Discover Cycle Phase Insights: Understand your body, feel empowered
At Clue, we believe knowledge is power—especially when it comes to understanding your own body. That’s why we built Cycle Phase Insights: to bring clarity, guidance, and community connection to your menstrual cycle experience.
Cycle Phase Insights is Clue’s most personalized feature yet—a science-led feed that goes deeper than tracking. It offers real-time insight into what’s happening hormonally at each phase of your cycle, and how that influences your mood, energy, focus, symptoms, and daily experience.
Now available just below your Cycle View, Cycle Phase Insights helps users tune into their body’s natural rhythms through personalized hormonal explanations, science-backed recommendations, and crowd-sourced tracking insights from the broader Clue community. The result: a deeper, more contextual understanding of the cycle—when it matters most.
"If I'm feeling not 100%, the first thing I do is check Clue for... a clue." — Anonymous
Why we built it
Your menstrual cycle isn’t just about your period. It’s a hormonal rhythm that can influence so much of your day-to-day life, including your energy, mood, sleep, focus, digestion, and more (1). But for many people, these shifts can feel confusing, unpredictable, or even invisible. Cycle Phase Insights was built to change that.
Developed by Clue’s in-house science team, the feature breaks the menstrual cycle into six hormonal subphases—early follicular, late follicular, ovulation, early luteal, mid luteal, and late luteal. Each represents a unique hormonal environment based on patterns observed in clinical endocrinology and user data.
Designed for depth
You might wonder, “Is what I’m feeling connected to my cycle?” This feature helps you explore that question with insight and agency. Users can explore their estimated subphase, see common experiences reported by others, and track what’s relevant to them—whether that’s mood, pain, cravings, or focus. Integrated content offers practical tips, while the Analysis tab provides long-term pattern recognition through tools like Feelings Analysis and Cramps Insights.
What you’ll get with Cycle Phase Insights
Within each subphase, you will receive:
Hormonal insights: Clear explanations of what’s happening biologically.
Personalized recommendations: What to track and how to support yourself.
Community insights: Aggregated, anonymized data from others in the same subphase.
A smooth, scrollable interface: A new continuous layout in the Cycle View.
Whether you’re managing symptoms, planning self-care, or just getting to know your cycle more deeply, Clue gives you the tools to connect the dots.
The science behind it
Your menstrual cycle is a complex hormonal dance, but no two experiences are exactly alike. Cycle Phase Insights breaks your cycle into six subphases that reflect distinct hormonal environments, helping you learn what’s typical—and what’s uniquely you.
Understanding your hormonal landscape starts with tracking. Certain hormone shifts, like the luteinizing hormone (LH) surge before ovulation, or the progesterone drop before your period, are consistent in timing (1). But how those changes feel in your body can vary widely, both between individuals and from one cycle to the next.
That’s why tracking matters: it turns daily symptoms and sensations into patterns you can see, understand, and respond to.
What’s a subphase?
Subphases are specific slices of the menstrual cycle that reflect meaningful changes in your body’s hormone levels (2). Each subphase represents a hormonally unique environment, and these shifts can influence how you feel (2-7).
We’ve chosen these six subphases based on well-studied hormonal patterns seen across menstrual cycles. Understanding them helps you interpret your experiences and spot your personal patterns.
Here’s how they unfold:
Early follicular (from the start of your period to ~6 days before ovulation)
Estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest. Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) rises to support new follicle development (8).
Late follicular (the fertile window leading up to ovulation)
Estrogen rises to its highest peak, stimulating the growth of the uterine lining and triggering the luteinizing hormone (LH) surge that signals ovulation (8,9).
Ovulation (your predicted day of ovulation)
The release of an egg is marked by a sharp drop in LH and estrogen (1,10). This is a hormonally distinct transition point in the cycle (1,10).
Early luteal (days just after ovulation)
Progesterone begins to rise rapidly as the corpus luteum forms (10,11). Estrogen also starts to rise again, creating a secondary peak (1).
Mid luteal (when progesterone peaks)
Progesterone reaches its highest level to support a potential pregnancy (1). Estrogen remains elevated, but below its follicular peak (1).
Late luteal (the days just before your period begins)
If pregnancy has not occurred, progesterone and estrogen levels drop sharply—this hormonal withdrawal triggers the start of menstruation (1).
While the general hormonal pattern is well understood and consistent across cycles, your personal experiences (like mood, energy, sleep, or symptoms) can vary, not only from person to person, but from cycle to cycle.
That’s why tracking is so valuable: by observing your own data alongside the science, you can better understand what’s happening in your body and how it relates to how you feel.
How to use Cycle Phase Insights
1. Open the Cycle View: Now scrollable, so you can explore your entire cycle at a glance.
Note: If you have hormonal birth control set in your profile, or if your predicted cycle is shorter than 20 days, Clue does not provide subphase predictions.
2. See your subphase: Based on your cycle data, Clue estimates which subphase you're likely in. (Keep in mind that this is an estimate—it’s based on the information you log.)
3. Explore insights: See what’s happening hormonally, and what common experiences others report in this phase.
4. Track what matters to you: Get suggestions on what you might want to track—like energy, mood, pain, or cravings—and see what others in the community are tracking. Remember, these are just starting points. Your tracking can (and should) reflect what you experience.
5. Discover related content: Find science-backed tips to support yourself and deepen your understanding of your body.
6. Look for patterns over time: Go to the Analysis Tab and explore other tools, such as Feelings Analysis, Cramps Insights, and Cycle History, to connect your daily logs to your broader hormonal journey.
Some features of Cycle Phase Insights, such as community insights and related science content, are exclusive to Clue Plus. Subscribe to Clue Plus to unlock the full experience and gain deeper insights from your data.
Why it matters
Understanding your cycle is about more than predicting your period—it’s about building a deeper connection to yourself. With Cycle Phase Insights, you can:
Anticipate changes: Understand your personal patterns and why they happen.
Support your well-being: Notice how your cycle may influence your experiences, and make choices that feel right for you.
Feel empowered: Replace uncertainty with clarity and self-knowledge.
Know you’re not alone: See how your experiences compare with those of the broader Clue community.
What the Clue community is saying
"Being able to put my symptoms in days before my cycle helped me learn certain things about my body. What foods I should eat during each phase, helped me understand my mood more and not feel so isolated in my menstrual journey." — Jaiya, USA
"It’s been an app that’s helped me see how irregular my cycles were and how they affected my skin and mood... Clue’s been so helpful and gives me an easy insight into myself, my health, and my life." — Ivy, USA
"I discovered that [my migraines] were only happening during my luteal phase when estrogen and progesterone change dramatically... It has made the biggest difference in my health and my mood, and I’m very grateful that Clue makes it easy to track and understand our complex female bodies." — Racquell, Reno, Nevada
"I’ve learned so much about my body and have been better understanding how my appetite, strength, sex drive, and feelings are affected through the seasons of my cycle. Thank you, Clue!" — Ryle, Chesapeake, VA
"Clue has allowed me to better understand my own human experience through a scientific lens and has validated the symptoms that I would have never been able to keep track of myself. It has led to further education about hormone levels in all stages of my cycle, and ultimately has provided an opportunity for me to shape my life around my hormonal changes, and stop fighting them." — Anonymous
Cycle Phase Insights is designed to make your app experience more personal, practical, and supportive. It can help you feel more in tune with your body because your cycle is a source of strength, not a mystery.
Subscribe to Clue Plus to unlock full Cycle Phase Insights.
