Tag: Health

  • Period Product Reviews – Thinx, Clue Premium & Me Luna #Periodically 24

    Period Product Reviews – Thinx, Clue Premium & Me Luna #Periodically 24

    Having a blog of this nature means that I am regularly being asked “have you tried…” and the answer is often “yes”. I’m lucky enough to sometimes be sent things to try out, like Natural Cycles and Thinx, and more oftentimes I buy things out of genuine intrigue. Today I want to write a few short reviews about three period/menstrual cycle products that I’ve been playing with lately.

    Thinx – period-proof pants 

    Technically speaking, Thinx call them “period-proof underwear” but I’m British and I can enjoy that alliteration!

    thinx.jpg

    My first impression was, “they look bloody massive!” And that’s coming from the queen of ginormous pants. Honestly I think it was just because I’m not in the habit of laying out a new pair of pants for a photograph, but what makes them feel bigger is the fact that they are quite substantial. The Thinx site boasts of its four-layer technology including a layer of “moisture-wicking cotton,” whatever that means.

    I’ve heard a lot of good things about period pants and even more about Thinx as a brand itself so I was excited to give ’em a try. Supposedly they can carry up to two tampons worth of blood, impressive. Thinx recommend you either use them solo on lighter days of your period or as back up for a tampon or cup on heavier days. I tried solo on a lighter day first and was immediately alarmed by a smell. Am I doing that TMI thing again? Who cares. There was an odour that I can’t say I am used to, and it wasn’t like that sanitary towel smell you get if you open a draw of pads, it was an unhygienic and unpleasant smell. Funnily enough, I didn’t ask anyone to sniff me to see how noticeable it was, but it was pungent enough to annoy me.

    Rinsing them is no ickier than rinsing out a menstrual cup and after that you just throw them in the wash and air dry them. I was disappointed that after the first wash there were a couple of threads pulling away from the waistband but it hasn’t affected how they feel which is undoubtedly more comfortable than a sanitary towel. The next time I tried them as a back up to a cup and they worked really well. There was still a smell but not nearly as potent.

    Conclusion: I love the idea of having a totally waste-free period but I’m not sure I’m sold on period pants after this experience. I’m open minded though and as always, I think it’s a step in the right direction! Also heads up, it’s a US company and I had to pay import tax before I could collect the package, but this might be because I didn’t pay shipping since the company sent them to me for free. 

    Clue *Premium* 

    Well this is what they called it when I purchased it but that word seems to have disappeared now. It seems it’s now a “Clue Membership”.

    We know I love Clue. As a menstrual cycle tracking app I have raved about it since my second menarche (I know that’s not actually a thing). I don’t think #Periodically would exist without it. I’m even a Clue Ambassador.  I do wonder if what I’m about to write might get me kicked out of that club. I hope it doesn’t because I think part of an ambassador’s job is to raise any red flags.

    Last summer it became pretty clear that Clue were looking for ways to make money, fair enough. The app is so clean and lovely that it would’ve been a shame to see it riddled with adverts or if they’d started selling users’ data to third party companies. So they announced they were going to introduce some paid features into the app – Clue Premium. I defended the decision at the time. Clue has served me well for a long time, I was, am, happy to support the company in all the good it’s doing. Until I saw how much they were charging. In the UK, if you want to pay month-by-month it will cost £9.99 each month. To pay for six months in one go it’s £31.99 and for a year it’s £42.99. That’s bonkers. One of the main reasons I’m trying menstrual cups and period pants is to save money on my period. Now I’ve got that money back, I’m hardly likely to invest £40 a year on my period all over again. However, Clue promised that everything that was available on the app before Premium would still be available on the free version of the app.

    So what extra features could Clue possibly introduce to justify £40 a year?  When Premium was rolled out to everyone, it made itself known by sending notifications every now and then saying “you have a new Forecast today,” and when you tried to view the forecast it would ask you to pay. Again, fair enough. So I paid for a month. I was very sceptical, but I wanted to see if it was worth £9.99. The notifications stopped. Every time I clicked the forecast button I was told “we can’t see your Forecast yet. Track your health everyday so Clue can provide a personal Forecast.” “The more you track, the smarter Clue gets,” it told me. Let’s be clear, I input an incredible amount of data into Clue every day. In fact, I’ve just checked and the last time I didn’t track was in March 2017. I have tracked upwards of 20 different categories daily for over a year, and more sporadically almost three years. If Clue can’t create a Forecast from my abundance of data, whose can they?

    An entire cycle went by without a single forecast. I was ten quid down, nothing up and pretty pissed off. And then, a couple of days before my subscription was ending I got a forecast, and then proceeded to get it for a few days. At the end of the second day of my period it told me that today and tomorrow I could expect to feel focussed. That figures, it’s something I’ve noticed thanks to Clue and that I try to exploit. It had some interesting information about hormones and asked me to confirm if I was focussed, both good things but it was pretty anti-climatic.

    I reached out Clue half way through my trial to check I was doing everything right, they were as friendly as ever and explained that, “we’re currently working on improving the algorithm which shows Forecasts, so that it can pick up more from the patterns the user has tracked. Keep an eye out for improved forecasts (and additional Premium features) that will be launching in the next month or so.” Typically, the day my subscription ended there was an app update which included notification of your cycle going out of range as a new Premium/Membership perk.

    Conclusion: Maybe I need to give it a longer trial but honestly I cannot justify spending more money on an app reading data for me when the app makes it so easy to read in the first place. This might be the problem with Clue Premium; the free app is so good that it’s difficult to imagine what premium features they could make worth the money. Forecasting is an interesting idea, but as it is now, it is not worth £42.99 a year. I think it was wrong for Clue to charge so much for so little so early on.

    *Update!*

    Me Luna Menstrual Cups

    Me Luna is the only cup brand I’ve tried but it hasn’t given me a reason to look elsewhere.

    meluna

    I’ve talked about my early experience with a menstrual cup in way too much graphic detail, but I haven’t really mentioned it since. I started with a soft Me Luna cup and while I think it was right for learning how to use it and going easy on my messed up reproductive system, I was still having some issues with leaking and wanted to master the art.

    So I upped the anti and ordered a classic cup, which was terrifyingly rigid in comparison to the soft cup. And yet, since I’ve found my fold (#FindYourFold) it wasn’t an issue, in fact, it was an improvement. I find it never moves out of place any more, it pops open easier and I only leak when I am extraordinarily heavy, which is a rarer occurrence now I’m on the pill. I do notice my internal pain issues a little more with the firmer cup, but only on insertion – once it’s in there are no issues.

    On a slightly ickier note, this time I got a dark blue one and I’ve found that staining is far less of a problem compared to the pale cup of my past.

    Conclusion: I can’t fault my Me Luna cup. I feel like I’d already fallen in love with the art of menstrual cupping but changing to a firmer cup has only made me love it more.

    Let me know what you think if you’ve tried any of these products or if there’s anything you think I should try, get in touch: @Hilarysaysblaah

  • A Period of Change #Periodically 21

    A Period of Change #Periodically 21

    Right first of all, some truths, disclaimers, apologies etc. Since I started the pill, and I don’t know if it’s because of the pill or whether it’s just a coincidence, but I have really struggled to start new writing projects. Ongoing projects have been fine, but creatively, coming up with new ideas and starting new sentences has been a challenge. So while it’s been a hot minute (5 weeks) since I started the pill, I’m only now writing about it for the first time.

    It has been a total ride, hell, it still is. From temper tantrums to bowel-crises, emergency gynaecology appointments to jaw aches – the last five weeks have had it all. For today though, I’m just going to focus on the first pill pack and how that was. As many will know, when you go on or off a hormonal contraceptive, or any hormonal treatment, things can get weird for your mind and body. I knew it was coming, but unfortunately that didn’t make it any easier. Knowing it was going to be a period of change for potentially unpleasant reasons, I decided to add some *nicer* changes too, so I bought a new menstrual cup from Me Luna (which I love and will talk about in more disgusting detail another time) and readied my period pants sent to me by Thinx.

    The first pill pack

    When you start a combined contraceptive pill it’s recommended that you take the first pill on the first day of your period. This immediately means your cycle will be shorter that ‘month’ because your withdrawal bleed from the pill will come in three weeks from your last period, not four. I did as followed, of course, and was immediately confused. Despite all the signals my body had been giving me that I was about to have a particularly bad period, nothing really happened. My period had started but not really. At this point I thought two things: 1) woah does it really work so fast – this is kind of great! and 2) but what if the lining of my womb that had built up to shed now never sheds – where’s it going to go?! So as you can see, I was thinking really clearly.

    Going into it I was determined to have an open mind and not to be paranoid about every tiny little symptom I experienced – yeah, surprise to no one, that lasted about 23 hours when I got a migrainesque headache, the first I’ve had since, well, what do you know, the last time I was on the combined pill! “Keep an open mind, keep an open mind,” I said through gritted teeth as I took the second pill. In the morning, on day three, I was actually relieved to discover that my period had properly started. I was in pain, felt a little nauseous, but I always feel slightly relieved when that happens (for like five minutes, don’t get me wrong) – it’s the fifth vital sign and all that.

    And then Tuesday came. I remember that it was a Tuesday very vividly because every week that’s passed since I’ve noted, “it’s been X weeks since that Tuesday. I survived – I can survive anything.” Fuck me – this is why I haven’t written this blog yet because I am trying really hard to block that day from my mind, but in the name of documentation I will relive the experience. In fact this is the furthest I’ve got writing this story so far (deep breaths). It was, to be frank, the most pain I have ever been in in my life. I was expecting things to get worse before they got better, but I also didn’t know that there was so much more pain yet to be achieved by my period. I was woken up by a regular period pain that just continued to get worse and worse and worse throughout the morning. Painkillers did nothing, moving did nothing, lying still did nothing, hot water bottles did a little but I’m fairly sure I burnt the skin on my belly from using them too much. It eased off at lunch and then returned in the afternoon. Honestly, I feel pretty traumatised by it, even now. I was at a point where I was googling “is it totally ridiculous to go to A&E for period cramps?” and I might’ve even convinced someone to drive me there if I hadn’t been home alone. There was vomit and tears, Bridget Jones and chocolate (usually pre-menstrual treats, not menstrual coping distractions). At the end of that fateful Tuesday I remember feeling as though my body had gone into shock. In hindsight now I’m like, “alright drama queen *eyeroll*” but I am also aware that it was really fucking scary and that I never ever ever want it to happen again to me nor anyone else.

     

    Needless to say, this wasn’t an excellent introduction to life back on the pill. I tried, am trying, really hard not to blame the pill but there’s only so much I can do to stop my brain making the connection between horrible, horrible pain and a drug designed to mess with the affected organs. Like I said, now I’d survived that, I could survive anything. Or so I thought until I realised that THIS PERIOD WAS NEVER GOING TO END. Twenty-two days. I bled, for twenty-two days straight. I know they say to expect “unusual bleeding” when you start the pill but come the fuck on. I decided it probably wasn’t too healthy to wear a menstrual cup for three weeks straight and while I tried my Thinx pants (jury’s still out) I only had one pair, and so I had the delight of wearing sanitary pads for three fucking weeks. Sorry for the profanity but TWENTY-FUCKING-TWO DAYS.

    I was also consistently plagued by a few charming new symptoms during this time. One change that I was not particularly excited about was a change in my breasts, which happened quickly and painfully – I’m talking stretch marks on my tits after just five days. Thankfully they seem to have resettled and calmed down now (hopefully!) The other symptoms have namely been: headaches, migraines, an unexpected jaw ache presumably caused by my habit of stress jaw-grinding, growing pains in my legs (please don’t say I’m still getting taller), the mood swings of a 14 year-old, a generally gloomy demeanour and unexpected creative block. The last three have irritated me the most. Not being able to write, whether caused by the pill or not, has just been incredibly frustrating. The way I would describe it is that it feels like someone is sitting on my head and that I can’t look up to see what’s going on. I’m hoping – by the fact that I’ve finally written this blog, that the person on my head has buggered off, but I will be honest and say that I am not feel overwhelmingly positive about the pill so far.

    Back to the twenty-two day period, if you’re good at period maths, it means that I didn’t actually come off my period until I had finished the first pack of the pill. So again, it was hard not to let my brain process the obvious fact that pill = extension of the world’s worst and longest period. True to form I came on my next bleed two days later but that, and the story of the emergency gynae trip, is a story for another blog.

    Enjoy #Periodically? Read the last update here, or check out my review of Natural Cycles here.

  • My experience using Natural Cycles #Periodically 20

    My experience using Natural Cycles #Periodically 20

    “How do you review a contraceptive?” was a question I asked myself when Natural Cycles kindly sent me a six month trial of its certified* contraceptive app. I sure as hell wasn’t going to risk pregnancy for the sake of a blog, even if I had been having any sex in the first place. So the following review does nothing to attest as to whether the Natural Cycles app actually prevents pregnancy, but it does test the accuracy of the app against my own fertility awareness, that of other apps I use, namely Clue, and how it compares to hormonal contraceptives like the pill. I have now (sadly) restarted the pill, but the last five months of my hormone-free journey have been made so much more interesting thanks to Natural Cycles, it was the perfect way to say goodbye to my (literal) natural cycles.

    giphy (8)

    It’s nothing like the pill…

    … in that it’s non-hormonal, non-invasive and has no side affects. For those who don’t know, the app works by taking your Basal Body Temperature (BBT), which you measure yourself, to detect the rise in temperature that occurs around and after ovulation to estimate your fertile window. Whereas most contraceptives involve taking precaution 24/7 or with every sexual encounter, by knowing when your fertile, ideally you can gauge the (much longer) period of time when you’re infertile and have lots of barrier and/or pill-free sex during that time. With that in mind, the app gives you ‘green days’ (infertile, go bare-back if you wish!) and ‘red days’ (fertile, wrap it up). Since you don’t have to ingest anything or have anything injected or implanted into you, there are no side-affects, which is very attractive to lots of people with uteruses for obvious reasons.

    Contrary to what a member of my family presumed, you take your temperature by sticking the thermometer in your mouth, NOT your vagina!

    But it’s more like the pill than you would think…

    … because it relies on you doing something at roughly the same time every day. What’s worse, it relies on you doing it first thing in the morning before you’ve done anything else at all, including but no limited to, getting up. If you happen to take the pill as you get out of bed, but one day forget until after you’ve brushed your teeth – it’s no biggy, but if you brush your teeth and only then remember to measure your temperature, then you have immediately compromised the reliability of the app and therefore your contraception. For someone like me – the very opposite of a morning person – this has been a challenge. I usually need an alarm on the other side of the room to get me out of bed, and while I’ve had alerts reminding me to take my temperature before my alarm goes off, it took a while to get consistent with measuring in the morning. In this sense Natural Cycles is a bit like the pill, skip a pill and risk fertility, skip a measurement and risk a green day when it ought to be red.

    Do I have a drinking problem or is there an evolutionary flaw with the app?

    There are a few circumstances when your temperature is considered unreliable. Getting out of bed before you measure being one of them. Basically, anything that messes with your BBT is no longer really your BBT and might wrongly detect ovulation – the app calls this a deviating temperature (naughty). Other triggers for a deviating temperature include having a lay-in (or any disruption to your usual sleeping pattern), being unwell or having a hangover. Now boozy nights have become much less frequent for me since I graduated, so I wasn’t worried about hangovers being a major hindrance to my experience with the app until it became clear that the only bloody time I was hungover was around ovulation.

     

    My hangovers (the green dots) as tracked in Clue

    The first couple of times I thought it was a fluke, but then it started happening every cycle – something about being fertile makes me DRINK. There are several explanations for this, but one that sticks out for me is that one of the behavioural changes that we experience around ovulation is that we go out and socialise – biologically, this is to find a mate, but socially in the twenty-first century, this often involves having an alcoholic beverage or thirteen. This is in no way Natural Cycles’ fault, honestly it could just be a coincidence with my own bad habits, but it disrupted four out of five fertile windows I had while trying the app. For this reason I personally wouldn’t recommend the app as a contraceptive to single people enjoying regular drunk stranger sex.

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    Sure, it’s a fun game to play when you’re not having sex, but a risky one if you are

    Throw an ovulation test in the mix – I dare you

    So once it was decided I was going back on the pill, albeit reluctantly, I wanted to really see what Natural Cycles could do in my final cycle using the app. When you input your temperature it gives you the option to add a positive or negative LH (Luteinising Hormone) test, a positive result means the hormone is surging and you’re about to ovulate. So with this in mind I started a five-test pack on the date recommended by both Natural Cycles and Clue. Five days passed and I only had negative results, as far as Clue was aware I was out of my fertile window and steaming towards PMS. Natural Cycles meanwhile was pulling the old “the ovulation symbol has disappeared for a while until we detect it” which is reassuring. So I bought another pack and continued for another five days… still nothing. This really made me panic, I’m going back on the pill to stop me ovulating – “WHAT IF I DON’T OVULATE AT ALL IN THE FIRST PLACE?” I thought, thinking I’d accidentally discovered my real problem. Another three tests later and I got a positive result on the twenty-third day of my cycle (I have no idea if that is normal and or healthy) BUT ANYWAY, low-and-behold my temperature did what Natural Cycles expected it to do after that and my pain moved in tandem with it – I think it successfully detected my ovulation – wahoo!

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    There were so few green days it almost wasn’t worth the fuss

    Maybe it was because the app was still getting to know me or maybe it was because my ovaries are evidently dysfunctional, but red days have been the majority, making me think that if I were having sex, it would be a whole lot easier (and cheaper given the price one would normally pay for the app) to just use condoms all the time? I wouldn’t have to worry about getting out of bed too quickly, an issue that has never ever been an issue in my life before, nor having a hangover or a cold.

    Uhm… my birth control isn’t a video game & other concerns

    I’m all about making Femtech fun. There’s a pelvic floor exercise device and app that involves moving a butterfly by literally clenching your vagina – I think that’s brilliant (and hilarious), but if I’m trying not to get pregnant, that’s no joke and I don’t treat it as such. So the fact the app has “achievements” for users to unlock, i.e. it’s currently hounding me to become a “Pro Cycler” – I’ve only got three stars so far – isn’t very motivating to me. I get that they’re trying to encourage users to input as much data accurately and as often as possible, but for me it felt a bit like trivialising what is otherwise a very scientific app.

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    In the same vein of thought, I’m a little uncomfortable with how the app is advertised. “Wake up. Measure. Get Up” the slogan goes and upon setting up everything is said in such a positive, sales-pitchy way that the very serious warnings risk passing you by – like the fact if you have a reproductive issue like PCOS for example, it’s likely the app could interpret your data incorrectly – and anything that risks pregnancy is dangerous. There have also been concerns mentioned in the press and also at a number of Femtech events I’ve attended that the figures regarding the success of the app aren’t entirely reliable, you can read the company’s reaction to some of these issues in its press release here.

    One other minor annoyance. Are we not done with blue periods and bizarre, unrealistic representations of women? Let’s just get one thing clear, at no point during my Natural Cycles experience did I wake up and measure looking like those featured on the app’s website. Can you possibly tell which one of these photos is the official Natural Cycles branding??? 

     

    Case and point…

    A step in the right direction

    I’ve learnt a lot about my body and Femtech in the last few months using Natural Cycles. The hormone-free aspect of the app is incredibly appealing to me, but the fact remains that it relies on me too much, and I am not nearly reliable enough for it to work for me as a means of birth control. However, the app is, without a doubt, progress.

    What would I like to see from Natural Cycles in the future if I were to use it again?

    • No achievements to unlock or stars to gain, just pregnancies to achieve and avoid!
    • An alert that wakes me up before the actual alarm set on my phone to remind me to take my temperature.
    • A better interface for inputting data – it’s a bit too numerical and off-putting. (The graphics on Clue are much more welcoming, but Natural Cycles’ temperature graphs are waaaay easier to read than Clue’s.)*
    • No BS about the risks. Say it how it is please!

    *Same data as presented on Clue and Natural Cycles. While Clue is not a contraceptive app, I find it really hard to interpret its temperature graph, a problem I didn’t have with Natural Cycles. 

    Clue
    Natural Cycles