About Gabrielle Lichterman
In 1999, Gabrielle, a women’s health journalist, made a breakthrough discovery: She realized she could organize and connect the complicated jumble of thousands of studies describing how hormones impact women and plug them into every day of a menstrual cycle calendar.
The result was a new type of menstrual cycle calendar that enabled women to do something never before possible: Women would be able to easily predict what their moods, health and behavior would be based solely on where they were in their monthly cycle.
By arming women with this knowledge, Gabrielle was confident this would make their lives better. That’s because women could now plan their day, week and month around the predictable ebbs and flows in mood, energy, memory and more. And they could anticipate the hormonal benefits and challenges that lie ahead.
Spreading Hormone Cycle Knowledge
Since making her discovery, Gabrielle has pioneered the practice of applying hormone research to everyday life and spearheaded the movement for women to live in sync with their menstrual cycles. She created Hormonology as the way to do this.
Hormonology offers a suite of useful tools for women to learn about their hormone cycles, including her Hormone Horoscope Apps (for women and teen girls), Female Forecaster App (for male partners of cycling women), book (28 Days: What Your Cycle Reveals about Your Moods, Health and Potential), videos, blog and newsletter.
Gabrielle shares hormone knowledge in lectures and classes and offers private consultations with individuals, partners and families.
She is a sought-after expert, sharing important and useful information about hormone cycles in newspaper, magazine, radio and television interviews worldwide.
She has also shared hormone cycle knowledge as a spokesperson for Procter & Gamble’s Always “Have a Happy Period” campaign and Instead Softcup.
Gabrielle’s Mission
Every week, Gabrielle receives emails, tweets and Facebook messages from women who tell her: “I wish I’d known this information when I was younger.” “Before I learned about my hormone cycle, I felt like I was losing my mind.” “If I’d known all this sooner, it could have saved me so much time and frustration.”
While most girls receive basic information about what to expect from menstruation during the “period talk”, virtually none are told how their new hormone cycle will be impacting their moods, energy, memory, love life, spending habits, sleep quality, food cravings, health and more all month long.
This lack of information frequently leads to years of self-doubt, worry, frustration and confusion when girls and women can’t understand why they feel or behave a certain way or why health issues worsen, then improve, for no apparent reason.
Therefore, Gabrielle’s mission is to share Hormonology with others to ensure that all future generations of girls and women have this critical hormone information from their very first cycle. Find out how you can join her mission here.
How Gabrielle Invented Hormonology
In 1999 while combing through research for a health article she was writing, Gabrielle came across a study in the journal Nature that revealed women feel more drawn toward masculine-looking men during the fertile phase of their cycle due to peaking estrogen and they feel more drawn toward feminine-looking men during other phases of their cycle due to lower levels of estrogen.
At the time, hormone research was hidden away, considered too boring or taboo to cover in the media. Generally, the only information women were given about their hormones were about how they made them grouchy during their premenstrual week. So, the idea that hormones could impact women at other stages in their cycles and in ways other than mood was eye-opening.
Yet, as surprised as Gabrielle was by this study, she had a hunch that there were more studies like this that revealed how hormones impact women’s emotions, behavior and health across the menstrual cycle. So, she set out to find them.
For several years, she collected and pored over thousands of hormone studies conducted by noted scientists from around the globe, read book after book about women’s hormones and interviewed leading hormone researchers.
Two Important Conclusions
As a result of her exhaustive research, Gabrielle came to two important conclusions:
1. Hormones impact virtually everything women do.
The hormones in a woman’s monthly cycle affect nearly every aspect of her day—mood, energy, memory, libido, appetite, food cravings, spending habits, chattiness, confidence, pain sensitivity, chronic illness flare-ups, verbal ability, how much muscle she builds, how much fat she burns, how quickly and accurately she moves, extroversion, introversion, creativity, optimism, pessimism, patience, anxiety, sleep quality, spatial skills and so much more.
What’s more, these hormonal effects impact women all cycle long. They don’t only pop up during periods or premenstrually. Hormones affect us every single day.
2. Hormones enable women to predict the outcome of their day.
Hormones have different effects on women from day to day. For example, on Day 7 of a woman’s monthly cycle, she’s more energetic due to the pep-boosting effects of rising estrogen. On Day 18, she’s more subdued due to the sedating effects of rising progesterone.
However, these hormonal effects repeat the same way on the same days cycle after cycle.
This means that healthy, naturally-cycling women can use their hormone cycle to predict what every day will be like with scientific accuracy.
The Daily Journal
Armed with these insights, Gabrielle kept a daily journal for three months, detailing virtually every aspect of her life—her moods, foods she ate, products she purchased, how much she talked or how quiet she felt, her libido, how many invitations to social events she accepted or turned down, aches and pains, you name it. And, she was impressed by how much her moods, health and behavior mirrored the findings in these hormones studies.
Yet, after examining the science behind hormones, all these changes made perfect sense.
Gabrielle now understood why one day she could be outgoing, yet another day introverted. Why one day she could be full of energy, yet another day fatigued. Why one day she could be attracted to rugged types, and another day to sensitive artists. And so on.
Even better, she could now accurately predict when she’d be feeling a certain way based solely on where she was in her monthly cycle.
Writing The Book
Wanting to share her insights with other women, Gabrielle continued researching hormone studies. In 2005, she included the results of her years of work in her groundbreaking book, 28 Days: What Your Cycle Reveals about Your Love Life, Moods and Potential. Published by Adams Media, it was world’s first and only daily “horoscope” based on a woman’s monthly hormones.
28 Days was named “One of the top 10 women’s health books of 2005” by About.com and translated into four languages.
Fourteen years later, in 2019, Gabrielle published a comprehensively updated and expanded edition of 28 Days. You can find the new 28 Days in paperback and eBook at Amazon.com around the world. Learn more here.
A Career Of Sharing Health Research
Considering Gabrielle’s background, it’s not surprising that she was the person to make the breakthrough discovery that the vast store of medical research about women’s hormones could be organized and linked together in a daily menstrual cycle calendar.
That’s because Gabrielle has forged a long career as a women’s health journalist specializing in hunting down important, well-constructed health studies that aren’t widely publicized, but are instead hidden away in medical journals. She then reports on them in a way that’s simple for readers to understand and easy for them to implement into their lives in practical ways.
For the past two decades, millions of readers have learned about vital medical advances and study-proven natural remedies through the articles Gabrielle has written for dozens of major print magazines around the globe including Cosmopolitan, Cosmogirl, First for Women, Glamour, Marie Claire, New York Daily News, Woman’s World and Working Mother. She’s also the former editor of WebMD’s health newsletters where she covered a wide range of health issues.
Gabrielle is driven by a passion to help people improve their lives—whether it’s sharing scientific research that shows how to lift their moods, improve their fitness or lower their risk of illness and disease.
So, when she began studying hormone research, she quickly realized this was information that would help women improve their lives in many ways for generations to come. That’s when she focused her passion on hormones—and created Hormonology.
In addition to creating new Hormonology tools to share hormone information, Gabrielle continues to be a full-time health journalist. You can regularly read her articles about the latest medical research and health trends in Woman’s World, First for Women and other magazines.
Have questions or want more information? Get in touch with Gabrielle
