How has Menstrual Health Tracking helped you?

[FitbitCommunity]

Community demand played a huge role in the release of Female Health Tracking on Fitbit. This feature helps you to track your periods, fertile windows, ovulation days, and female health symptoms.

If you have want to view or add suggestions to improve female health tracking, visit our feature suggestion forum. If you have questions, see our help article.

What's your favorite thing about Female Health Tracking, or how has it helped you on your health journey?

[BuckeyeKt]

@SheKeepsFalling Thanks for sharing that. Yikes! But I’m sadly not surprised. I got my Fitbit in December. Every month I take deep breaths when I know it’s time to grapple with the clunky, inexplicably user-unfriendly drag/delete/can’t delete UI of Fitbit’s Women’s Health. I track on 2 other apps that I’ve had since before my Fitbit that aren’t nearly so infuriating to use, so there’s plenty of examples of better ways. This morning I hit the point of googling “Fitbit Board” and “how many women work at Fitbit?” There’s no way women were involved in creating this and signed off “works great! Just what I needed!” It’s abysmal.

[Tannager]

I really like having this tracker in the same spot I track my sleep and exercise. 

Unfortunately, there is a bug in the tracker that makes it totally unreliable: it regularly changes my periods and fertile windows (even if they are already passed), by more than a week!

I'm not sure just how often it does it since I only really notice the changes if I'm on my period and it suddenly tells my my period was 2 weeks ago (despite it being correct a few days before...).

It's very strange - the changes happen while the tracker is closed, not when I'm looking at the calendar or changing other details...

This is a huge problem to be unreliable- a period tracker is not useful if you can't trust it.

I went back to my original tracker app but wish fitbit would fix this!

[SunsetRunner]

I like the feature a lot! I'd also like to suggest for the menstruation data to be accessible through the Fitbit Web API, as most of the other features are available through the API. I also agree with other comments that the name should be changed to "Menstruation Cycle." 

[SunsetRunner]

Cycle tracking is not working, you know it well, and you are not going to fix it. You deceive your customers by advertising this option.

[MrsLaurelStein]

Menstrual Health Tracking helped me get pregnant. I am very excited, but I wish there were more features for pregnant women. 

[Tannager]

Agreed! 😕

[SheKeepsFalling]

Why are no Fitbit staff members responding to the feedback in this thread? This lack of engagement from you further confirms my feelings that you don't take this functionality or our concerns seriously. In general, I like the Fitbit, but it annoys me all over again when I accidentally scroll down to the 'feminine health' section of my device display. 

Menstruating Fitness Friends, if you like simplicity, I recommend WomanLog Period Tracker. It's an unfussy calendar with reminders, birth control and fertility tracking, and some customization options. Also allows you to back up and restore your history so you can take your data with you from phone to phone. It was my go-to for many years. https://www.womanlog.com/ 

I recently decided I wanted something a little ✨flashier✨, so I moved over to Clue, a woman-owned product. https://helloclue.com/ 

Even the free version has a great interface that brings a little fun to the task of period tracking. I like the reminders and how you can customize the things you track, like flow heaviness, cramps, exercise, sexual activity, energy levels (and much more).

If Fitbit won't give us the functionality we need, know that there's better out there.

[FitnessTiger]

I like it when it works.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well.  As others have said, it frequently doesn't save symptoms.  I originally liked how it visualized those symptoms with the cycle so you could easily find patterns.  Now it has gone haywire.  My predicted period was off a few days - things are getting less regular as I enter peri-menopause, and I can't edit.  It won't save.  The app thinks I have a 54 day cycle and counting (things aren't that irregular yet).  It added in a second period for this month, as though my regular period I tried to edit doesn't exist even though it is clearly indicated on the calendar.  I can't delete this erroneous period, now the cycles are messed up, and the whole point of tracking is lost.  There is no support for the feature, and no one seems to be paying attention to complaints of it not working.  Why get us interested in using something if you're not going to support it?

[MathildaOak]

It hasn’t. Past periods still

move when I add a new one which is ridiculously annoying and means I can’t trust any of the history. Just because I log an early start day of bleeding, doesn’t mean my previous ovulation has to change. I hate it and spent years hoping it’s gonna work at some point but it doesn’t.. super frustrating when I am otherwise happy with my Fitbit!  

[sco94]

It hasn't. Editing periods is very frustrating as the predictions are way off and even if you edit the periods individually, it edits ALL the historical data as well rather than the period for that month so it's impossible to track accurately..

[Nicole_34683]

I have found it to be very helpful, and mostly accurate in prediction.  This feature has been a helpful tool to help me track not only my menstrual cycle, but also help me predict hormone triggered migraine episodes.  It is one of my favorite features on my Fitbit.

[Hannxm]

It's been incredibly helpful as someone who has incredibly unpredictable periods. When I first started my periods, I would mark it on my calendar but it would either not come at all or at a totally random date or even the week after. The tracker adjusts constantly to my cycle when I do have periods, unlike a classic calendar. It giving me a countdown to the days is also helpful so I can prepare just in case, as I often forget I even have periods and sometimes it will surprise me when I haven't prepared for it. So it's a pretty neat feature that I really enjoy using. 

[friluftsline]

It hasn't helped me at all. Tracking of menstrual cycle was one of the reasons I chose Fitbit. But after seeing that this function is no more advanced than the free app I have been using for years, I'm not impressed at all. Why not correlate the cycle to resting heart rate, as this is highly causal? Every month it looks like my cardiac health has decreased, or that I am about to catch a cold, when really it's just a natural sign of a healthy cycle.

It seems that Fitbit grossly neglect women's health (as have medicine in general done for hundreds of years).

[Hellyeahkate]

Yes, I couldn't agree with this more! And they could also link it to the temperature logging/skin temp in the Versa etc. Not to mention it would be good to also be able to track and have visibility of trends (eg pain or headaches).

I don't find this "feature" in the app helpful at all, and rely solely on a seperate app.

[SheKeepsFalling]

Amen! They don't care about this feedback, though. Notice how there is no staff feedback or updates on their plans to improve the functionality. And I've noticed that they tend to relegate actual feature requests to locked threads so we can't discuss or give feedback to each other. Just awful that they get so much right but fail so blatantly and unapologetically in this respect.

[DMCrake]

As a post-menopausal woman, it is a waste of useable data space. It is utterly ridiculous that this so called “feature” isn’t optional as I’m also certain that the majority of men aren’t using it. Your admins & developers obviously don’t understand the actual concept of a feature-HINT: if people don’t use it or don’t want it, it’s not. Thanks in advance for moving my comment to the locked burial ground thread of “we know but we don’t care” &/or “this is never going to be an option, stop asking about it”.

[SheKeepsFalling]

@YojanaFitbit I'm begging for some staff engagement here. I tagged you over a year ago to get an official statement from a Fitbit employee. I just got an email that you marked another basic suggestion as Not Planned. I just want some reassurance that this "female health" functionality isn't dead in the water. Because it certainly has no laurels to rest on- y'all have work to do. 

[GAW97]

It's some of the worst tracking I've ever seen. I use Glow and Ovia to track now. My FitBit is always dead wrong when it comes to my cycle. The neglect given to female customers is something else... I spent money on this watch, the least I expect from it is that it has features which works.

[Marieluise]

I did use it to plan, (as my cycle is fairly regular), and used the data for my conversations with my gyn. It has been helpful to see what changed, as I and my body change. 
Which is why I am so gutted, that currently my entire calendar is gone (after the update) and I seem to have lost all my back data. Is there an option to get that back, so I can use it for my upcoming gyn appointment.
Happy to learn about a work-around or where to find it on the desktop version of the app. 

Thanks!

[Nmaexercise]

I agree. This is SO DISAPPOINTING. Fitbit clearly does not care about its female consumers.