Charting your cycle with a fertility awareness method (FAM) can benefit your physical and mental health in numerous ways, from mitigating depressive PMS symptoms, to helping to diagnose a hormonal imbalance or reproductive health disorder, to assisting you in optimizing fitness and health choices.
Women who opt for FAM— also known as fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs) or natural birth control or natural family planning (NFP)— over hormonal birth control experience the natural health benefits of ovulation. These benefits impact multiple other aspects of women’s health, including:
- immune system health
- heart health
- bone health
- brain health
- breast health
- prep for future healthy pregnancies
Find more articles about the myriad benefits of fertility charting to women’s health, below.
This page was last updated on March 14, 2024.
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Reasons Women Need Periods: The Role of the Menstrual Cycle in Preparing the Uterus for Pregnancy
By Clare Sharp • October 12, 2023Even before you start trying to conceive -
Reasons Women Need Periods: The Role of the Menstrual Cycle in Breast Health & Development
By Cassondra Moriarty • April 8, 2022and its connection to cancer prevention -
Reasons Women Need Periods: The Role of the Menstrual Cycle in Brain Health & Development
By Cassondra Moriarty • November 14, 2020And why cycles are so important for teen braindevelopment -
Reasons Women Need Periods: The Role of the Menstrual Cycle in Heart Health
By Cassondra Moriarty • June 5, 2020Welcome back for our third installment of “Reasons Women Need Periods,” a series dedicated to taking a deep… -
Reasons Women Need Periods: The Role of the Menstrual Cycle in the Immune System
By Cassondra Moriarty • August 10, 2020When it comes to periods, misinformation abounds. Periods and period research have long been stigmatized, so it’s no… -
Reasons Women Need Periods: The Role of the Menstrual Cycle in Bone Health & Development
By Cassondra Moriarty • May 12, 2020Welcome back for our second installment of “Reasons Women Need Periods,” a series dedicated to taking a deep… -
The top 3 reasons to avoid hormonal contraception during perimenopause
By Cassondra Moriarty • October 21, 2022In a recent People magazine story, Naomi Watts shared her story of unexpectedly entering perimenopause (literally meaning “around… -
10 Reasons to Consider Getting off Birth Control and Starting Fertility Awareness Instead
By Mary Rose Somarriba • August 17, 2019Are you think about getting off birth control? As someone who took hormonal contraceptives in the past to… -
The Powerful Link Between Fertility Awareness and Mental Health
By Julia Hogan-Werner, LCPC • April 25, 2020As a psychotherapist, you wouldn’t think I’d spend much time talking about women’s reproductive health. Instead, you might… -
The Benefits of Charting for Your Mental Health
By Julia Hogan-Werner, LCPC • February 26, 2020Fertility Awareness-Based Methods (FABM) are an empowering way to track your menstrual cycle and manage your fertility, but…