Your Cycle Is Your 5th Vital Sign: What Fertility Awareness Reveals About Your Health
Most of us were taught to think of our menstrual cycles as either an inconvenience or something to only think about if you’re trying to get pregnant. We often experience it as something to struggle through, dread, suppress, or work around. But from a physiological perspective, the menstrual cycle one of the most empowering sources of information and tools for empowerment we have at our disposal. It’s a continuous feedback system that reflects how well the body is functioning as a whole.
In fact, leading medical organizations now recognize the menstrual cycle as the 5th vital sign, alongside heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and body temperature. Unlike those other markers, however, the cycle is still widely ignored, medicated away, or dismissed as irrelevant largely due to a lack of knowledge.
My hope is that this article can start to help changing that. To invite you to start thinking of your cycle in a new way, and to start learning to understand our cycles and the wealth of information they provide us about our health as women.
Why the Menstrual Cycle Qualifies as a Vital Sign
Vital signs help measure the overall basic functions and health of your body. Checking your vitals is typically the first step in any medical appointment. As you will see in this article, learning to understand your own 5th vital sign will help you avoid medical appointments in the first place, or put you in a place of power in any doctors office going forward.
Your vital signs are able to signal when something deeper may be happening in the body. For example, your pulse can tell you about cardiovascular stress and your temperature can signal infection or inflammation. In the same way, your 5th vital sign, your menstrual cycle reflects hormonal balance, metabolic health, thyroid health, inflammation, digestive health and so much more.
A healthy cycle is not defined by bleeding once a month; it’s that too, but the star of the show is ovulation. It’s defined by regular ovulation, healthy pain free menstruation, balanced hormones, and a predictable rhythm that forms a pattern over time. When those patterns are disrupted, the cycle is often the first place the body shows us that something is off.
This framing has been championed by physicians such as Aviva Romm and popularized by Lisa Hendrickson-Jack and others, but it is also supported by broader endocrinology and reproductive health research. The cycle is not just important for reproduction, it has far reaching integrative functions that contribute to your overall health.
What Mainstream Medicine Misses When the Cycle Is Ignored
Modern gynecology is excellent at crisis care and saving lives in the case of actual emergencies. Where it consistently falls short is in preventative, cyclical, and root-cause oriented care for women.
Painful periods, irregular cycles, heavy bleeding, missing ovulation, and hormonal symptoms are often labeled as “normal” or treated exclusively with hormonal contraception. The underlying question of why the cycle is expressing distress is rarely explored. The treatments offered end up providing a band-aid over symptoms while ignoring the root cause of the imbalance.
When the cycle is viewed only as something to suffer through and/or ignore, we lose access to one of the most simple yet intelligent feedback systems at our disposal. This leads us to leave this wisdom on the table, and continue managing symptoms in isolation.
Ovulation Is a Monthly Health Event, Not Just For Making Babies
Ovulation is often thought of as something that only really matters when someone is trying to have a baby. Physiologically, it is far more significant than that.
In general, a healthy body is a fertile body, so we can begin to see healthy ovulation as a marker of health.
Ovulation triggers a hormonal cascade that supports bone density, brain health, cardiovascular protection, metabolic stability, immune function, and emotional regulation. Estrogen and progesterone are not “sex hormones” in the narrow sense. They are whole-body hormones that set the stage for long term health.
When ovulation does not occur regularly, either because of imbalance or hormonal contraception, the body is missing out on this essential cornerstone of whole body health. Over time, this absence can have consequences that extend well beyond fertility.
Understanding Your 5th Vital Sign With Fertility Awareness
Fertility awareness is a tool which helps us become literate about our bodies and wombs. When we learn to read and understand the language of our wombs, we are able to identify not only when we are fertile, but many other key aspects of our health.
To be clear, fertility awareness is not not calendar counting or app-based guesstimates. True fertility awareness is the practice of observing and interpreting real-time biological signs produced by the body.
The form of fertility awareness that is most well researched and effective is the sympto-thermal method, which involves observations of our cervical fluid patterns, basal body temperature shifts, cycle length and more. Together, these markers tell a story about ovulation quality, hormonal balance, stress impact, and overall endocrine health.
This is why fertility awareness functions as a health literacy tool, not just a method of natural birth control.
What Your Cycle Can Reveal About Underlying Health Imbalances
When you know how to read your cycle, patterns begin to emerge clearly. Short cycles, long cycles, delayed ovulation, absent ovulation, painful menstruation, heavy bleeding, spotting, or consistently low temperatures are not random events.
Your cycle paints a picture, and each of these signs can point toward thyroid dysfunction, inflammatory conditions, chronic stress, nutrient deficiencies, hormonal imbalance and more.
The cycle often speaks long before lab values fall outside of “normal” ranges, so we are in the drivers seat and can nip things in the bud. Fertility awareness allows women to catch subtle shifts early, when intervention is often simpler and more effective.
The Fertility Awareness Method as Preventative Care
One of the most underappreciated benefits of fertility awareness is that its a simple way to create a long term health record. A single blood test is just a snapshot, frozen in time; while your fertility awareness charts create a living timeline of your health.
Over months and years, charts reveal trends and imbalances in real time. They support better clinical conversations with your health care provider for more targeted testing, and more informed decision-making. It is a tool that helps you stay in power when it comes to advocating for and clear decisions about your sexual health.
This is preventative care in the truest sense; you are able to spot the first sign of imbalance and move forward from that place of knowledge.
Why Hormonal Birth Control Silences the 5th Vital Sign
Hormonal birth control suppresses ovulation by design. When ovulation is suppressed, the body’s cyclical feedback loop is also suppressed.
The monthly bleed that occurs on many forms of contraception is not a menstrual period. It is a withdrawal bleed triggered by synthetic hormone interruption. This illusion of a healthy cycle while on hormonal contraception does not reflect ovulation, hormonal balance, or cycle health; it’s just an emptying of the womb.
When the cycle is silenced, we lose access to vital information about how the body is functioning beneath the surface.
This Is Not About Pregnancy - It Is About Body Literacy
Fertility awareness is often misunderstood as something only relevant for women actively trying to conceive or avoid pregnancy. In reality, the literacy of our wombs and cycles is foundational health education that every woman on earth would benefit from.
Understanding your cycle supports informed consent, sexual confidence, symptom resolution, and long-term well being at every life stage. It restores a relationship with the body that is based on observation and reverence rather than pain and fear.
This knowledge strengthens your ability to make informed choices, whatever path you are on.
Reclaiming the Cycle as Information, Not Just an Inconvenience
Many women have been taught to resent their cycles or fear them. Fertility awareness offers a different relationship, one rooted in curiosity, power, and trust.
When the cycle becomes information rather than an inconvenience, we start to see the sacred wisdom of our bodies. Decision-making becomes clearer and more empowered. The body stops feeling like something out of control that only a professional can fix or understand.
This shift in perspective alone can be profoundly life changing.
Why This Knowledge Matters: The Bigger Picture
Cycle literacy is not just personal, it has the power to ripple empowerment and change across generations. Changing lineages and timelines with the power of knowledge of self.
When women understand their cycles, they pass that wisdom forward. They model informed choice, embodied health, and reproductive sovereignty for daughters, partners, and communities. This is how reproductive justice moves from theory into lived reality.
Fertility awareness reconnects us to knowledge that was once shared, observed, and respected, long before it was medicalized or dismissed.
Learning to Understand your 5th Vital Sign
Regardless of whether you are at a point in life where birth control is a priority for you, this is exactly what is taught inside The Natural Birth Control Blueprint. Even if you are not currently avoiding pregnancy, learning the science backed fertility awareness method taught in the blueprint gives you lifelong tools for understanding your health, advocating for yourself, and making informed decisions with clarity rather than fear.
I have had many clients who’s partner’s have vasectomies, who are not in sexual relationships or are in same sex relationships complete the course and the number one comment I get is “why did no one teach me this sooner?”
While many women enter the program for hormone-free birth control, the deeper value is cycle literacy itself.
If you would like to explore if the Natural Birth Control Blueprint would there are a few things to consider, or for more personalized guidance feel free to book a free call with me for personalized guidance.