I Track My Cycle Religiously—But a Chinese Medicine Practitioner Taught Me More Than Years of Data

For years, I’ve been the woman who never knew when her period was due without consulting an app. My phone knew where I was in my cycle long before I did. It knew when my period was expected, when I’d probably start craving crisps, and when I should lock in for the next three to five working days. My menstrual cycle wasn’t just something I experienced; it was something I outsourced.

Like many good obsessions, it began innocently enough. I downloaded Flo so I wouldn’t be caught out wearing white trousers. Before long, I was logging cramps, moods, sleeps, libido and breakouts with the diligence of someone conducting a long-term clinical trial. If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re genuinely furious with your partner or simply two days from your period, you’ll understand the appeal.

I was far from alone. We’re living in the age of the quantified woman, and our menstrual cycles have become another stream of data to analyse. The world’s three largest period-tracking apps have now been downloaded more than 250 million times. Need I say more?

The irony? Despite years of meticulously collecting information about my cycle, I wasn’t convinced I actually understood it - and that didn’t sit right with me. Believe it or not, we have more information about our menstrual cycles than any generation before us, yet a 2026 study of more than 383,000 UK women found that over one in five still couldn’t say how long their cycle actually was.

Then it dawned on me: the women before us managed to understand their bodies long before smartphones arrived to narrate them. Perhaps what I was missing wasn’t more data, but a different way of making sense of it.

Which is what led me to Traditional Chinese Medicine, which interprets the menstrual cycle through patterns across the whole body: sleep, digestion, stress, emotions and energy. I took years of my cycle history to Maddy McCarthy, founder of Yin Space and TCM practitioner, and asked her to read it back to me. Would she see something my app hadn’t? Could the monthly symptoms I tick off tell an entirely different story?

Let it be known that my quest for more answers isn't driven by the belief that we need to track less. More so by a different question: in our pursuit of understanding our bodies, have we become fluent in data but forgotten how to listen?

What I Learnt About My Cycle From a Chinese Medicine Practitioner

The Rise Of The Cycle Tracking Era

So what drove me to swap graphs for a body-first approach? Curiosity, mostly. Even with all the data I’d collected, I still had the nagging feeling that I was missing the point. And if we’re honest with each other (welcome to your safe space), most of us didn’t download a period-tracking app because we suddenly developed a passion for endocrinology. And as we’re constantly flooded with ways to optimise our wellbeing best, it was perhaps inevitable that our menstrual cycles would become another stream of data to analyse.

​I was no different. The more I logged, the more I convinced myself that I was getting closer to understanding my body and the series of unfortunate events my period would bring. After all, that’s what we’re sold, isn’t it? That enough information eventually brings insight.

​The data suggests many of us have bought into exactly that. A UCL study of predominantly UK users found that almost two-thirds had been using a tracking app for more than a year, while 43% said logging had become part of their everyday routine. And we’re no longer just tracking periods. We’re recording everything else, hoping that if we collect enough dots, they’ll eventually connect on their own.

​And sometimes they do. Tracking can be genuinely empowering, helping spot patterns, prepare for symptoms and advocate in medical appointments. For many, tracking is the thing that starts the conversation. I know first-hand that seeing patterns written down can be the first time symptoms that once felt random begin to make sense. But I also couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d become incredibly good at collecting information, while getting no closer to understanding what it was trying to tell me.

What Happened When A Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner Read My Cycle

Before McCarthy even attempted to interpret my cycle, she did something that felt almost radical: she listened.

​Our initial consultation lasted 90 minutes, and it was probably the closest thing to therapy I’ve experienced outside an actual therapist’s office. There was no racing through a checklist or trying to squeeze years of symptoms into a ten-minute appointment. Instead, she asked about everything. My period’s patterns, yes, but also my digestion, my cervical mucus, whether I experienced clotting, whether my pain travelled, and even how I’d describe myself emotionally. I volunteered details I’d never thought to mention to my GP, not because they’d never asked, but because I’d never considered them relevant.

​Then, in our follow-up appointment, she started connecting the dots. From a TCM perspective, she said the strongest pattern running through my symptoms was what practitioners call Blood Stagnation, a TCM term used to describe when the body’s circulation is thought to have become obstructed. The dark blood, sharp travelling pain and 50p-sized clots all pointed towards stagnation, while the fact that I ran hot and felt overwhelmed by the slightest bit of heat suggested a second, overlapping pattern: “Heat sitting alongside the stagnation.” Together they explain why the pain is as severe as it is.

​What surprised me most was how she intercepted my PMDD. I’d described the familiar pattern: seven to ten days of what can only be described as a black cloud, followed by an almost eerie emotional flatness once my period arrived. The health anxiety that seems to settle in my chest for no obvious reason. In my mind, these had always sat in a separate box labelled mental health - or, more dismissively, just hormones. McCarthy didn’t see separate boxes; she saw the same pattern showing up somewhere else.

She explained that, in TCM, my system appeared to be running low on the resources it needed at exactly the point in my cycle they were most in demand, while the stagnation prevented things from moving as they should. The endometriosis, digestive flare-ups, anxiety and PMDD weren't four unrelated conditions competing for attention; they are one story being told in different ways.”

Whether or not you subscribe to that interpretation, I found that after my first two sessions of decoding my cycle’s data, the shift in perspective was fascinating. For the first time, nobody was treating my emotional symptoms as an inconvenient side note to my physical ones - or vice versa. My period wasn’t the problem to solve; it was part of the conversation my body had been trying to have with me all along.

What Science Can (And Can’t) Tell Us About Our Cycles

Walking out of my appointment with McCarthy, I couldn’t stop thinking about one question: was she describing something medicine hadn’t explained to me yet - or was she using different language to describe the same thing?

According to consultant gynaecologist and Medical content creator Dr Brooke Vandermolen, it may be less of a contradiction than it first appears.

“Both are asking why symptoms don’t track hormone levels in a simple, linear way, and both treat the menstrual cycle as a marker of wider health rather than an isolated event,” she explains. “That’s why modern gynaecology increasingly talks about the menstrual cycle as a ‘vital sign’, alongside blood pressure and heart rate.”

I’d naively assumed Western medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine were having entirely different conversations. In reality, they’re often looking at the same person through different lenses. Where TCM describes patterns of Blood Stagnation, heat and energy, Western medicine looks at hormones, inflammation and physiology. The language differs, but the observation is increasingly shared: sleep, stress, digestion and emotional wellbeing all influence menstrual health.

As Vandermolen explains, “the clearest overlap is the mind-body link: chronic stress and poor sleep measurably suppress the hormone signal that drives ovulation, which is the same territory TCM describes through emotion and energy.”

That doesn’t mean the two systems are interchangeable. Modern medicine remains essential for diagnosing conditions like endometriosis, ruling out serious pathology and providing evidence-based treatments. But as Vandermolen notes, “science still has unanswered questions. We don’t fully understand why two women with similar hormone levels can have completely different experiences of PMS or PMDD, or why severe symptoms don’t always neatly match what appears on a scan.”

Perhaps that’s why my appointment with McCarthy resonated so deeply. My app had collected the data. My GP had helped me understand the medical picture. McCarthy offered another way of interpreting the patterns I’d been noticing. Understanding my body, I realised, required all three.

Acupuncture for My Cycle: What I Learned

The next part of my treatment with McCarthy was acupuncture to address the patterns she believed were contributing to my symptoms. The idea was to encourage movement where blood was thought to be stagnant, helping to ease pain and clotting around my period, while supporting my body through different phases of my cycle.

Unexpectant of what I was going to feel, lying on the treatment couch, I felt almost unnervingly aware of my body. Every sensation felt sharper. My breathing slowed. My nervous system actually seemed to exhale. It felt, oddly, like giving my body a huge glass of water.

According to McCarthy, “acupuncture isn’t designed to chase individual symptoms. Within TCM, treatment focuses on the underlying pattern beneath them.” Around my period, McCarthy encourages movement where blood is thought to be trapped, helping to ease pain and clotting. Afterwards, the focus shifts towards rebuilding and nourishing the body for the next cycle. Before my period, treatment changes again, with greater attention paid to supporting the nervous system and the symptoms associated with PMS and PMDD.

TLDR: the treatment evolves with the cycle itself, adapting to what the body needs, meeting you exactly where you are.

Beyond The App: What Tuning Back into My Cycle taught me

Here’s where I’ve landed: I don’t think the problem is that we’re tracking our cycles too much. I think we’ve started relying on the tracking a little too heavily, mistaking data for interpretation.

I haven’t deleted my app. In fact, I still use it. But the relationship is different. Working with McCarthy gave me something my app could never: a framework for understanding my symptoms, and acupuncture gave me space to respond to them rather than simply record them. It wasn’t a cure, and it didn’t make promises about eliminating my pain. Over time, it helped my body feel calmer, my symptoms less overwhelming, and my cycle like something I could work with rather than brace myself against.

Whether this explanation has resonated with you or not, I left with something I’d been missing: trust in my own body. The app still helps me predict my cycle. Acupuncture helped me respond to it.

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