91. Charting Your Cycle: A Foundation for Fertility and Whole-Body Health

What if your menstrual cycle held the answers to your hormone health, fertility, and stress—all in one place?

In this episode of Cycle Wisdom, Dr. Monica Minjeur explores how fertility awareness methods (FAM) give women powerful insight into their health, far beyond trying to conceive. You'll hear Lila’s story of coming off birth control, struggling with irregular cycles, and finally finding clarity through charting.

Dr. Minjeur explains how cycle tracking can reveal issues like low progesterone, PCOS, thyroid imbalances, and even the impact of stress. She also discusses the importance of working with a trained fertility awareness instructor to learn how to track fertile signs and why personalized instruction makes all the difference.

If you’ve ever felt dismissed, confused by your symptoms, or unsure if your hormones are really “off,” this episode will help you connect the dots—clearly and confidently.

✨ Learn more or book your free discovery call at radiantclinic.com

Transcript

Monica: 0:02

Welcome back to Cycle Wisdom, where we empower women to restore natural menstrual cycles, to improve health and promote fertility. I'm your host, Dr. Monica Minjeur, and I'm so glad you were listening today. What if you had a window that looked into your hormonal health, your fertility, and even your stress levels, right in your own body? That's what fertility awareness methods offer. They're not just for women who are trying to conceive fertility. Awareness is also for women who are wanting a better understanding of their cycle, their symptoms, and their overall health. Today I'm going to talk about why cycle charting is one of the most powerful tools we have in the field of restorative reproductive medicine and why it might be the missing piece in your health journey. So let's get started with Lila's story. Lila was a 30-year-old marketing manager. She had recently gotten married and they were not yet trying to conceive, but she wanted to stop the pill and get to know her cycle a bit better prior to going on birth control. Her periods had been irregular and she had lots of symptoms that she thought were related to her hormones, but she decided to go on birth control just to try and get a better control of what was going on. Lila had been on hormonal birth control for over a decade, and when she stopped, her cycles were very unpredictable. She was anxious and confused and didn't know was this normal? Is this just part of coming off of the pill or was this actually what her cycle was doing on a regular basis? She didn't know if she was actually even ovulating, and she went to see her ho ob doctor who dismissed her and said, just give it time, or you could always choose to go back on the pill. Lila was frustrated with these answers and she found our clinic. Yeah, we paired her up with a fertility awareness instructor, and within two cycles of charting and guidance from her instructor, she saw that she wasn't ovulating consistently and that she had a short luteal phase. The time from ovulation until her next menstrual cycle started. Her chart gave her clarity she hadn't found anywhere else, and she was able to identify what was wrong with her cycles, as well as what needed to be done in order to move things in the right direction. With targeted medical treatment and ongoing support from her instructor, we were able to help Lila's cycles become more regular. She was now able to clearly identify ovulation and she felt empowered to make healthcare decisions even before trying to conceive. She felt confident, calm, and in sync with her body, something she had never felt while she was on the pill. So why does charting your cycles even matter? Again, as I mentioned in the intro cycle, charting is a daily window into that hormonal health, and your ovulation and cycle patterns are a monthly report card of what's going on. As we talked about in last week's episode number 90, talking all about ovulation as a predictor of good health. It helps to be able to know when that ovulation is occurring in order to understand what's going on more at that cellular level. So being able to identify that ovulation pattern and see what's going on with your cycle helps us to have a deeper understanding of what's going on from that hormone balance perspective. Notably estrogen and progesterone. Seeing what's happening with your ovulation in your cycle also tells us so much about your stress levels or things like thyroid or metabolic issues. Because when something is going awry with your cycles, then we can understand that there's likely something that's causing that and we want to understand and get to the root cause of that. Charting helps to detect or pick up things that are red flags, things like irregular ovulation, or maybe not ovulating at all short luteal phases like Lila had. When we find that that luteal phase is short, from the time you ovulate until the next menstrual cycle occurs, it's often a sign of low progesterone or other hormonal or metabolic abnormalities that can be alerting us to a bigger problem. We also are able to understand if there is a delay or absence of menstruation. Many women will oftentimes be scared that they think, oh, am I pregnant or did I not ovulate? And if you're not charting your cycles, it's difficult to understand what's actually going on. On the flip side, if you can identify when ovulation occurs, maybe you pick up the fact that you've ovulated later this month. Perhaps there was a stressful situation that occurred, or maybe you had an illness and that can delay ovulation, which will tell you typically that your menstrual cycle is coming just at a later time. Fertility awareness also helps to improve your chances of conception. As we know, not every woman ovulates on day 14 of her cycle, and so charting your cycles will help you to identify your true fertile window. Most of the methods that we utilize will have you tracking cervical mucus observations, and this will help to identify that fertile window or that time when you're able to conceive if you time intercourse during those times. It also helps to avoid unnecessary waiting or mistimed intercourse. So if you're specifically trying to get pregnant, you can utilize what you know about what you're tracking with your cycles in order to try to conceive. And finally, it can also help to guide precise timing for labs and hormone support. So often we find that women are told to get their labs drawn on cycle day 21. Now, this assumes that you've ovulated on day 14, and that seven days afterwards is typically when your progesterone levels in particular should hit their highest point. However, if you don't ovulate until day 20 or 21 and then you get your labs drawn on that day, your levels are going to seem like they're low. And so instead we say, if you've ovulated on day 20, we want to check your labs seven days after ovulation. And because we know that ovulation day changes every cycle, we don't time your labs just based on your cycle day. We time it precisely to your ovulation. And typically one week after your ovulation. Now, although many women use cycle charting when they're trying to conceive, it is useful for so many other things beyond just trying to conceive or trying to avoid a pregnancy cycle. Charting is incredibly vital when it comes to symptom identification. I. So often women are told that must just be hormonal. Or maybe that symptom is just from your menstrual cycle. And this is oftentimes why many women are put on birth control. They may come in complaining of headaches or acne or feeling irritable or moody, and they're told, well, that must just be hormonal. Let's put you on birth control. The reality is if we can teach women how to chart their cycles and then also to overlay other symptoms on top of that, it helps them to have a better understanding of is this truly something that's hormonal or is this something a chronic issue that may not be related to your cycle at all? Charting your cycles is also helpful for the management of chronic conditions like PCOS, or conditions like hypothalamic amenorrhea, which I discussed in detail in episode 86, which means that your periods just stop happening typically from a combination of increased stress on your body, lack of enough caloric intake, or excessive exercise. Charting your cycles also gives us a really good insight into what's going on with painful periods, pain with intercourse, endometriosis, as well as thyroid issues. And when done correctly, most fertility awareness methods that are evidence-based have a 99% efficacy at avoiding pregnancy naturally when used correctly. Cycle charting also helps us to understand other symptoms like PMS, acne or anxiety patterns, and helps us to target if those symptoms are truly hormonal, as well as helps us to understand what needs to be done in order to help improve your symptoms. Cycle charting, most importantly, gives women autonomy and body literacy in order to be able to fully put words to what is going on with their cycles, with their symptoms, and to be able to have those conversations with healthcare professionals who can help them out. Modern tools make charting more and more accessible every day. We utilize many apps like The Chart Neo App to help make tracking simple and the evidence-based methods that our instructors teach. Include Creighton model, Neo Fertility, Marquette, billings, and Symptothermal. And we pair you with trained instructors to give you the personalized support you need. Although these methods are fairly straightforward to learn, we always recommend working with a certified instructor, especially if you are trying to avoid pregnancy or understand irregular cycles, because it's not just easy to pick it up if your cycles are irregular or if you have a strong reason to avoid pregnancy. At Radiant Clinic, we pair every patient with a certified instructor who teaches the method that fits your lifestyle and your needs the best. Our instructors teach how to identify your fertile signs. Things like cervical mucus or basal body temperature, or urinary luteinizing hormone surges, like the LH strips that people talk about. And most importantly, you're able to then take those fertile signs and identify what those patterns mean in order to track accurately and confidently so that you learn a method that you're able to utilize for all of your reproductive days. Our instructors work closely with myself so that your charting can inform your medical care if necessary. Now, not all women who learn charting instruction need to seek medical care, but that way if there are concerns or problems, you can come in with a very clear picture and we're able to hit the ground running and know what needs to be done based on your cycles. This helps us to target your lab timing appropriately, as well as provide personalized treatment planning based on your unique cycles. And most importantly, it gives us a great tool to watch your ongoing progress because it's not one thing to just track your cycles. We want to see that changes are being made and over time then once things get back on track, we're able to make sure that we are maintaining all of those healthy changes that happened. Fertility awareness becomes a foundational tool in the field of restorative reproductive medicine, and we believe every woman deserves to know how her body works. If your cycle feels confusing. Or if you're tired of being told, well just wait and see. Or if you simply want to stop guessing and start understanding, charting is the first step. Whether you're hoping to conceive or just wanna get off the hormonal rollercoaster, or maybe you want to understand if your symptoms are even related to your hormones at all. We can help you uncover what your body is telling you. Our trained instructors walk with you step by step, and your charting becomes a powerful tool in your personalized care plan. Imagine if your cycles finally made sense. Imagine having answers about your symptoms, your fertility and your hormones, and knowing exactly what to do next. Visit Radiant clinic.com today to learn more and book a free discovery call with our team. We're here to help you connect the dots, find real answers, and feel at home in your body again. If you're ready to work with our elite team of healthcare professionals, go to our website, radiant clinic.com to schedule a free discovery call with me and learn more about our package based pricing for comprehensive care. We are currently able to see people for in-person appointments in our Cedar Rapids, Iowa Clinic, or can arrange for a telehealth visit if you live in many different states across the us. Check out our website for current states that we can serve medical clients and let us know if your state is not listed to see if we can still cover you there as we are constantly expanding our reach. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please share this podcast with someone in your life who would benefit from our services. Remember to subscribe to this podcast for more empowering content that I look forward to sharing with you on our next episode of Cycle Wisdom.