We start bleeding.

It is thought that 90% of women experience some premenstrual changes, even if mildly. There are more than 150 clinically identified symptoms of PMS, including irritability, anxiety, depression and headaches.

Hormones are fluctuating.

"Hormonal is the modern day "hysterical."

Underneath the surface is the way women’s health and pain has been, still is, viewed and treated in society.

nal” applies as much to a testosterone-charged City banker as it does to a woman about to have her period. The metabolic processes of all organisms can only take place in very specific chemical environments and, in the human body, hormones are special chemical messengers that, as part of the endocrine system, help to control most major bodily functions.

Male, female, or anywhere on the spectrum of gender, hormones keep us alive.

Women can wait between four and 10 years after first seeing a doctor with symptoms of endometriosis and a diagnosis.

The average is seven-and-a-half years. In 2017, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence released guidelines urging GPs not to overlook symptoms of the disorder, because for it to be repeatedly inferred that you are overreacting to your pain, your experience of that pain is going to become stained with confusion, fear and guilt.

Treatment for women with coronary heart disease is delayed compared to men.

Learning that mittelschmerz (the German words for “middle” and “pain”) is thought to be caused by one of our eggs rupturing through a sac (follicle) on an ovary, releasing fluid and a small amount of blood that can travel through the ovary wall and irritate nerves in the lining of the abdominal cavity, was a strange comfort.

Research tells us that our hormonal fluctuations do seem to affect how chemical signals pass through our brain – as any neuroscientist would tell you, we just don’t know exactly how or why. In all fields of brain study it is accepted that mental distress is not caused by one thing in isolation.

The hormonal changes and symptoms of menopause are very real and can be very hard.

Breathing, pumping, contracting: these are all actions of the body that keep us alive and keep our species going.

Menstruation is another rhythm unique to women.