Manage menstruation with an app: Who needs a circle on the calendar?

​Women hate prissiness about periods. A whole new lexicon is developing for that time of the month, along with apps to manage it. Chloë Hamilton wears her red badge with pride

Auntie Flo chart: the Clue app tracks periods and tells women when to expect PMS

Here's a question that's only directed at half our readership (the other half, as we know, doing whatever it can to avoid mentioning menstruation). What do you call your period? Personally, I favour “on the blob”. It's light, it's funny – it's everything my period is not.

I put the same query to a number of my female friends. “I've fallen to the Communists” was one particularly inspiring suggestion; “riding the crimson wave” another. Some didn't want to say and only a few opted for “my period”. Euphemisms, it seems, are still the easiest way for women to refer to their cycles. And for evidence, we need look no further than a press release from Clue, the period-tracking app.

This week, Clue announced the results of a global survey of 90,000 women, examining their attitudes to periods. The study – the largest-ever of its kind, conducted in conjunction with the International Women's Health Coalition – revealed more than 5,000 different euphemisms in 10 different languages. In Sweden, women say “Lingonveckan,” meaning “lingonberry week”, while the French say “les Anglais ont debarqués” – which means “the English have landed” and refers to our historically bloody habit of invading their territory.

Still, while the way women talk about their periods might be dated, the way they keep track of them could not be more modern. In fact, it appears that an entire generation of women are eschewing the traditional red dot on the calendar in favour of period tracking apps (such as Clue) which let them know when Auntie Flo will be popping by.

Ida Tin, 36, co-founded Clue in 2013 and the app is now used by more than 2.5 million women from nearly 200 different countries. “I think there is a lot of information that women don't have easy access to,” says Ida. “I wanted it to be a tool to manage that part of life.”

So users are invited to log their details – date of birth, weight, length of cycle and period date – before the app predicts the date of their next bleed, as well as informing them when they're most fertile and most likely to suffer from the dreaded PMS. Similar apps include Period Tracker, Life, Eve – and Period Log, which language school owner Vicky Payne, 40, says she uses to check her regularity. “I don't even know what day it is half the time,” she explains. “But this warns you how many days late you are, and also when you are fertile and your exact ovulation date.

“The only thing you have to remember to do is to log the start of each period on the day that it arrives.”

Not too difficult – given how, in recent years, both men and women have started using all kinds of apps to monitor their health. We have a morbid curiosity, it seems, with our own mortality. Runkeeper, MyFitnessPal, Strava, FitBit, Sleep Genius and My Diet Coach are just some examples of health and fitness apps that have become popular. No wonder, then, that women have taken to digitally deconstructing their menstrual cycles.

What's more, period apps also provide peace of mind for women keen to avoid unwanted pregnancies. PhD student Becca Mavin, 24 – who is on a single-hormone contraceptive pill – gets only two or three periods a year and says she uses Period Tracker to monitor her own fertility. “This is a huge positive for me,” she says. “Periods are an inconvenience and always made me feel dreadful, but the one thing I miss about them is the monthly confirmation that I'm not pregnant.” She need worry no more. Period Tracker lets her know if she's in the fertile “danger zone” of her cycle, and thus more likely to conceive.

There may be a social aspect to these apps, too. Perhaps they will help to break down the reticence about menstrual cycles by educating women about their bodies and allowing both them and men to talk more openly about periods – at any time of the month. Ida certainly hopes so. “I think it breaks down taboos when people know more,” she says. “It makes it easier to have a conversation.”

After all, amusing as it is that Swedish women have “lingonberry weeks”, joke-names only reinforce the fact that – for too many people – menstruation is still unmentionable.