appearance – wasting budgets and maintaining dependence on single-use sanitary wear.

“We spoke to one university procurement officer who confirmed that students had to go to a specific location to collect reusable products,” Haig added.

“That alone can be a deterrent, especially if the space isn’t welcoming or inclusive.”

Haig concluded: “The availability of free sanitary wear across Scotland has been an excellent way of improving equality for women across the country.

“However, without targeted interventions, Scotland risks entrenching its dependence on single-use menstrual products, which ultimately undermines the environmental and social equity goals of the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021.

“We are therefore calling for improved menstrual education and teacher training; inclusive procurement processes that reflect student preferences; better infrastructure to support reusable product use; and clearer signposting and more accessible distribution methods.

“This will help protect the dignity of everyone who menstruates and the sustainability of service provision, ensuring every student has real choices.”

By Morgan Rose, chief science officer at Ema

Artificial intelligence is supposed to make care smarter, faster, and fairer, but what happens when it quietly learns to see women as less in need?

New research from the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre (CPEC) at the London School of Economics, led by Sam Rickman, reveals a concerning truth: large language models (LLMs) used to summarie long-term care records may be introducing gender bias into decisions about who receives support.

The Study

Researchers analysed real case notes from 617 older adults receiving social care in England. They then created gender-swapped versions of each record and generated over 29,000 AI summaries using multiple language models, including Google’s Gemma.’

The goal was simple: would AI treat men’s and women’s needs the same way?

It didn’t.

The Results

• Google’s Gemma model consistently downplayed women’s physical and mental health issues compared to men’s.
• Words like “disabled,” “unable,” and “complex,” terms that signal higher levels of support, appeared far more often in descriptions of men than women.
• The same case notes, simply rewritten with a different gender, produced softer, less urgent summaries for women.

In other words, when the algorithm rewrote her story, her needs shrank.

The Cost of Softer Language

Language isn’t neutral. In healthcare, it’s the difference between monitor and act.

Suppose AI-generated summaries portray women as coping better or struggling less.

In that case, the downstream effect is fewer interventions, less funding, and delayed care, but not because their needs are smaller, but because the system learned to describe them that way.

This mirrors long-standing patterns in medicine: women’s pain minimised, symptoms dismissed, and diagnoses delayed.

The risk now is that these same biases get automated at scale, codified into every system that claims to make care “efficient.”

Why This Matters for Femtech

Femtech founders, clinicians, and AI builders have a responsibility to notice what’s hiding in the data.

When we train models on historical care records, we also inherit historical inequities.

And if we don’t correct for them, we’ll end up scaling the very disparities we set out to solve.

At Ema, we build for women’s health with this reality in mind:

• Language is clinical data. Every word shapes care pathways.
• Bias is not neutralised by scale. It’s magnified by it.
• Ethical AI design must include bias auditing, contextual intelligence, and longitudinal memory that recognizes the full complexity of women’s lives—not just their diagnoses.

The Path Forward

Fixing this isn’t about scrapping AI.

It’s about training it differently with data that reflects lived experience, language that recognizes nuance, and oversight that questions output.

Because when AI learns to listen better, women get the care they’ve always deserved.

Source:

Rickman, S. et al., AI tools risk downplaying women’s health needs in social care, Care Policy and Evaluation Centre (CPEC), London School of Economics, 2025.