Extend the 10 day period tracker

[MissJules]

At present periods lasting more than 10 days cannot be logged accurately. I have endometriosis. My periods are random and last a lot longer than that. I am on day 43 on this period for example. I can't use your tracker because it won't allow me to log more than 10 days if bleeding. please consider extending this to an unlimited amount so people outside the norm can use this service too. 

[Bronthe]

Dear Fitbit,

---

@AlessFitbit wrote:
Fitbit Update: 08/5/18

Hi everyone - We realize that everyone is different and are working to expand period logging beyond 10 days in the future. As we launched female health tracking in our app, we aimed to meet the needs of most women, and existing medical research told us that the majority of women (90%) have periods that are 10 days or less. In the meantime, we encourage customers to log flow intensity details if they have periods longer than 10 days. 

---

I would like to see your source for that...

Nevertheless, you are offering a service that invites a user bias. The people who have a nice stable cycle won't feel the need to use Female Health Tracking like the people with issues. This group should be your target group. They want to use this feature to give them insights, map the symphony and build a case for their doctor. Because unfortunately these symptoms are often not taken serious until it is to late... (think cancer)

And this 10 day limit and only 1 period per month and black dots instead of the actual symbols make this a useless tool.

Fitbit consciously made the decision to program in the 10 day limit (a message, url link etc) which will force the statistics to be skewed towards being 'normal'.

With Fitbit being all about statistics I feel disappointment that Fitbit decided to allow skewing of this very important health data.

With all the research and data available you could even use this data (really long periods, heavy bleeding, too frequent periods etc) to give advice: "we see that you are bleeding a lot, don't forget to replenish your Iron so you won't go anemic" or whatever. Like you do with the sleep service.

[SunsetRunner]

"As we launched female health tracking in our app, we aimed to meet the needs of most women, and existing medical research told us that the majority of women (90%) have periods that are 10 days or less."

1) What is your peer reviewed source for this comment?

2) Why should the "10%" of us who don't fit the "majority" not also be represented? Would 10% be relevant if it were a 10% loss of customer base? 

3) Based on this logic, why isn't the sleep tracker restricted to a pre-determined number of hours that 90% of users typically get? Or the food tracker limited to logging a number of calories based on the consumption of 90% of people? 

I realize that we have already received the response that this is being looked into, however, I hope that this situation serves to better inform future developments. If the development team opts to create content toward a "norm" there needs to also be an option that accounts for the natural and NORMAL variances that exist within human physiology. Anything less marginalizes the experiences of a percentage of your user base, generates frustration among users, and misses the mark on being a health enhancing, possibly life saving, feature. 

[shanaqui]

Re this comment: "1) What is your peer reviewed source for this comment?"

I'd love to know too. I just did a literature search and couldn't find anything obvious. How recent is the research? Who was it carried out by? What was the sample size? How was the research carried out? How did they define a period (e.g. did they count one day of intermittent spotting as a period)?

[Donna80]

There are three limits that should be removed then -

Duration - 10 days limit

Interval - 100 days limit, 1 per month

[investor]

It is a given that most periods are within 10 days. 90% seems about right.

Here is one source, from NIH (May 2017):"About 9 to 14 out of 100 women have heavy periods. A period that lasts longer than five to seven days is considered prolonged menstrual bleeding." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0072478/

I don't think there should be a day limit, and you should be able to manually add a symptom that if added by many it can be flagged to tech so that it can be added (so that in future software updates new users don't need to add it manually). If Fitbit adds many options it will get complicated, reducing usage, it is a balancing act to make everyone happy.

[Britishbunny]

Please add a menapause selection on your app. I have trouble using your app as it won't let me go past 10 days on my cycle....I bled for 5 weeks then had 4 days off bled again for 3 weeks and so it goes on.....

It would be great so we can see if they are getting shorter and further apart so we can say that once past a year with nothing we can clearly see its all over at last. 

[Koakle]

I agree with what's already been said.  My periods are normally a minimum of 10 days so there is no point in me using this part of the app until its modified.  I don't really understand why a limit was set in the first place.

[Koakle]

I forgot to add, I also often get more than 1 period a month so removing this limit would also be very helpful.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @Britishbunny, thanks for explaining why you need this option in the Fitbit App! I've moved it into a similar suggestion which has a lot of votes. As the more votes and comments an idea has the more visibility and momentum it gains. 

[Britishbunny]

Thank you. 

[Donna80]

The 100 day limit is just short of a 4 month cycle (112 days). Remove the arbitrary limits that are alienating your customers!

[vpd108]

I completely agree! I just emailed customer support about this very issue and they directed me here. I recently changed methods of birth control from the pill (20yrs) to an IUD. My body is now trying to regulate itself and I have periods longer than 10 days. 

A couple of things to consider.

1) If a young woman is using this (say early teens), it may be unnerving to receive a pop up that states "Periods cannot be longer than 10 days." She may get scared and think something is wrong with her.

2) Every woman's body is different. We aren't built from a mode with the same settings. The female health tracker should acknowledge that and work for everyone. Not the average. 

[SunsetRunner]

Did anyone else get the helpful email “these 8 period facts might surprise you”?

I’ve got some period facts for FitBit

1) most women spend most of their lives trying not to get pregnant

2) lots of women have periods >10 days in length

3) lots of women don’t have regular cycles

4) of those women with periods >10 days long, exactly 0% of them are happy with FitBit telling them that the maximum length of a period is 10 days. Unless FitBit could pass that message to our uterus, in which case it would improve our lives

I don’t need a watch telling me my body is impossible.

[SunsetRunner]

Oh, and their “helpful” “facts” include the following “menstrual bleeding can last anywhere from two to eight days and can occur every 21 to 35 days”

[Donna80]

Can we add another fact -

5) the interval between periods may exceed 100 days.

[Britishbunny]

Hi ladies. I hope they listen to us all. I have just had 9 months of hell were I have  been on my period for 7 months overall. Come on fitbit  sort your app out for us ladies on the next stage of our lives. 

[Kwalz0815]

I wish my period would just listen to the app:”your period can’t be longer than 10 days” 

unfortunatly it just doesn’t care and continues flowing. I really want to keep track of that. So please remove the limit. 

[LanuzaFitbit]

Hi everyone thanks for sharing this suggestion. This is being discussed although I do not have a firm commitment or timeline at the moment. Do continue to vote for this feature suggestion whilst it’s under consideration.

Please note that if something is under consideration and chosen for development, it can be a while until it's released or until I have any news to share. Please watch this space for any updates! Thanks for your patience.

[Donna80]

@LanuzaFitbit, Can you confirm the discussion concerns removing all three limits - the max duration, the max length, and the min & max interval/cycle, and not just one of these limits.

[JuliaMc14]

I would also like to see this 10 day limit removed. And although this doesn't apply to me anymore, I can see where it would be nice to be able to mark time as pregnant or postpartum, where applicable.

[Kateli38]

It would be great if you could remove the 10 day limit per period on your period health tracker! 

I'm currently on month 4 of having the hormonal IUD coil. For the first 6ish months, the side effects are unusual period cycles, including extra short or long periods. 

[Spidermandy]

I would love to see the original reasoning behind the decision to limit accurate period tracking. I'm failing to see a downside to allowing user flexibility here. Please get this updated. I'll even take an extra button click in user settingsset get that feature working on the app.

Also, symbols showing up on the days for other trackers would be nice too. I don't track anything anymore because there's one stat I want to see most, but I can't tell when it was by glancing at daily black dots.

[leduck]

I won't be using this feature anymore because it will not allow the length of any period to be longer than 10 days, making this whole feature quite useless. Editing periods on it is a real pain, which is odd since that is the reason for this feature. I'm peri-menopausal and think that your assumption that women don't have periods longer than 10 days is adorable but shows you really don't know your audience and their health needs very well. I'm open to using this feature again if this bug is fixed, but there's no point in using it if I can't track my periods accurately.

[AlexandraFitbit]

Hi @leduck! Thanks for sharing this suggestion, I moved it to this similar post so you can add your vote to it. Please keep sharing your ideas!

[SRGonzales2010]

Thank goodness I am not alone!! I have PCOS, and yes we have extended periods, longer than 10 days for sure!! It would be amazing if we could have an extended cycle time. I am currently on day 14, and quite frankly I don't know when it will stop. My previous app aloud me to log however many days needed. My doctor also request I track my periods, with this one I can't.