145. Gen Z: Your Missing Education on Cycles and Fertility

Gen Z tracks everything — sleep, steps, macros, mood. But when it comes to their reproductive health, 59% of Gen Z women feel uninformed, and 69% are worried about their future fertility. This is not a personal failure. It is a systemic one. And the consequences are showing up in Dr. Minjeur's practice every single day — women arriving in their mid-30s with fertility challenges that had early, identifiable signs years earlier.

In this episode of Cycle Wisdom, Dr. Monica Minjeur makes the case for cycle literacy as essential health education — not a niche topic, and not a conversation to delay. Through the story of Jenna, a 26-year-old who spent a year without a period after stopping birth control she had been on since age 16, you will see what happens when young women are never taught what a healthy cycle actually looks like.

You will learn:

• Why ovulation — not menstruation — is the true vital sign of reproductive health, and why this distinction matters enormously
• How hormonal contraceptives can mask underlying cycle conditions for years, only for them to resurface when a woman is ready to conceive
• What cycle literacy looks like in practice — and why starting to chart in your teens and twenties changes everything

If you are a young woman wondering about your cycles, or a mother wanting better for the next generation, this episode is a must-listen. Learn more or schedule a free discovery call at radiantclinic.com

Transcript

Speaker 0:02

Gen Z tracks everything. Sleep, steps, macros, mood, and everything in between, whether they're using devices or apps or even just tracking it in their head and having these conversations with their friends. But when it comes to their reproductive health and fertility, many young women have never been given even the basic information they need to understand their own bodies and their cycles. We are failing an entire generation with silence, and the consequences long term are real. I'm Dr. Monica Minjeur, the host of Cycle Wisdom, where we help women and couples restore hormonal balance and reclaim their wellbeing through personalized healthcare grounded in clinical excellence. So let's get started as always with a patient story about a Gen Z patient of mine, and we'll call her Jenna. Now, Jenna came to us at age 26, and she was aware of her health, very proactive, and she had been on hormonal birth control since age 16 when she was prescribed the pill for her acne. However, when she learned more about the side effects of the pill, she decided to stop it. A month went by, and then two, and then three, and then six months, and she had an entire year that had gone by and her cycles didn't return after she stopped the pill. She was quietly panicking, but also had shame that she didn't ask more questions before she'd been placed on birth control in the past. Luckily, a friend sent her to see us, and we started with some additional evaluation. So we began with having her observe some cycle charting to see, did she notice any signs of spotting or bleeding or ovulation signs? Unfortunately, there wasn't anything that showed she had a clear ovulation confirmed on her charting. So we continued forward with a hormone panel that showed she had significantly suppressed luteinizing hormone, low progesterone, and significant nutritional deficiencies, which is quite common when people have been on the pill for quite some time. Unfortunately, the part that had not been diagnosed previously was that she had underlying cycle issues that the pill had been masking. So when she was taking birth control, she was having what seemed to be like a normal cycle, but the hormones had actually covered up some of these underlying conditions. Jenna had never been taught what a normal cycle should look like, or that ovulation was truly that marker that we're looking for in order to ensure that a good cycle is actually happening. Over the course of the next few months, Jenna worked with one of our charting instructors. We provided targeted support to replenish her deficient nutrients and provided cycle-timed charting as well as hormone replacement therapy in order to help restore her cycles. Within three months, her periods returned, and for the first time, she understand what her body was doing, not just having a bleed every month, but also clearly identifying ovulation when it was happening and when she could expect to have her next cycle. Now, why does this matter? There was actually research published earlier this year that found that 59% of Gen Z women felt uninformed about their reproductive health, and 69% are concerned about their future fertility. Now, at the time of this recording in 2026, Gen Z are women who are between the ages of 14 to 29. Now, certainly, this may be more of a concern for women that are a bit on that older end of Gen Z, but even younger women, teenagers and early 20-year-olds, are concerned and feel uninformed about their fertility and their reproductive health. All of this despite being the most digitally connected generation, most of their reproductive health information is coming from social media. Now, we all know that most social media can be inconsistent at best and harmful in some situations. Many influencers are getting money in order to publish different information that's saying certain things about reproductive health, which may or may not actually be true. And in other cases, women are just trying to compare their situation to something else that they saw an influencer talking about and are spending significant amount of time, money, and energy on treatments or therapies or diagnostic processes that are not the right fit for them. The consequences are showing up in big form. We see this frequently in our practice that women are showing up in their mid-30s and they're surprised by fertility challenges that had early and identifiable signs years prior. Many times, we're talking with women about what were your cycles doing before you started the pill, or what did they do during that time that you had an IUD? And they don't realize that actually there were things that were showing red flags even prior to starting on the pill that should have been addressed and corrected before they were masked for many years. Now, we are very clear that this is not a personal failure on any individual. This is a systemic failure of the medical community. There is a significant lack of education, not only between healthcare professionals, but also in the education that we have provided to young women for so long. For many years, women have been told a regular period means that everything is fine, and the reality is it's possible to have a menstrual cycle without ovulating. That can obviously create big problems down the road if you're trying to get pregnant. Other times, women are told, "Well, going on the pill right now will protect your fertility for later." And the reality is that being on hormonal contraceptives will actually suppress your cycle. Most of them are going to suppress ovulation, create nutritional deficiencies, and can mask other symptoms that could have been identified earlier on. This does not preserve your fertility. It suppresses the cycle and bypasses other reproductive abnormalities that should be identified and treated earlier on, even before you're planning to try and conceive. The key point here is that ovulation is the key thing that we're looking for, not just a period, not just that withdrawal bleed. A period happens in response to ovulation approximately two weeks prior, but ovulation can be absent even when periods do show up. Having a cycle where you don't ovulate or an anovulatory cycle can be quite common in young women and oftentimes go undetected unless you are specifically charting. So this is why we say that ovulation is your vital sign, not just menstruation. We use that ovulation confirmation as the standard to show that reproductive health is intact, not just having a period. In many young women, when they go on hormonal contraceptives, they're actually suppressing the hormone pattern that needs to take place in this intricate balance between your hypothalamus and your pituitary gland, which are located in your brain, and your gonads. So whether that's ovaries for women or testes for men, all of these hormonal symptoms can be suppressed if we are not clearly identifying the correct underlying abnormalities and fixing those things. In women, ovulation, cervical mucus, and the natural cycle all become suppressed when you are on hormonal contraceptives. Now, unfortunately, many times the pill has been marketed as the fix-all for any problem that a young woman is having, especially in her teenage years. You have acne? Go on the pill. You're irritable? Go on the pill. You have heavy bleeding? You have cramps with your cycles? Go on the pill. You don't have a regular cycle? Go on the pill. And unfortunately, being on the pill does not identify or treat the underlying cause. So many times these young women are getting put on hormonal contraceptives when they are teenagers. They're told, "Just stay on them until you're ready to get pregnant," and then they stop the pill or the IUD or their implant is removed, and now all of a sudden they have the same or sometimes worse cycle symptoms than they had prior. We didn't fix anything by putting them on the pill. We just masked those symptoms. Unfortunately, in many women, after coming off of the pill or having an implant removed or having your IUD taken out, in some cases it can take months or years for your cycle to return with some regularity, and many times those underlying health conditions become visible only after stopping the hormones. Conventional medicine is oftentimes prescribing the pill as a first-line response to cycle symptoms without evaluation. In our world of restorative reproductive medicine, we want to first identify the underlying cause of your symptoms before just recommending suppression. One of the things I talk about often in my practice is that if you were a 17-year-old young man that comes into my practice and you have acne, I would focus on treating your acne with topical skin medication, sometimes oral medications if needed, but I would not suppress your hormones in order to treat your acne. So why in the world would I assume that if I have a 17-year-old young woman coming in- that I wouldn't also try to treat her acne to address the skin conditions, treat with topical medications, and treat the underlying cause rather than just trying to block or suppress her hormones. This is incredibly poor care, and it does a disservice to these young women who are told this is the only solution or this is the easiest solution because it is masking an underlying symptom, which is acne in the first place. So we talk a lot about the value of cycle literacy, and what this means is learning to chart your cycles even in your teens or your 20s because this creates a longitudinal health record. It allows you to observe changes over time, and it gives you a record to look back and say, "Hey, where am I noticing adjustments that have changed or shifted over time?" Many times we're able to identify things like PCOS or polycystic ovarian syndrome, which has now gotten a new name, which is polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome. These changes can be identified in young women as early as in their teen years, and treating it appropriately when they are younger makes all the difference as to what continues to happen into their 20s and 30s. We can also identify and treat things like endometriosis, ovulatory dysfunction, as well as other conditions like PMS or PMDD. All of these things open this window for treating the underlying cause of these symptoms rather than having women that are suffering from these symptoms for many years, or worse yet, being placed on hormonal contraception that is suppressing these underlying symptoms. Education empowers women to be able to make decisions about their health in a way that makes sense for them going forward. We know that women that are empowered, that are educated, have better compliance with their treatments and have better outcomes long term for their health and their fertility. So why would we not want to start educating young women on their cycles from the time that their cycles begin, and sometimes even sooner than that? Another big important piece that many women overlook is the fact that being on oral contraceptives or the oral pill oftentimes will deplete your key nutrients. Now, I talk a lot more about this in episodes number 33 and 65 on this podcast, where we talk about what it looks like to come off of the pill, some of the side effects that you can have, and how we would restore your nutritional health. But your B vitamins specifically can be incredibly zapped from being on birth control for many years, as well as other vital nutrients like folate, zinc, magnesium, and vitamin C. All of these nutrients are critical for hormone production and cycle health. So quite frequently, we end up making sure that we're restoring these nutrients, giving specific B vitamins, specific nutrients to help restore these pieces so that we can get those nutrients in place for being able to have good production of the hormones we need in order to begin that process of ovulation and regular cycle health. Women coming off of the pill after years of use oftentimes take some time in order to correct these nutritional deficits. And so we focus on targeted repletion based on what your body specifically needs. So what can you start doing right now? If you are not already doing so, start charting your cycles. Even a basic mucus observations of cervical mucus or temperature monitoring can provide meaningful data. I talk a lot more about this in episode 91, where I go into depth as far as a fertility awareness-based method and how you can use it not just for fertility, but also for charting your overall cycle health. We also discuss important things like learning what is a normal cycle. Your cycles ideally should be somewhere between 28 to 35 days. You should see a clear window that is a fertile window and a clear identification of ovulation, as well as a luteal phase or the time from when you ovulate until your next period begins of around 12 days. Now, there are definitely normal variants in this, so it's also important to make sure that you are working with a healthcare professional who will evaluate any abnormalities, not just suppress your symptoms. You are never too young to start charting your cycles as long as they've started. So start now. Start with something. You don't have to have all the details in place, but start with what is identifiable to you. Ask questions. Ask about your symptoms. Ask about your cycle. Ask about any medications that you're trying to be prescribed to you and expect real answers. Oftentimes, young women are dismissed or prescribed hormonal contraceptives without any evaluation. Restorative reproductive medicine takes cycle symptoms seriously at any age and realizes that these are vital signs that our body is utilizing to tell us when something is wrong. So let's talk about a few commonly asked questions that we get. The most common one I probably hear is, "I've been on the pill for a long time, maybe since I was a teenager. Maybe I've been on it for 10, 15, or 20 years. How do I know if and when my cycle will come back?" And typically what we would advise women is that most cycles will return eventually, but the timeline is really variable and sometimes underlying conditions can surface. An evaluation that's completed after stopping your hormonal birth control can give you real information rather than months of waiting and wondering. And if for some reason your cycle does not come back, we should always be able to discern what is that underlying cause or reason, and is it something that's correctable? Another common question we get is, "Is it too early to think about fertility in my 20s? I'm not thinking about having a baby right now, but how do I know what things are going to look like? I've heard about egg freezing, and what might I need to consider? Is that something I need to do?" The best time to learn about your cycle is before fertility is urgent. What you do in your teens and your 20s, how you track your cycles, how you evaluate abnormalities, and most importantly, how you treat anything that is problematic, does shape what is available to you in your 30s and 40s when it comes to your fertility. Having early knowledge of cycles that are irregular or symptoms that are problematic can get you the care you need now in order to be able to address those underlying health conditions and correct them before you're even worrying about fertility. Even if your doctor says that you are too young to worry about this, find a different healthcare professional. Find somebody who takes your questions seriously. Menstrual cycle symptoms at any age are worth evaluating, not just something to wait it out And finally, for our Gen Z women that are listening, can I use an app to track my cycle? Yes, absolutely. Apps can be a great starting point, but not all apps are created equally. Most apps rely on algorithms, meaning they are looking for a regular 28-day cycle, and they are looking for ovulation on cycle day 14. Most of them are not entering in your actual observed cycle signs. So my recommendation here is if you put in that today is the first day of my period and your app is already predicting this is your ovulation day and this is when your next period is going to start, this is an algorithmic app. This is not an app that we wanna be utilizing. Learning to chart with real biomarkers like cervical mucus observations or temperature shifts will give you far more accurate information. In our practice, we recommend ChartNeo as a true medical app that allows you to track many different biomarkers like cervical mucus, urinary hormone monitoring, and/or temperature shifts. It also allows you to track your other symptoms, and this allows you to determine the observations that are best for you. As a bonus, when you're ready to work with a healthcare professional, you can share your charting with them in real time, so you can work together to discern your best treatment path forward. ChartNeo does have a free 45-day download, so check it out, try it out, start playing around, and evaluate what is the best system for you to be able to start truly identifying your fertile window, your ovulation, and look to identify any changes that may be happening over time. Imagine if every young woman, alongside learning what a period is, was also taught what ovulation is, what a healthy cycle looks like, and what your body is doing every month. Imagine if that knowledge could follow her into her 20s and 30s so that when something felt off, she recognized it early and had time to address it before fertility ever became urgent. Imagine if reproductive literacy was treated as essential health education, not a niche topic, and not a conversation to delay. This could give the next generation of women the foundation they need to improve their long-term health and promote fertility.

Speaker 2 20:04

If you're ready to work with our elite team of healthcare professionals, go to our website, radiantclinic.com, to schedule a free discovery call 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. Please note that our fertility educators are able to take care of clients no matter where they live. 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.