I watch the same narrative unfold in my clinic: a woman started microdosing a GLP-1, the scale was too fast, and before she could even blink everyone was congratulating her before she even realized what else was happening.

Menarche isn’t a finish line, and it shouldn’t be treated like a secret. It’s the moment a diagnostic window swings open, and it stays open for only a few years.

It’s more nuanced than most people are taught. Sex ed and most marketing (think ovulation test strips, etc.) love the tidy “28-day cycle” storyline.

Your hormones are messengers.

Imagine if we taught girls, and their mothers alongside them, how to actually track a cycle, not just the date it starts, but the fuller picture: energy, mood, skin, sleep, cravings, pain.

This is the hormonal arc of a woman’s life. And we barely talk about it until something goes wrong. Or worse, only after menopause.

You’d go home thinking you understood the treatment approach, come back eight hours later, and the entire framework had been revised.