Open TikTok right now and you’ll find millions of young women diagnosing their own endocrine systems from a 30-second video.

If you’ve been on #WomensHealthTok recently, you’ve seen it: green “fertility juices” that promise to cure PCOS, and creators filming themselves crying about the “luteal uglies” – that period right before your period where influencers claim you become unrecognisable and need to be fixed.

As a biomedical science student at Westminster in London, I live in both worlds. In the lab, I’m taught to demand peer-reviewed evidence, controls and statistical significance. On my For You page as a young woman who is chronically online and loves beauty, I’m told my biochemistry can be reset with a carrot, a grapefruit and a £45 bottle of wellness drops. But my studies have already taught me that my biochemistry cannot be fixed by an algorithm — and believing it can is putting us all at risk. 

What Are The “Luteal Uglies?”

The term has gone viral because it gives a name to something many of us quietly feel. In the late luteal phase, oestrogen and progesterone naturally dip. Progesterone withdrawal can cause water retention, skin sensitivity, irritability, and fatigue. It is normal human physiology.

What TikTok does is rebrand this normal dip as a medical flaw. The fix? According to influencers: don’t leave the house, don’t book important meetings, buy their cycle-syncing supplement bundle. It turns a shared female experience into something shameful that needs to be cured and monetised. For Muslim women like me who already navigate so much scrutiny around our appearance and energy in public spaces, being told we have a week every month where we are inherently “ugly” is particularly damaging. Islam recognises menstruation through specific religious rulings, but the Prophetic example shows that menstruating women were not treated as untouchable or something to be hidden away. Aisha RA narrated that the Prophet ﷺ would rest against her while she was menstruating, drink from the same place she drank from, and allow her to comb his hair. These small acts of affection and closeness beautifully demonstrate that menstruation did not diminish a woman’s dignity, desirability, or place in everyday life. In contrast, the TikTok trend risks repackaging the same old misogynistic idea that menstruating women are somehow dirty or should withdraw from society. 

Deconstructing The Fertility Juice Myth

The “luteal uglies” are just one example of a much bigger conversation happening online about women’s bodies and reproductive health. Once the algorithm has convinced us that normal hormonal changes need to be managed, optimised or fixed, it’s not much of a leap to see the same thinking applied to fertility. The claims may look different, but the underlying message is similar: your body isn’t quite doing what it should. Consider a recent viral recipe: raw carrot, grapefruit, ginger and “hormone balancing” drops, claiming to instantly cure Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS), formerly known as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), and endometriosis despite both being complex medical conditions.

From a biochemical perspective, this is sheer fiction. Your endocrine system is not a kitchen sink you can flush out with the right products. It’s a tightly regulated feedback loop between your hypothalamus, pituitary gland and ovaries — the HPO axis. PMOS is a complex endocrine and metabolic condition, and its new name reflects that it extends beyond the ovaries — a point recognised by the 2026 global consensus published in The Lancet (Teede et al., 2026). Endometriosis involves tissue similar to the uterine lining growing outside the womb.

Sure, a diet rich in fibre and antioxidants supports general well-being. But it does not change your gene expression or reset your cellular hormone receptors overnight. When we promote juice as a medical alternative, we trivialise disorders that affect 1 in 10 of us. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), endometriosis is estimated to affect 1 in 10 women of reproductive age in the UK, yet we risk delaying women from seeking real help when we present wellness products as medical alternatives. I’ve seen friends in our community spend £80+ a month on unregulated powders instead of booking a GP appointment because they were told doctors “don’t understand natural healing.” 

Why Are We So Vulnerable To This?

From my own experience, I think Muslim women can be particularly vulnerable to this because conversations about our bodies can already feel complicated. Modesty, cultural expectations and wanting to feel understood by healthcare professionals can sometimes make it difficult to speak openly about intimate health. I have experienced this personally through living with a long-term autoimmune skin condition for the past four years. It has been an ongoing part of my life, affecting my comfort, confidence and everyday experiences, yet I have also had my symptoms dismissed by a doctor as “exaggerated,” partly because the specific causes of the condition are not fully understood. That experience taught me how damaging it can be when something you have been living with for years is questioned simply because medicine does not yet have all the answers. When healthcare feels dismissive and cold, it can make the algorithm feel comparatively warm, affirming and even sisterly – as though we are getting advice from a trusted companion and not an influencer with a brand deal. When this is the reality, it becomes easier to understand why women may turn to the timeline for answers.

Wellness marketing knows this. It borrows the language of wholesomeness, and even of the deen – “natural,” “pure,” “clean,” “ancestral” – to sell products that have zero lab data behind them. It tells you to abandon hormonal contraception or skip smears in favour of “cycle-syncing” without ever showing you a peer-reviewed trial.

Evidence-based care is not anti-natural. In Islam, we are encouraged to seek knowledge and treatment, so we don’t need to dismiss every TikTok video outright. Instead, we should use them as a starting point and ask: where is the evidence, is this person qualified, and are they informing us or selling us something? For me, health literacy means staying open-minded about what we see while checking claims against reliable research, trusted medical sources and qualified healthcare professionals. 

Trusting The Lab Over The Feed

In our biomed degree, we are taught to ask one question: “Where is the evidence?” Here are three filters I now use on my own feed, and maybe they’ll help you too:

• Point, Evidence, Explanation: If a creator makes a claim — “this juice lowers testosterone” — ask for the evidence. Is it a single anecdote, or has it been tested in a controlled trial, where one group gets the treatment and another doesn’t, so researchers can see if it actually works? What is the explanation for how it works at a cellular level? If they can’t answer beyond “it worked for me,” that’s not science. 
• Look for regulation: In the UK, supplements are not medicines. They don’t have to prove efficacy before being sold. Real medicines do.
• Follow scientifically literate Muslim women: We need more of us in this space – women who can talk about progesterone AND about Ramadan, who can explain insulin resistance without making you feel broken.

And if you’ve ever found yourself believing these videos, please don’t feel silly for it. I get it – and I’ve been there too. When you’re struggling with infertility, PCOS or endometriosis, you just want something that might help, and it’s completely understandable to hold onto anything that gives you hope. But please don’t feel like you have to try every viral remedy or blame yourself when it doesn’t work. Take what you see online as a starting point, check the evidence, and speak to someone qualified. You deserve proper answers, compassionate care, and reassurance that your body isn’t failing you.