The class we missed.

I have two science degrees and didn’t learn how my hormones work until I was 30.

Every month, there’s a stretch that feels like pushing through molasses. I sleep worse, I give up more easily, and the negative thoughts get louder, like a haze I can’t think my way out of. Then my period comes and the haze lifts.

For years I had no idea why. When I turned 30 I started tracking my cycle, and the pattern was hard to miss: my darkest journal entries clustered in the two weeks before my period. I have degrees in biochemistry and neuroscience, yet no one had taught me about the hormones that run my body.

Understanding my cycle hasn’t stopped the rollercoaster, but I ride it differently now. I think about how many years of beating myself up I could have skipped if someone had taught me this when I was younger.

Schools skipped it

A 2025 analysis of every US state’s health education standards found that about three in four never mention menstruation. Students fill the gap with whatever social media serves them, and plenty of it is wrong.

Research skipped it too

• In 1977 the FDA advised keeping women of childbearing potential out of early drug trials. A 1993 law first required NIH-funded studies to include women.
• Women have adverse drug reactions nearly twice as often as men. One analysis found women’s bodies clear many drugs more slowly, yet most are dosed the same for everyone.
• About 80% of people with autoimmune disease are women, and a 2024 Stanford Medicine study offers a clue as to why.
• From 2013 to 2023, just 8.8% of NIH grant spending went to women’s health research.

That is changing, and it needs to change faster.

What we are building

A free online curriculum anyone can use, not only students who happen to live in the right state or country. Every lesson is written from named sources, explains what is known first, and says plainly where the research is thin. It is for everyone, because understanding the female body helps all of us.

Silvia