Period Power by Maisie Hill

Period Power by Maisie Hill ISBN-13: 9781472963611 Paperback: 352 pages Publisher: Green Tree Released: July 2, 2019

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, modified from Goodreads:
Ninety per cent of women experience symptoms of PMS. And so many of us feel on top of the world, capable, confident and sexy for part of each month followed by a state of physical and emotional discomfort and fatigue for another part. 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.


My Review:
Period Power is a women's health book focused on our menstrual cycle and reproductive hormones. It has some really useful scientific information plus her ideas about how to deal with the ups and downs of your cycle. It gets detailed and technical (which I wanted!), but it's not difficult to follow. You can understand the author's points even if some of the technical terms are new to you. You can jump to a section that interests you and start there. She usually gave a detail explanation in one spot with a brief explanation in the other spots that needed it. The mild repetition helped me to remember the information, too.

The author started with some basic (but detailed) information about your reproductive organs and hormones and what's normal during different parts of your cycle. She teaches a simple method for tracking your cycle so you can spot patterns in your energy, attitude, etc. She also suggested things you can do to work with these different parts of your cycle (when different hormones are increasing and decreasing). She talked about concerns and changes that happen during different times in your life (your first periods, trying to conceive, pregnancy, perimenopause, after menopause, for transgender, etc.). She also talked about things you can do to improve your cycle (involving diet, exercise, etc.) and covered potential problems you may experience (long or short periods, light or heavy flows, long or short cycles, no periods, PMS, PMDD, cramps, ovarian cysts, etc.) and what you can do about it. She also brought up period poverty and some other activist issues, but I felt like she was trying to increase awareness rather than force the reader to share her opinions.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.