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 

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.

Dr Olivia Ahn, founder of FLUUS

The FemTech industry is rapidly innovating, but the conversation often neglects a fundamental issue: material safety.

While we focus on digital tracking and advanced fabrics, the tiny, ubiquitous fragments of plastic in our personal care products, microplastics, pose a significant, yet often silent, threat to women’s intimate and systemic health.

As a former doctor who moved into material science, my research focuses on the intersection of these two fields, particularly exploring the pathways through which microplastics from period and intimate care products enter the bloodstream.

The current evidence demands a radical shift in how founders and manufacturers approach product design.

The Ubiquity of the Problem

Microplastics, defined as plastic particles smaller than five millimeters, are no longer confined to remote oceans or deep-sea trenches.

Recent studies have demonstrated their presence in every part of the human body, including the bloodstream, lungs, placenta, and reproductive tissues.

For the FemTech and consumer health sectors, this raises profound questions. While we often focus on microplastics shed from synthetic clothing or food packaging, we must address direct exposure pathways.

Many single-use period pads and liners contain synthetic polymers, adhesives, and backsheets, which are all sources of microplastic shedding through friction and degradation.

Even when the outer layer is organic cotton, the hidden core materials can present a systemic risk.

The Intimate Absorption Pathway: A “Fast Track” to the Bloodstream

The primary concern with microplastics in intimate care lies in the unique vulnerability of the vaginal and vulval mucosa.

Unlike the skin on our arm, which is designed to be a tough, protective barrier (keratinized epithelium), the vaginal mucosa is highly specialised and much more permeable. It is a richly vascularised tissue meaning it contains a high concentration of tiny blood vessels just beneath the surface.

This structure allows for:

1. Rapid Systemic Uptake

The tissue acts almost like a sponge, allowing substances to be absorbed quickly and directly into the circulatory system. In medicine, this pathway is leveraged for rapid drug delivery, confirming its efficiency.

2. Bypassing First-Pass Metabolism

When substances are absorbed through the gut, they pass through the liver, which acts as a primary filter to detoxify or metabolize compounds.

When chemicals or microplastics enter via the vaginal mucosa, they can bypass this critical “first-pass” mechanism, potentially leading to higher systemic exposure levels of the contaminants.

When microplastics are present in a period pad, making prolonged, intimate contact with the mucosa, there is a clear and high-risk pathway for these particles to cross the tissue barrier and enter the bloodstream.

The Broader Implications for Women’s Health

The health impact of microplastics is complex and still emerging, but existing evidence raises serious red flags, particularly for gynaecological and reproductive health:

Inflammation and Oxidative Stress:

Microplastics are known to induce inflammation and oxidative stress in cell cultures and animal models.

Chronic, low-grade inflammation is a foundational mechanism for numerous diseases, including endometriosis, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), and cardiovascular issues.

Microplastics has not been linked to be causative to these conditions, but reducing any source of inflammatory burden is critical for overall health.

Hormonal Disruption:

                             Dr Olivia Ahn

Microplastics can act as carriers, or “Trojan horses,” for endocrine-disrupting chemicals like phthalates and BPA, which are added during plastic manufacturing.

When the microplastic enters the body, it releases this cocktail of EDCs, which mimic or interfere with natural hormones.

This disruption is directly linked to fertility challenges, impaired ovarian function, and altered reproductive development.

Reproductive Tissue Accumulation:

Recent studies are particularly alarming, detecting microplastics in human ovary follicular fluid, semen, and the placenta.

These findings suggest that microplastics are accumulating in the very tissues responsible for reproduction and fetal development, demanding immediate action to minimise exposure.

Setting a New Standard for Integrity

The challenge for founders and manufacturers is no longer merely to sell a product, but to assume full responsibility for its material science and its entire lifecycle.

We must move past the industry’s status quo where products are chemically complex and built to last centuries.

We must advocate for radical transparency in ingredient disclosure and invest in genuine, circular technology that eliminates these pollutants at the source.

The next generation of femtech must prioritise both the user’s health and the planet’s health equally

The Fluus Standard: Zero Microplastics, Zero Waster and Zero Compromise

This drive for scientific integrity is the foundation of Fluus.

We developed our proprietary Flushtec technology to prove that a 100 per cent microplastic-free, fully flushable period pad is not just an ideal, but a reality.

By eliminating plastic SAPs and traditional hot-melt acrylic adhesives, we deliver genuine confidence, ensuring the product fully disintegrates after use, leaving zero waste and zero microplastic residue behind.