After experiencing all sorts of fun post-40 period symptoms, our friend Sarah James, from the Selfie Podcast, recommended the Flo app. Ironically, I’m a slow adopter to new apps; while I’m happy to try them and recommend them here, it takes a lot for me to continue using them over a long period of time. Heh, I said period. But with the Flo app, I’ve been going strong for six months now and have been very pleased.
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In its simplest form, Flo allows you to track your period and your symptoms, which for us perimenopausal women is just as helpful as those of you who might be trying to get pregnant. (Side note: It’s a great app for that too).
Once you get it set up with the dates that you think your last period was, and how long your cycle is, it will predict when your next period will be. Presumptuous? Yes! And I like it. You can open the app at any time of the month and see how long it is until you will feel murderous rage. Or just a headache that won’t go away for four days straight.
When you get your period, it’s important for you to add those dates (to ensure Flo tracks it properly) along with your symptoms. They give you lots of simple “tap” options – from flow to physical symptoms, plus emotional ones as well. You can add other things, like sleep issues, or stress. And while I do appreciate the insights they offer based on your symptoms, I mostly just like knowing that the reason I’m feeling sad or tired or whatever correlates to hormones (at least, most of the time).
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Plus, I can see “oh look, I’m getting a migraine the same time every month when I ovulate.” While it doesn’t necessarily make the headache go away, you can start to prep for it, and perhaps find some preventative solutions.
For you data nerds, you can even get all sorts of reports like patterns, cycle length, even period intensity, but for me, it’s just a simple, sleek tracker that’s made my life a whole lot easier. And one that I’m happily insisting my teen use too.
