Our claim to fame at Rescripted is that our Sex Ed system in America is completely broken, which is showing up in so many women’s lives as they reach their 20s and 30s and realize they know nothing about their own bodies.
“The menstrual cycle has four phases…? I thought the menstrual cycle was just your bleeding period!”
“How do I know when I’m ovulating?”
“Where’s my cervix? I mean, I know it exists but I have no clue where it is.”
“How do I know if I’m fertile? Is there a blood test for that?”
“Is XYZ normal? Is it normal to have XYZ? Do you experience this too?”
Body literacy is a must for optimal health
We’ve heard these kinds of phrases from women of all ages and have normalized the experience of not knowing your body when in reality, it’s not normal to not know your body.
When we don’t understand our bodies, we can’t proactively care for them, channel them in the ways we’d like, actively improve them, and show up as our best selves.
Body literacy is a must if you want to take a preventative approach to your health, prevent chronic illnesses from developing, feel fulfilled in your own skin, and live an optimized life in general.
Clearly, we aren’t getting the education or tools we need to understand our bodies during Sex Ed in 9th grade, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t resources available to us in our adult life to finally understand what’s happening beneath our skin.
The technology boom has also made so much of this accessible to us in the palm of our hands and in the comfort of our homes.
10 biohacking tools for better understanding your body as a woman
Our team, being naturally obsessed with all things and everything women's health, has tested just about every women’s health wearable, tool, app, device, and service out there that has to do with understanding your body on a deeper level.
We put in the leg work over the years so you don’t have to go through all that testing and learning. And this is our summary of our most admired picks!
1. Oura Ring Gen3 (Wearable)
The Gen3 is Oura’s latest ring version, equipped with 3 easy to understand scores (Readiness, Sleep, Activity) that help you understand where your body’s at across recovery, sleep, and activity, and what your active needs are for today.
Gen3 also arms you with blood oxygen sensing SpO2 insights (helps pinpoint any breathing disturbances), live workout and daytime heart rate readings, menstrual cycle predictions, nap detection to account for extra Zzzs, automatic activity detection to record all your movements, guided meditations, sleep sounds, and more.
Oura comes in a seamless ring form factor, which is great for women because it doesn’t clash with outfits or jewelry like other wrist-worn wearables tend to and is lightweight to the extent you barely even notice it’s there.
2. Natural Cycles (Cycle Tracking and FDA-Approved Birth Control)
Natural Cycles is more than just a cycle-tracking app. It’s the only FDA-approved form of digital birth control, cleared by regulators in the US and Europe.
Their algorithm and app have been clinically tested and proven to prevent pregnancy 93% of the time when used correctly, which is more effective than a standard condom alone.
They use changes in your basal body temperature (BBT) taken from a traditional oral thermometer to predict which stage of your cycle you’re in and whether or not you need to use protection that day.
Natural Cycles also provides you with daily and long-term insights about your body, while helping you link physical and emotional symptoms to certain stages in your cycle so you can understand the routine changes your body goes through as someone born female.
3. Know Your Lemons (Breast Self-Check)
Know Your Lemons is a breast cancer foundation that’s on a mission to increase rates of early breast cancer detection through creative and empowering education, which they’ve been able to achieve through their app.
Know Your Lemons teaches you how to self-examine your breasts, the difference between a normal lump and a suspicious one, and calculate your risk score. They also provide you with a custom screening plan so you know exactly when you need to get a mammogram done and how to prepare for it ahead of time.
4. Eve by Glow (Period Tracker and Sex App)
Eve is an app that predicts your next period and ovulatory window, tracks your mood and symptoms so you can discover trends in your cycle, and enables you to take daily sex quizzes so you can become your own “sexpert.”
Eve also grants you access to their community, which is like having an extended friend group specifically for discussing all things sex and health.
Their mission is to use their community to bring together women who have questions they need answers to, but would be too afraid to ask in traditional settings, while also empowering women who have been there before to share their pro tips.
5. Rosy Wellness (Sexual Wellness App)
Rosy is a sexual health app developed by healthcare professionals for the 43%+ of people who experience sexual health concerns. They provide you with personalized wellness plans that meet your unique needs on your own schedule, all with the goal of helping you optimize your sexual health and sex life.
They offer expert knowledge, behavior change tools, thought reframing, support, and recommendations for follow-up all within the app. Everything from body image to low sex drive to sexual trauma to stress and fatigue are all areas designed to be managed through Rosy.
Plus, they have on-demand, group live events and virtual coaching sessions that give you the chance to connect with sex experts and other members so you can ask the hard Qs you’d otherwise be apprehensive to put out there, while also learning through other people’s experiences so you can get one step closer to a more fulfilling sex life.
6. Loom (Sexual & Reproductive Health Information App)
Loom is a sexual and reproductive health information app, designed to help women learn about their bodies and feel better in them. They offer a symptom checker tool that enables you to check in with your body on a daily basis and offers possible causes, including those pertaining to sexual and reproductive health that often get skipped over the traditional medical field.
They also have a downloadable guide that helps you choose the right doctor and understand how to best advocate for yourself as a patient with a uterus.
7. Open (Mental Health App)
Open is a mental health app that offers both guided and live mindfulness, meditation, mindful movement classes like pilates, and breathwork sessions.
Their breathwork classes are built to help you shift your state so you can transform your mental and physical reality within minutes, while their mindful movement classes help you restore your body and mind in tandem, and their mindfulness sessions are designed to cultivate inner growth and help you ground your nervous system.
All in all, if you’re looking for a resource to help you get connected to your inner self and nourish your mental health, this is one of the best out there from a quality perspective.
8. Oova (Lab-Quality Fertility Tracker)
Oova is a fertility tracker that provides lab-quality results to help you decode what your hormones are trying to tell you. They leverage at-home urine test strips with ultra-sensitive hormone detection technology to give you instant access to your luteinizing hormone (LH) and progesterone levels, removing the need for a blood draw to get insight into your fertility status.
By using the Oova app, you’re able to translate your results within minutes to get a clear understanding of what your hormones are saying at any given moment. The Oova app then provides you with actionable information to guide you in your fertility journey. The best part is, Oova gets smarter and more accurately tailored to you over time as you continue to use it.
9. Feminade (Online Women's Health Concierge)
Feminade is an online concierge for women's hormone and reproductive health. They help women get to the root cause of their symptoms through advanced at-home hormone testing, telehealth visits with a team of women’s healthcare experts, evidence-based holistic treatments, and online education.
Their hormone test combines the benefits of the two most useful methods, 24-hour urine, and saliva testing, into one simple test to provide a comprehensive evaluation of your sex hormones, adrenal hormones, and more.
Following your test, you get to schedule a consultation with their licensed healthcare team to review your results and get a personalized treatment plan. From there you monitor your progress over time and continue to self-educate through their online resources as you learn more about what’s working and what’ll require more iteration.
10. Noula (Data-Driven Hormone Health App)
Noula is an app that helps you unlock the full picture of your body’s hormone health so you can get data-driven answers for what you need to feel your best and relieve any problematic hormonal symptoms like hair loss, low libido, lack of energy, irregular periods, painful periods, PCOS, and more.
Their flagship test measures 9 key hormonal biomarkers that help you and your Noula care coach build a care plan that’s customized to you. From there, your coach works with you to pick an area to focus on so you can uncover your body’s triggers and patterns, then build an actionable plan to address your active needs and track your progress.
11. Cronometer (Diet, Exercise, and Health Data Tracker)
Cronometer is a health and fitness app that helps users track their diet and exercise habits. Impressively, Cronometer has a database of 1.2 million verified foods, and users can log their meals and get a breakdown of the calories, vitamins, and minerals they consume.
By downloading the free Cronometer app, you can do all sorts of things, including get valuable health reports and charts, so you can learn how nutrients and metrics correlate over time, and, if you're on a special diet for a health issue, you can get support from their team and content. What's more, Cronometer can sync with other apps and devices you might use, like Apple Health, Fitbit, Oura, and more.
Caroline McMorrow is Rescripted's Content Manager.