The Problem That Started Everything
When my partner Simran and I first got together, she struggled, badly, with PMS. Cramps that stopped her in her tracks. Headaches that came out of nowhere. Mood shifts she could feel coming but couldn’t explain. Days where her energy had completely vanished. Days where irritability arrived before she did.
Simran is one of the most self-aware people I have ever met. She knew her body. She could feel the patterns. She would sometimes apologise a few days later, not because she had done anything wrong, but because she sensed something had been off and she couldn’t fully explain why. She knew something was coming. She just didn’t have the map, or the tools to do anything about it.
And the world kept telling her that this was normal.
This is just what periods are like. All women go through this. Take some ibuprofen. Try the pill.
I watched this and something in me couldn’t accept it. I refused to accept “this is just how it is for women.”
Something was missing. Something deeper needed to be understood.
Seeing What Others Had Missed
As a strength and conditioning coach and high performance specialist, I had spent years working with professional athletes, c-suite executives, at one of the UK’s leading health food brands and one of the UK’s premium gym chains. My entire career has been built around one question: what does this body actually need, right now, to perform at its best?
When I looked at Simran through that lens, something became clear very quickly.
She was not living in her natural rhythm.
She was spending a lot of time in high stress states. She was doing ice baths and saunas in the mornings, practices that while beneficial in the right context, were riling up her nervous system at exactly the times when her body needed to be brought down, not fired up. She was eating, moving, socialising, and recovering as if her body operated on a fixed, unchanging system, like a man’s body does, on a 24-hour hormonal cycle.
But a woman’s body doesn’t work like that. It never did. And she knew this, however, in the patriarchal world we have lived in up until now, research for women has not been prioritised. It is time for that to change.
What They Never Told Us About the Female Cycle
Here is something that most of us were never taught in school, by doctors, or by the wellness industry:
A woman’s hormones do not operate on a 24 hour cycle. They operate on a roughly 28 day cycle, moving through four distinct phases, each one governed by a different hormonal profile, each one calling for a completely different kind of support.
During the menstrual phase (days 1–5), estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest. The body is in a state of active release. Energy turns inward. The nervous system craves warmth, stillness, and anti-inflammatory nourishment.
During the follicular phase (days 6–14), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) rises and estrogen begins to climb. Energy and mental clarity return. The body is awakening, literally rebuilding its uterine lining and preparing an egg for ovulation.
During the ovulatory phase (days 15–19), luteinising hormone (LH) surges and estrogen peaks. This is a woman’s most energetic, communicative, and outwardly radiant phase. The body is at its most open and expressive.
During the luteal phase (days 20–28), progesterone rises and the body begins to turn inward. If conception hasn’t occurred, hormone levels start to fall. This is where PMS symptoms most commonly emerge.
Research published in Archives of Women’s Mental Health confirms what women have always known in their bodies: these hormonal shifts have profound, measurable effects on mood, energy, cognition, pain perception, and social behaviour. Yet for decades, the wellness industry has sold women solutions designed around male biology and handed them over as universal wisdom.
That was the gap I was determined to close.
The Periodisation Approach: Applied to the Female Body
In elite sport, we don’t just train athletes hard and hope for the best. We use a method called periodisation, the strategic planning of training, nutrition, recovery, and rest in phases, each one deliberately designed to prepare the body for the next.
You start with the end goal. Then you reverse engineer every step of the journey.
That is exactly what I did for Simran.
First, I observed. I tracked everything, tracking her energy levels, her moods, the foods she craved, when she wanted to socialise and when she wanted silence, when she could push and when she needed to rest. I mapped every shift across the full 28-day cycle, the way I would track performance data for an athlete preparing for competition.
Then I went deep into the science. I studied what happens on every single day of the female cycle, including when FSH peaks, when estrogen rises, when LH surges, when progesterone falls. I looked at what each hormonal shift demands from the body in terms of nutrition, hydration, sleep, movement, and nervous system support.
Then I reverse-engineered it. What does the body need during the menstrual phase to ease inflammation and support rest? What does it need during the follicular phase to amplify that rising energy? What supports ovulation without overwhelming the system? What brings the luteal phase back to calm without suppressing it?
I had the framework. Now I needed the ingredients.
Why Synthetic Supplements Weren’t the Answer
When I started researching what could support each phase of the cycle, I kept running into the same wall: synthetic supplements. Pills designed to flatten symptoms. Hormonal contraceptives designed to override the cycle entirely.
This wasn’t what I was looking for. I wasn’t trying to suppress Simran’s body. I was trying to give it what it needed to thrive, on its own terms, in its own rhythm.
So I went back further. Much further.
I found myself in the research of Ayurvedic medicine, where the concept of supporting the female body through its natural rhythms has existed for thousands of years. In the traditions of ancient African herbalism, where plant medicine was understood as a system of working with the body’s intelligence. In shamanic plant rituals where herbs were used not to override the body, but to honour and support it.
And crucially, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
Because while these traditions are ancient, the science validating them is very much contemporary.
The Science Behind the Blends
Every ingredient in every Mosha Cha blend was chosen intentionally, backed by published research, and aligned to a specific phase of the cycle.
Ginger, which anchors our Restore blend for the menstrual phase, has been shown in multiple meta-analyses to be as effective as NSAIDs for primary dysmenorrhea. A 2021 systematic review published in PMC, examining 638 studies across five randomised controlled trials. It found ginger significantly outperformed placebo for menstrual pain severity (mean difference 2.67, p=0.0001). Separately, a landmark meta-analysis published in Pain Medicine (Daily et al., 2015) confirmed the effectiveness of 750–2000mg of ginger powder during the first three to four days of the menstrual cycle. This is not folk wisdom. This is clinical evidence.
Turmeric, also in Restore, brings curcumin: one of the most studied natural anti-inflammatories on the planet. A 2024 meta-analysis published in PMC, examining five randomised controlled trials involving 379 women, found curcumin significantly alleviated both PMS symptom severity and dysmenorrhea pain compared with placebo. A separate clinical trial published in ScienceDirect (2020) found turmeric supplementation reduced menstrual pain. In some conditions, this outperformed mefenamic acid alone. Curcumin works in part by inhibiting prostaglandin synthesis. This is the same mechanism as ibuprofen, but without the gastrointestinal side effects.
Chamomile, which features in our Calm blend for the luteal phase, has been validated in human clinical trials for both physical and psychological PMS symptoms. A 2021 study published in ScienceDirect found chamomile was significantly more effective than placebo for menstrual mood disorders. It also outperformed mefenamic acid for the psychological symptoms of PMS. A broader review published in Gavin Publishers (2022) confirmed that German chamomile tea reduces menstrual pain, anxiety, and PMS scores in human trials. The mechanism is well understood: chamomile’s flavonoids influence progesterone levels via the pituitary gland and its apigenin compounds bind to GABA receptors. This calms the nervous system naturally.
Lavender, also in the Calm blend, featured in a 2025 double-blind randomised controlled trial published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Health Care and Sciences, as part of a natural PMS supplement that significantly reduced symptom severity compared with placebo over three consecutive menstrual cycles. Its anxiolytic and nervous system-calming properties are well established across multiple systematic reviews.
Raspberry leaf, central to our Glow blend for the ovulatory phase, has been assessed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as a traditional herbal medicine for female reproductive support. Rich in fragarine (a compound that tones the smooth muscle of the uterus) and tannins that support uterine wall strength, raspberry leaf has a centuries-long history of use in women’s reproductive health that modern research continues to validate.
Cinnamon, in the Restore blend, has been shown in clinical studies to stabilise blood sugar during menstruation and reduce pain, nausea, and vomiting in the first days of the cycle, a particularly significant finding given that blood sugar dysregulation is one of the lesser-known drivers of PMS severity.
Peppermint and lemon balm, in our Bloom blend for the follicular phase, support the nervous system’s transition from rest to activity: peppermint for its natural analgesic and digestive properties, lemon balm for its well-documented ability to ease anxiety and support mood stability during hormonal transition.
This is not a collection of herbs chosen because they sound nice. Every single one has a published mechanism of action, aligned to a specific hormonal phase, chosen to support the body as it actually is, not as we have been told it should be.
So Why Is No One Talking About This?
This is the question I kept coming back to as I dug deeper into the research.
The studies exist. The evidence is there, sitting in peer-reviewed journals, published by universities and medical institutions around the world. Ginger performing on par with ibuprofen. Curcumin reducing PMS symptoms in randomised controlled trials. Chamomile outperforming pharmaceutical painkillers for the psychological symptoms of menstruation. The science is not hidden. It is just not profitable.
Here is the reality that the wellness industry does not talk about openly: organic herbs cannot be patented. You cannot own a plant. You cannot charge a premium margin on something that has grown freely from the earth for thousands of years. There is no billion-pound pipeline behind ginger root. There is no shareholder return in chamomile tea.
Pharmaceutical solutions, by contrast, generate enormous profit. The global menstrual health market is driven overwhelmingly by pain medications and hormonal contraceptives, products that manage and suppress symptoms rather than address root causes. A woman who understands her cycle, who nourishes her body through each phase, who no longer needs to reach for a painkiller every month, is simply not a repeat customer in the way the industry has been built to require.
This is not a conspiracy. It is just the logic of profit.
And the women who paid the price for that logic are the ones who were told, for generations, that pain was normal. That mood swings were just part of being a woman. That the answer was a pill.
But go back far enough, and every ancient culture knew differently.
In Ayurveda, the female body and its rhythms were considered sacred. Specific herbs, foods, and practices were prescribed for each phase of a woman’s cycle, not to fix a broken body, but to honour an intelligent one. In ancient African traditions, plant medicine for women was community knowledge, passed from mother to daughter, healer to healer, across centuries. In shamanic lineages across cultures, the menstrual cycle was not a burden to be managed. It was understood as a source of power, a map of a woman’s inner seasons, something to be moved with rather than against.
Every ancient culture, in its own way, was deeply devoted to women. They understood the importance of the female body’s rhythms long before modern medicine arrived and decided it knew better.
That knowledge did not disappear. It was simply deprioritised, underfunded, and crowded out by solutions that were easier to sell.
Mosha Cha exists to bring it back. Every woman deserves to thrive and live in flow with her body. Not despite her cycle. Because of it.
What Changed for Simran
The shift was not overnight. Real change rarely is.
But over weeks and months of living in alignment with her cycle, supported by the blends, guided by the food and movement and rest frameworks we built together, something fundamental changed for Simran.
The confusion started to lift. The apologies stopped. Not because the cycle disappeared, but because she finally had a map. She knew what was coming. She knew what her body needed. She had the tools to meet each phase with something other than ibuprofen and willpower.
Less unpredictability. Better sleep. More energy in the phases designed for energy. More genuine rest in the phases designed for rest. A body that felt understood, rather than one she was constantly fighting against.
This is what is possible when women are given the right support. Not control. Not suppression. Support.
Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Evidence
The thing that struck me most in this whole process was how consistently the ancient traditions and the modern science agreed with each other.
The knowledge was always there. In Ayurvedic texts thousands of years old. In African plant medicine passed through generations of women. In shamanic traditions that honoured the cyclical nature of the female body long before science gave it a name.
What was missing was not the wisdom. It was someone willing to take it seriously, cross-reference it with peer-reviewed research, and translate it into something a woman could hold in her hands every single morning.
That is what Mosha Cha is.
This Is What Mosha Was Built For
Mosha Cha is not a period tea. It is a performance system for the female body, built on the same principles I have used with professional athletes for over 15 years, grounded in clinical evidence, and rooted in the ancient wisdom of traditions that understood the female body long before modern medicine decided it was complicated.
Every blend (Restore, Bloom, Glow, and Calm) was built for a specific phase of your cycle. Every ingredient was chosen for a specific purpose. The 30-page digital cycle syncing guide that comes with every box was written to give you not just a product, but a framework for understanding your own body.
Periods are not meant to be painful. You are not meant to have cramps that stop your day. You are not meant to white knuckle your way through mood shifts and exhaustion every single month. Moving through each phase of your cycle with ease, with energy in the right places and genuine rest in others, is not a luxury. It is what becomes possible when your body is actually supported.
That is what we are here to do at Mosha.
The pain, the mood swings, the unpredictability, the months of just pushing through. This was never inevitable. It was the result of a world that never gave women what they actually needed.
Mosha was born to change that.
It was born through observation, through research, through thousands of hours of study and love and devotion to one woman’s wellbeing. Then to every woman’s.
We built this for Simran. Now we are sharing it with the world.
Because every woman deserves to understand her body. Every woman deserves to thrive in her own rhythm. And every woman deserves a cup of tea that was made with her, all of her, every phase of her, in mind.
Mosha Cha Cycle Syncing Tea Kits are available now at mosha.co. Each box contains a one-month supply of all four phase-specific blends, a ceremonial yoni steam kit, a hand-picked crystal tea strainer, and a full 30-page cycle syncing guide.
Our teas are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult your healthcare provider before beginning any new herbal supplement, particularly if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or taking medication.
References
- Daily JW et al. Efficacy of Ginger for Alleviating the Symptoms of Primary Dysmenorrhea: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials. Pain Medicine. 2015;16(12):2243–2255. doi:10.1111/pme.12853
- Negi R et al. Efficacy of Ginger in the Treatment of Primary Dysmenorrhea: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. PMC / Cureus. 2021. PMC8021506
- Shabanian Boroujeni Z et al. Effects of Curcuma longa (turmeric) and curcumin on the premenstrual syndrome and dysmenorrhea: A systematic review. SAGE Journals. 2024. doi:10.1177/22840265231219331
- Bahrami A et al. Effects of curcumin on menstrual pattern, premenstrual syndrome, and dysmenorrhea: a triple-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. PubMed. 2021. PMID:34708460
- Okuyan E et al. The effect of turmeric on primary dysmenorrhea: Prospective case-control study. Journal of Surgery and Medicine. 2021;5(7):715–717.
- Razavi M et al. The effect of Matricaria chamomile on menstrual related mood disorders. ScienceDirect. 2021.
- Jenkins G, Etheridge CJ, Mason P (2022) Herbal Infusions and Women's Health: A Review of Findings with a Focus on Human Studies on Specific Infusions with Studies on Extracts to Evaluate Mechanisms. Journal of Nursing and Women's Health 6: 178.
- Mirzaee F et al. Natural relief for premenstrual syndrome (PMS): a double-blind clinical trial on the efficacy and safety of PMSoff. Journal of Pharmaceutical Health Care and Sciences. 2025. doi:10.1186/s40780–025–00495–6
- European Medicines Agency. Assessment report on Rubus idaeus L., folium. EMA/HMPC. 2014.