Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working For You

Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working For You

Maisie Hill

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Period Power is a profound but practical blueprint for aligning daily life with the menstrual cycle, to give women a no-nonsense explanation of what the hell happens to their hormones every month and how they can use each phase to its full advantage. Ninety per cent of women experience symptoms of PMS, a syndrome which features a wide range of signs and symptoms and yet there’s an enduring lack of understanding about what it actually is, and a disappointingly meager range of treatment options. So many of us have a Jekyll and Hyde experience of our lives; we feel on top of the world, capable, confident and sexy for part of each month, then find ourselves in a state of physical and emotional discomfort and fatigue, wanting nothing more than to collapse on the sofa in front of Netflix. But what if instead of just trying to plan for our dark days, women were equipped with ways to improve them? What if our desire to improve ourselves could be combined with our need to know just what our womb and ovaries are getting up to every month? Not to mention how to take advantage of the natural superpowers that sit in each phase of our cycle, so that we can plan our month to perform at our best. Maisie Hill is uniquely placed, as an acupuncturist, women’s health practitioner and doula, to explain just how we can achieve this, as well as focusing on particular milestones that require an altered approach, such as coming off hormonal birth control, infertility, pregnancy, motherhood and the perimenopausal years. Using what Hill calls the cycle strategy--a woman’s secret weapon when it comes to improving her relationships, career and health--she will apply the principles of Eastern and Western medicine to give women all they need to make sense of their cycles, as well as accessible and practical suggestions through which readers can improve their physical symptoms, and stop berating themselves because of the way that they evolve through each menstrual month.


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  • amanda
    Mar 06, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

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  • garrido30
    Mar 29, 2025
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    This book provided a detailed insight into menstruation as split up into four phases, and provoked fascinating conversations on thinking more deeply about oneself and listening to one's body at each stage, rather than trying to work against it to conform to capitalist hyper-productivity. The intersectional lens did not go unnoticed, and I especially appreciate the parts of the book that assess queer and race theory. Although more could have been done, I appreciate that this is not a Sociology text and that this was not the focus of the book. One main flaw is that it sometimes read like a textbook and contains copious amounts of information which are hard to digest and I doubt my brain has retained much of it. One last critique, perhaps not of the book itself, but more of medical diagnoses in general, is that so many of the symptoms for the conditions mentioned, such as hypothalamic amenorrhea, PCOS and hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism, have largely the same symptoms and it is easy for any mild hypochondriac to self-diagnose with various new illnesses after reading this book.

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