Woman's Hour - The Menstrual cycle: what's normal?

Episode Date: August 28, 2019

Data from a large study of women's menstrual cycles shows that just thirteen per cent of women experience a 'text-book' 28 day menstrual cycle and that the date of ovulation can vary significantly. Professor Joyce Harper who led the study, explains the significance of the research for couples trying to calculate the best time to conceive.Lisa Jewell is celebrating twenty years as a bestselling author. Her first novel, Ralph’s Party, was published in 1999 and was the best-selling debut novel of the year. Since then she has published another sixteen novels, including a number of dark psychological thrillers. Lisa joins Jenni to talk about her latest, The Family Upstairs and to talk about her career as a writer. Another in the series of features about life Off The Rail. Candy Huxham has been a youth worker since 1991, when she left banking and she hasn’t looked back. She set up the Handy Trust – a charity in Hythe and Dibden, Hampshire – offering advice on anything from drugs, to teenage sexual and mental health. One of those young people was Crystle Rogers. Fast forward more than twenty years and Crystle now works alongside Candy, also as a youth worker and supports kids like her former self. As well as running three youth clubs – they do drop in visits to schools, and street youth work out at night talking to young people. Reporter Jo Morris joined them.Cook The Perfect Caribbean Jackfruit Fritters. In her first book, Rachel Ama’s Vegan Eats, Rachel takes inspiration from her Caribbean, West African and Welsh roots. She shows how you can take your favourite dishes and adapt them into quick, easy vegan recipes. She joins Jenni to Cook the Perfect… Caribbean Jackfruit Fritters. Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Caroline DonneInterviewed guest: Professor Joyce Harper Interviewed guest: Lisa Jewell Interviewed guest: Rachel Ama

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday 28th August. In today's programme, a new novel by Lisa Jewell, celebrating 20 years as a best-selling author. The Family Upstairs is a dark psychological thriller. Another in our series, Off the Rails, and a second chance to hear Candy and Crystal.

Candy left banking to work with young people, helped Crystal when she was a troubled teenager, and now they're youth workers together. And Cook the Perfect. Rachel Ammer, the author of Vegan Eats, cooks Caribbean jackfruit fritters. Now, we've always assumed that the average woman's menstrual cycle lasts for 28 days. There's a period at either end, and somewhere in the middle, you might be fertile enough to get pregnant.

It looks like we may have been wrong. A study of the cycles of nearly 130,000 women has concluded that only 13% of us have the classic 28-day cycle, and the moment of ovulation can vary enormously. Joyce Harper is Professor of Reproductive Science at the Institute for Women's Health at University College London and led the research. What prompted the study? So I've been very aware that we've had this historic textbook 14 plus 14 day menstrual cycles. And now we've got this technology, these fertility apps and menstrual cycle apps that are monitoring millions of women's cycles. So I contacted one of the companies last year and said, can we have a look at your data and re-evaluate the menstrual cycle and see if we really do have the majority of women having 28 day cycles. And what did you find? So we found that

they didn't. And I was so interested in the range. So we say 28, but we also say sort of 25 to 30. And yes, the majority of women did fall between 25 and 30 days. But we saw women with very short cycles and women with very short cycles and women with much longer cycles. And I think one of the messages is that we're all individual and what's right for us is fine. And we mustn't try and think we must all have a 28 day cycle. But these apps can help us really evaluate our reproductive health. So if you're a woman trying to get pregnant, how does your study help? So there are over 100 so-called fertility apps on the market and over half of them are just looking at dates.

So I teach master's students and they told me last year that they're using these calendar apps that call themselves fertility apps and they tell them the day they're ovulating. And I said, but we can't do that. You can't just assume that you're going to ovulate in the middle of your menstrual cycle. And our data definitely shows that. So there are fertility apps that do measure other things. So in this study, we looked at basal body temperature. This is your temperature that rises on the day you ovulate. And there's also a hormone that we can measure called luteinizing hormone it's just measured in your urine just we on a stick and this will tell you you're going to ovulate in a few days so apps that look at these and these technologies have been used for many years without even using an app you can just measure your temperature measure your lh and just mark it down on some

paper but using the apps it learns about your cycle. It has an algorithm that will learn and help the woman understand and pinpoint those days of ovulation. And that's the time when you need to have intercourse if you're trying to get pregnant. How important is it that you have it on the dot in order to get pregnant? Because sperm lasts much longer than eggs. Yes, the egg lasts for 24 hours

so that's really important but the sperm does last for about five days in the woman's system but the nearer you are to the day of ovulation the higher your chance of getting pregnant and one problem we have globally is that women are delaying having their first child so in the UK it's over 30 now for the average age women are having children and other countries it's higher than that. And I'm sure your listeners know that with female fertility declines quite rapidly in your 30s, especially after 35. So we're leaving a very small window for women to try to get pregnant. So I think using this technology to identify that fertile window and be sure that you're having intercourse as near as you can to the day of ovulation should really help women who are trying to get pregnant.

And if you don't want to use technology, is taking your temperature enough or you can test mucus, can't you you in the vagina yes that is the third way so it's to test your cervical mucus but the data does show that really you have to be taught how to do it it's quite tricky and to be honest a little bit messy so taking the temperature or measuring your hormone luteinizing hormone I think are two really convenient methods and yes you don't need to use an app but then you'd have to record it and you won't learn. The apps do learn about your cycle and help you in that prediction. So I think this, what we call Femtech, is a way to really help women and help educate women about their reproductive science. What was it about your own trouble getting pregnant that prompted your overall interest in this subject? I was very aware of female fertility decline and had intended to have children around about 30 but my relationship split up and I got to about 35 and I knew my biological clock was ticking so as soon as I met

my partner at 35 we started trying to have children. And back then we didn't have apps, but we did have some other different types of technology. There was a kit called Persona that I used to use to try and help identify that day of ovulation. I was unfortunately lucky in natural conception, had to go through fertility treatment. So I've had a very hard journey to have my three children and I really don't want other women to have to go through the pain and trauma that I did to try to get pregnant. So I really want to try and encourage women to be really aware about their fertility and if they want to have children to try sooner rather than later and to use technology that can help them increase their time to pregnancy. Professor Joyce

Harper, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. Now, imagine you're a young woman. You're the daughter of adoptive parents who have a job and a small flat in St Albans and then on your 25th birthday you discover you've been left an eight-bedroom house in Cheney Walk in Chelsea, one of the most expensive parts of London. Lucy finds out that it was in this house that she was discovered as a baby, well-dressed and cared for, lying happily in her cot whilst in the kitchen below, there are three decomposing corpses. In The Family Upstairs by Lisaisa jewel lucy has to find

out what happened and why lisa obviously we've got to be really careful here not to give anything away because this is a gripping novel um and we won't give any spoilers but why house in cheney walk in chelsea it seemed to me maybe that's everybody's dream house I can't say it was particularly my dream house for me it was more I live in London I walk around London and I live in a very nice house in London but I often see these other houses in London and I my mind boggles with the concept of who on earth lives in these enormous enormous houses how can they afford to live in these enormous houses and there's something quite anonymous about a lot of them. A lot of them are actually empty.

So I think part of choosing this huge house in Cheney Walk was that sense of anonymity, that sense that nobody's really looking because there's not that sense of community and a lot of these houses, I say, remain empty, unlived in. So that was more rather than choosing a dream house what sparked the idea though for a story which has three narrators lucy libby and henry and i think you saw someone at one point who sparked the idea yes absolutely i was in the middle of writing the book before

and i was in the south of france on holiday with my family and um we were in one of those very posh beach um beach club restaurants with the um on the decking with the little jets of water being sprayed on us to cool us down and I saw on the um the boardwalk behind the restaurant there was a shower block for members and I saw this woman very slim very brown slightly bohemian looking for some reason I just assumed she was British. There was something very British looking about her, dragging these two small children by the hands down the boardwalk into this shower block, clearly not supposed to be going into the shower block,

looking over her shoulder to make sure she hadn't been seen. And I'm sure there's a very banal explanation for why she was doing this, but I couldn't stop thinking about her. There was something about her. I just felt there was a story. I felt she didn't belong there. There was a story behind her. And so I went off and made one up for her.

And what inspired the idea, which is so frightening, of someone moving in into somebody's home and completely tearing it upside down? Yeah, well, that was the thing. When I decided I wanted to make a story for this lady in the south of France, I imagined that part of that story would be that she'd escaped from somewhere. And then I tried to imagine what she could possibly have been escaping from. And I thought a house of horrors is possibly what she'd been escaping from.

And so then very, very slowly, this perated through my my system into this idea of a man showing up one day um and yeah as you say without spoilers sort of slowly taking everything over you often write about families and unreliable parents and teenagers now that we've got uh henry lucy finn and clemency what attracts you to writing about teenagers? I don't know because even when I had young children I wrote about teenagers and I think in a way I was almost waiting to meet my children as teenagers

I have enjoyed this stage of parenting more than any other stage of parenting I don't really remember being a child myself I can barely recall anything about what it felt like to be eight years old but I can remember nearly everything more than any other stage of parenting. I don't really remember being a child myself. I can barely recall anything about what it felt like to be eight years old, but I can remember nearly everything about what it felt like to be 15, 16 years old. So, yes, I've always been writing about teenagers. And there's just something...

A teenager can be anything you want them to be as well. They're so fluid. They can be dark, they can be light, they can be ridiculously stupid and ridiculously brilliant uh they're capable of anything they haven't they're not fully formed so there's just so much freedom there you're celebrating 20 years as a best-selling writer but you didn't set out as a writer how did you begin a career? Ah I well I was actually um I was a secretary um when I started writing my first novel um I had and I just in fact been made redundant from my job as a

secretary and at that point in my life I was 26 years old I'd just come out of a very dark marriage I was celebrating my freedom um you know, I was back in London, back with my friends. And I did a little creative writing course just for fun. But at that point, if you'd asked me what I wanted to be when I was a grown up, I would have said I have absolutely no idea what I want to be when I'm a grown up. And I did secretly hope that I might meet a rich man at some point because I had no clue where my life was taking me and then I had a very fortuitous conversation with a friend on holiday shortly after I lost my job I'm saying you know you haven't you've been made redundant you know a lot of people use redundancy as an opportunity to change the direction of their life is there something else you'd rather

be doing than being a secretary and because I'd just done this creative writing course I found myself saying and possibly even thinking for the very first time in my because I'd just done this creative writing course, I found myself saying, and possibly even thinking for the very first time in my life, I'd like to write a novel, I think. And she made me a bet. She wasn't going to let me get away with it that lightly. It's like, you have no idea how many people have told me that they want to write a novel.

Write three chapters and I'll take you out for dinner to your favourite restaurant. So I did, and that was my first novel. And how easy was it to get it published? I think you sent it to quite a few people. It was, well, it wasn't that. It was just I sent it out to 10 agents and I got nine rejection letters

which absolutely as I'd expected because clearly I was a terrible writer and why on earth would anybody want to publish my book? But then the 10th one took it on. She made me do an awful lot of work on it. You know, it was my first novel so it needed to be bashed into shape. But yes, it was after that she was amazing. She got me a publishing deal very quickly.

Now, you began with romantic comedy and then you moved to these dark psychological thrillers. What prompted the shift? There was no prompt and there was no shift. It's been a very slow process because i've written 17 novels now um so i've had a long long time to go in a very slow arc from romantic fiction to what i'm doing now but there was one there was probably one point if you would like if you want to call it a shift uh where i was writing a novel about a a much married man it was called It was called The Third Wife

and it was supposed to be a study of the family, the impact on the family of a father going off and having more and more families with other women. And I was about halfway through it and I suddenly realised I was bored and I just thought this book needs something else. So I took The Third Wife, who I'd been writing about, and rewrote the first chapter

with her being thrown under the wheels of a night bus on Charing Cross Road. So therefore I'd killed my first character, and you can't kind of come back from that. So I think that cemented my journey into psychological drama. But what was the reaction of your publishers when they realised that you were changing your genre? Because I'm told they don't really like that. Yes, I've been incredibly fortunate. But actually, because I've been writing these non-romantic fiction books in

in the sort of my middle section of my career that were really they were kind of non-genre family dramas very hard to publish and very serendipitously at the same time as I started killing my characters I was handed over to the only editor who could take me on at that time after my other editor left, who happened to be their crime editor. So we just sort of came together at exactly the right moment. So I've been really, really lucky

that I've never had anybody throw up their hands and say, what are you doing? Where's your romantic fiction? You're not keen on police procedure though, are you? I'm not keen on research. I'm not keen on, i've i'm not keen on i'm not a learner i i feel i'm not a student i don't want to go off and learn anything new be it ice skating or police procedure or anything i'm very very lazy i don't like doing research so i use my characters to work

out the mystery um before the police are even called i've got my characters finding out exactly who who'd done it and what happened um yeah it's just pure laziness i love reading police procedure you you were writing another novel you had this idea yeah you wrote this one what happened to the one that you started oh well actually that was my first attempt at writing the book about the many times married man which ended up i ended up doing that about four or five books later um it was actually called the the life of dave the first time i wrote it i can't believe i can remember that but yeah that's just somewhere in a dark corner of my files on my computer well lisa jill i'm sure you'll go back to it uh maybe probably not probably not we just have another brilliant idea

watching a woman taking her children into a shower somewhere in the South of France. It's called The Family Upstairs. It's a really grippy read. Lisa, thank you very much indeed for being with us. Thank you. Now still to come in today's programme Cook the Perfect, Rachel Amah makes

Caribbean jackfruit fritters and the serial episode eight of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls. Now, you may remember that last week's programmes were all generated by you in Listener Week. You may have missed our discussion from Thursday's programme about book clubs. Now, Natalie and Melissa, the founders of the Black Girls Book Club, exchanged ideas and memories of wonderful books they've read with Doreen and Virginia, who are members of a club which began in 1967. Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Oh, we absolutely love that. Oh, these two have just... We absolutely love that. You must have heard them breathe deeply. We want to do that as a tribute to Toni. Oh, if you haven't read it yet, you must. We need to, we need to do it. I've read it.

Melissa's yet to read it, but we want to read it with the book club. We need to, we need to. I've read it. Melissa's yet to read it, but we want to read it with the book club. So it's just so nice to hear that. It just reinforces that. Shall I say that needs to be our next book? Because we'll have listeners who will come up to us and be like, we're not reading, are we? Yes.

I don't know, that's an amazing book. You've just ordered the rest of your group. Okay. That is the next book to read. That is the next book. Okay, beloved. And then Karen on Friday explainedlaimed why she feels like an outsider because she and her husband had to go into rental accommodation in their 50s. I think

because our generation as a general rule we're the Thatcher's children aren't we so we were 20 years old when we first bought our property and had mortgages continuously from that point until things started to go wrong for us in our 50s. And most people of our generation are still homeowners. And as being someone that's in rental accommodation as a consequence of lots of different unfortunate circumstances that all came together at the same time. We dropped off the housing ladder, an expression I completely hate, but it is a housing ladder. And I said, another thing I said in my email, that I sort of feel like a dirty little secret amongst the so-called middle classes because we're not talked about. So I go about life, generally speaking, keeping my circumstances to myself. And if anybody asks, I'll tell them.

But you get this slight recoil. It's barely perceptible. Do you really get that? Oh, really, really. Don't forget, you can catch up with all the Listener Week stories through the website, podcast or BBC Sounds. And do remember, please keep on writing to us because we really do

value everything you tell us on the programme, especially your suggestions. Now, in our series Off the Rails, we've introduced you to young people who've had a troubled time in their teenage years but have been helped to get back on track. Crystal Rogers is

one of them. Twenty years ago, she was supported by Candy Huksom, who became a youth worker in 1991 after she left a career in banking. She set up the Handy Trust, a charity in Hytham, Dibden in Hampshire, to offer advice on anything from drugs to teenage sexual and mental health. Well, Crystal now works alongside Candy. They run three youth clubs and work in schools and on the street. Jo Morris joined them on a freezing evening at the beginning of their shift

and asked Crystal why they go out on the road to talk to teenagers. It's just to give them a bit of reassurance really that we're around, a bit of support if they need it because actually they could have had a bad day at school and actually they need to let off some steam and actually they might not have gone home, you know, we've had cases, Paul, where they haven't technically gone home from school, so parents are worried. So we go out and just look. We also make sure they're just not causing

any trouble in the community, which then, nine times out of ten they're not, they just want to be with their mates. And it is a chance to talk, isn't it, to us? So yeah, it's making ourselves available. So it's a cold day, isn't it, to us? So, yeah, it's making ourselves available. It's a cold day, isn't it? It's freezing. Any weather, any weather as we go out.

See you later. So, Crystal, it's fair to say you got into a bit of trouble when you were younger. Yep. How did you meet Candy? I think it was through school, wasn't it? Your school and your dad phoned up and said, take her away, I can't stand it any longer. Yeah, my dad was quite... Find her somewhere else to live.

Yeah, because I gave him a rough time. His baby girl just wouldn't... Wouldn't conform. So, yeah, he said, take her away, but he didn't mean it. No. How old were you when you met Candy? 12. 12?

12, yeah. So you were very young. Oh, yeah. Not even a teenager. I rebelled really badly against my parents i hated them didn't want to live with them so my parents put in rules which every parent does i didn't agree with them rules so therefore i would rebel i wanted to be out with my mates i wanted to be out drinking i wanted to be out taking the drugs on the drug scene what you wanted when you wanted i wouldn't go home for days on end. She was missing.

Can you remember when you first met? What were your first impressions of? Well, very mouthy. Yeah, I did shout abuse at her. Yeah, really mouthy. And I didn't know whether she was going to play ball or not. What did you say to her? Can I repeat the words?

I said, what the F are you doing here? I don't need any effing help. She was like, well, I'll just say F, I want me to. And she did, just sat there and took it. So all the swearing. I kept going. I think I run you ragged. People were scared of Crystal.

Were you scared of her? No. So where are we going? So we're just going to go round to you at Wreck. We've got a skate park here. This is where our youth club is as well. Just to see if there's anyone out and about. There's groups that are bigger than 10.

Tend to be associated with social behaviour actually. It's about they just want to hang out but obviously large groups can be quite daunting. So it's pitch dark isn't it hello guys people were saying to me that crystal was going to get excluded from school she was going to do this she was going to do that so therefore you don't give up yeah so you just do it gently as in do your detached youth work find where that group is with crystal in it and then keep meeting up with them yeah she did she popped everywhere everywhere i went she was there i was like oh really what do you mean what she's popped up yeah i was hanging out with my mates i would go out and

walk in crystal what you doing and i'm like what you doing here yeah she would stand there and listen she'd talk and then if i was really angry or had a really bad day, a couple of fights, she would sit me in the youth club after a few punch-ups. Come on, let's calm down. Let's think about it logically. And it was a case of getting all my anger out, just releasing the anger. I don't even know why I was so angry.

Who's going to ask, why were you angry? I don't know. I don't know whether it was the move to such a village or whether it was my baby brother was the apple of everyone's eye because my mum went on and had another baby bit of both really everything child syndrome you know it was a social jump from town to village so we used to live over in savampton main centre and then we moved here back where my mum grew up and it wasn't what I was used to so you were sticking out like a sore thumb and also there wasn't anything too exciting going

on was there yeah so the older boys were much more interesting yeah and drinking down at the skate park drugging down at the skate park we always looked for this skate route quick yeah so places to run if the police turn up. Don't get yourself caught. No, and obviously down Lovers Lane. That was where we had a few good fights. So you were fighting? Oh yeah, I liked a good punch up then. Being honest, yeah, it was a good fun.

Yeah, she would flatten people just for looking at her. So this is another hot spot where their benches are, but they're empty tonight because of the free benches just there. On the corner of Tesco's. Oh, they? Mm. Do you turn around? Mm.

What do you see? There's some at the corner of Tesco's. Do you see some? It's like you saw them out of the back of your head there, Candy. Yeah, I've got a place on my very focals. It says, young person alert. It's hard to identify them in the winter because they've got all their hoods up and everything. In the summer you can see who they are straight away.

So looking at them, do you think you know any of them? Yeah, probably. No one listened. I could have quite easily lost my temper. It was the respect. Candy was respected in the village. She was the one that got you out of the trouble. You know, if you wanted to get your night in a police cell, Candy would come and sit with us. We were called Candy.

Yeah. And we get it now, don't we? Even I do. I go over and sit in the police station. Yeah, you can be an appropriate adult, yeah, in the police station for young people. I was like, I'm not having my parents there. I don't want them anywhere near me. And so Candy would be the one called out. So you came out.

Yeah. Take her home. I think the confidentiality helped. You weren't running back to my parents going she said this or she is doing this or confirming that i done drugs you know i think my parents they never had drugs around them when they were younger mum was brought up quite well and drugs was a big no-no so she didn't see the signs nor did my dad they didn't see the signs of what was coming or what I was doing. So it made them more horrified, really? Yeah, I think I did shock them quite a bit.

It was the pregnancy that completely... My dad didn't talk to me for five months. He was absolutely horrified that his daughter was pregnant as a teenager. How old were you when you got pregnant? 16. He was absolutely horrified. They didn't find out until i was four months pregnant your parents didn't find out no so i was four months pregnant for the rest of the pregnancy my dad didn't speak to me did you tell candy yeah candy knew for the day one yeah he's an absolute idiot oh he's not He's just easily led.

So how long have you known these three for? Oh, well, since they were at little school. When, like, police have came down, they've came down as well. Over what sort of things? What they would class as antisocial behaviour, wouldn't it? Yeah, if you listen to music loudly, they just come and, like, just get bare angry. You don't want to listen to them. You actually listen to Candy and Christian.

Do they listen? Sometimes. But if they're not ready, they don't. But what we say is, you're not ready yet. However, when you are, we'll still be here. So just contact us and then we can help you. So does she talk to you differently than other adults in your life yeah she was more calmer with me she would let me get my frustration

out to the point where i was then crying yeah she would break me to tears i don't know if that's legal i would like to question that yeah i don't know if it's legal to break people to tears and she would then she was never afraid to give a hug yeah we were told not to but yeah you gave always gave a hug when needed the hug was there and the other day when we were with the family and you were good cop and i was bad cop or whatever and we did the other day say to the boy you need a cuddle and we said it's okay to have a cuddle now and again. And that night his dad said, he did let me give him a cuddle. You do forget about the affection.

And I think I didn't have that affection at home because my baby brother was... Getting it all. Getting it all. He got all the cuddles. He'd sit on my mum's lap and you're like, hang on a minute. So you're like... Yeah.

So it does. I think people forget teenagers still need that hug now and again and the reassurance that it's actually all right to have your own opinion, but it's how you put your own opinion across. And I think we don't give teenagers enough information on how to put their own thoughts across without becoming angry. My dad don't come down here. I doubt he cares. I doubt your dad cares.

Yeah, like, you came in, like, one day, and we, like, all put condoms on these, like, yes what a weird they loved it people you say hey we did it well yeah fun i loved it we are trained to give out condoms and pregnancy tests and things so sometimes i have to leave one of those in a bag with the name of the young person behind the flower bush by the front door. But I always tell my family, don't answer the door. If you see someone there, they're probably just collecting something. But you need to build the relationship first. You then say, oh, you seem to smoke a lot. You know, do you need to? What happens when you smoke? You know, people get poorly and you can talk about it. You can't just go straight in like some youth workers think you can and say, right, you've just go straight in like some youth workers think you can

and say, right, you've got to stop smoking and I'm going to provide you with a six-week course to stop smoking. Well, they just laugh. They laugh. Because she listened and she took all the rubbish, whereas my parents would say, actually, Crystal, no, that's wrong, Candy wouldn't say it was wrong. She would be like, I don't know if you've thought about it this way and kind of gave me different scenarios around the same

situation whereas my parents I argued back constantly. You were a whirlwind just going round and round. So you kept on trying. Yeah yeah yeah don't give up don't give up. You can't with young people and I think that's I think that's what some of it was you know people move out of your life yeah and they gave up yeah and they gave up with me whereas Candy was just stuck with me like a magnet she wouldn't leave and you're like back in the day I just thought she was going to annoy me for the rest of my life I wasn't far wrong and you've been there you've done it and that's why you're good at doing what you do youth work because the young people can relate to crystal and we're quite lucky with the families we work with we build up a relationship with the

whole family not just the young person it's about helping the whole family because actually you can't fix a home problem if no one else is helping yeah they've all got to be in on it yeah and so it is quite intense candy Candy and Crystal spoke to Joe Morris. And if you've missed any of our previous stories about young people getting their lives back on track, you can search for Off The Rails on the Women's Hour website or you can listen, of course, through BBC Sounds. Now, you may have seen in the papers this morning

that vegan food has become the UK's fastest-growing takeaway, which means Rachel Ammer's book Vegan Eats could not be more timely and today she cooks Caribbean jackfruit fritters. Now Rachel we'll talk about the jackfruit in a minute but this Caribbean fritters this is based on a St Lucian recipe that your granny used to make? Yeah, so my grandma, she's from St. Lucia and she was an incredible cook and one of the things she was known for making was fish cakes but I wanted to make a vegan friendly version so I got inspiration from her

and I've made these using chickpea flour to bind it all together which is great for binding vegan food I've added loads of fresh herbs I've even added some jackfruit as a kind of, almost like a fish replacement, you could say. And it just makes it really delicious and makes these really nice vegan Caribbean fritters. Now, jackfruit is not familiar to me at all.

What is it? So jackfruit is a fruit. The origins of jackfruit are actually from India, and then it spread to Southeast Asia. And now you can see it in South America. You can see it in the Caribbean. And now we're seeing it in places like London. It's a really versatile fruit to use.

You can have ripe jackfruit, which is slightly brown on the outside, and it tastes kind of like a mango and a passion fruit combined in one. Or you have jackfruit that isn't quite ripe and it's kind of green on the outside and that's when people use it for savory cooking so whether they want to use it for a meat replacement to do like jerk kind of jackfruit tacos like pulled pork that's I think one of the most popular ways people are using it as a vegan food at the minute what does it taste like that when it's not like a mango? When it's not ripe, it's kind of similar to like heart of palm or artichoke.

It's quite savoury and a little bit salty and not too much flavour, which makes it great for adding flavour to. So what have you got putting together there? We've got the frying fat in the pan. We've got some oil in the pan. What kind of oil is it? Just any neutral vegetable oil for this. And then I've got some fresh herbs. So I've got some coriander and parsley,

which you'll see a lot of in Caribbean cooking. Kind of those fresh herbs, as well as green onions. So they're in this bowl with jackfruit, chickpea flour, tomatoes. I've added some nori flakes, which are seaweed, and they're going to add like a fish-like flavour to it. A bit of chilli in there. Mix it all together. Combine it with the jackfruit. And then you just fry them.

So it's really simple. It's all in one bowl. So you really do it just like you do a fish cake? Just like you do a fish cake. And then we're just going to add it straight to the oil. a nice sizzle going on yeah you became vegan four years ago i think about four years why did you start so um i ate almost everything before and then i one of my friends actually told me we were both talking about veganism and we both didn't really understand it. I didn't have any vegan friends or vegetarian friends.

And he was like, oh, try watching this documentary. It's really interesting. Went home, got bored, watched it. And my heart just kind of broke. And I had pets my whole life. And I suddenly looked at animals and the food I ate as the same thing. And the next day I went, I'm just not going to be a part of this anymore. And I went vegan.

So how easy did you find it to adapt your favorite recipes, the ones that you were familiar with, the ones that your grandmother had been so good at cooking, in order to be vegan? It was more of like this fun thing for me to do. I love food. I love the Caribbean flavors I was used to making. And then I went, if I'm going to go vegan, I want to enjoy it.

I want to love the recipes. And it became a task to then use the flavours, the nostalgic flavours I was used to. Like, I used to love having this brown shoe chicken that I had before. How can I make this with vegan? What different fruits and vegetables can I use to create different textures to make food just as delicious but also vegan you do have a recipe for juniper pasta using jackfruit again instead of tuna yes why is it such a good substitute for meat and fish well for me I wanted a lot of the recipes in the book are just vegetables but i wanted to have some nostalgic ones so tuna pasta was like my

university go-to i just made tuna pasta all the time i was like let's recreate this but vegan the jackfruit was just perfect for it because when you bite in the tins it is slightly salty it's very simple and adds a great texture so you can kind of see it's like stringy and it pulls apart which is a little bit similar to tuna so I wanted to use that including some nori sheets to get that kind of seaweed flavor and just make food that I love vegan as well. How often do you use it from a tin and And how big is the fruit if you buy it fresh? It's huge. So if you buy jackfruit fresh, you'll see them growing on trees in Costa Rica.

Not in England. Not in England. Or Scotland. Or Wales. No. So I don't actually cook with it often. It's like a specialty thing for me. But they're huge.

When you buy them huge, when you buy them fresh, they're so much more affordable than if you buy a tin and you get about 400 grams and you get a smaller portion but it's this big oval round beastly fruit um you don't want to stand underneath one if it falls from a tree because it would be very severe so they are sold on the market they are in this country now they've come into this country they are if you go to somewhere likexton Market, you'll see fresh jackfruit everywhere. How would you substitute? I mean, I was just thinking of what are all the familiar foods that I think I know with a Caribbean sort of background. Curried goat.

Yes. Oxtail soup. Yes. And jerk chicken. Yes. What would you put in a goat curry? In a goat curry? Well, I don't cook with soy and some people would use like a soy protein or seitan.

I'm not sure if you know the infamous seitan. Seitan's like the proteins of flour and it's binded and people use it as a meat replacement to do kind of fried chicken. But I like to use kind of fresh fruit and vegetables so I would use something like oyster mushrooms and when you grill them you get a really nice dare I say meaty-ish texture so we use the same seasonings you would in an oxtail and the same ingredients but instead of adding the meat I would add some grilled oyster mushrooms. And jerk chicken? Jerk is like my favourite there's's a lot of jerk recipes. I've even got in the book these barbecue jerk tacos where I've made a homemade barbecue jerk marinade. I've roasted them in the oven with some oyster mushrooms

so they kind of crisp up. And I've also got some plantain and some like deconstructed coleslaw and it comes together and makes these epic tacos. Hang on, what is deconstructed coleslaw? It sounds like a really fancy way of saying coleslaw that's not built together. Some shredded cabbage, some mayonnaise, which I've mixed with jerk seasoning, and it just looks like this beautiful ensemble and it tastes amazing.

Now, you've become a full-time vegan vlogger. How easy is it to be successful at it? It's very, it's a lot of work. I've not been as consistent as I've wanted to be lately, but I learnt to create recipes and create YouTube videos, film them myself, edit them myself, upload them every week and just keep going because people are actually gaining. You know, people come to me and they've got recipes to make

and it's so nice knowing that people have that to turn to. Rachel Ammer was cooking the perfect Caribbean jackfruit fritters, which, to my surprise, did not taste unlike a fish cake. The consistency of the jackfruit was really rather fishy. They were delicious. Lots of you got in touch about jackfruit. Rosemary emailed, Jenny hasn't heard of jackfruit.

You don't have to go to London to buy it. They sell it in tins in supermarkets and fresh in Wellingborough. Metadata tweeted, Jackfruit has always been a staple of Caribbean cuisine. It was brought to the Caribbean from Asia during colonial times and has been a part of the Caribbean diet for hundreds of years. It's a very pungent fruit and is eaten when in season.

It's interesting the way it's being used now by vegans. Lots of you got in touch about the average length of the menstrual cycle. Anne emailed, I'm listening now in utter amazement that anyone believes cycles are 28 days. I've used a fertility thermometer for about 40 years as I do not like to be caught by surprise. My cycles have always ranged between 26 days and until recently about 45 days. Two fertility thermometers and a photocopier are all that's needed. The amount of money and plastic wasted on fertility kits from chemists is not something I support.

It's such a shame people are taught to trust apps and kits and self-monitoring. Rebecca tweeted, Bizarrely, Woman's Hour is talking about menstrual cycles and the weird inaccuracies we've been encouraged to believe are true and they're still not talking about irregular cycles. Come on. Judith agrees. She tweeted,

As a post-menopausal woman who had periods at between 21 and 42 day intervals, I agree, it should be discussed. Catherine emailed, I successfully avoided pregnancy and planned my three children using the temperature method over 20 years ago. I kept a chart so I knew when I was at the peak period for ovulating. This isn't a new method, but the app obviously can make it more accurate and helpful. I always reckon that because I had very regular periods, this made this method easier for me. And Mary emailed after hearing the clip from Listener Week. She wrote, I've just had a comment by someone talking about renting in their 50s and how we're invisible. I wanted to say how refreshing it is to hear that

expressed. For various reasons I became a renter in my 50s just as we hit the economic crisis. I turned 60 this year and will have to rent for the rest of my life. No one ever talks about this and yet there must be many of us in the same position. The biggest worry is how will I afford to rent when I retire? The biggest irony is that my rent is higher than a mortgage payment would be. And Trisha emailed, oh my goodness, how I identify with a lady who said renting is a dirty secret. I'm the same. I don't volunteer the information anymore. People appear shocked that an intelligent and hard-working woman of my age could be in this position.

Sometimes I feel I have to give an explanation along the lines of I did once have my own house, but I feel sorry for my daughters too who have to admit my lack of property and assets to their friends and partners and horror of horrors when their partner's parents are informed. Believe me, it's a horrible situation to be in. No bank of mum and dad here either. Now don't forget you can hear all the programmes from Listener Week again through BBC Sounds, and thanks to you for all your suggestions and your emails. Now tomorrow we'll be discussing Hollywood having been rocked by allegations against the film mogul Harvey Weinstein which first came to light in a New York Times

article in 2017. He has unequivocally denied any allegations of non-conceptual sex. He's currently facing a criminal trial in the new year. But a new documentary looks at the rise and fall of the film mogul called Untouchable. We'll be talking to the director of the documentary, Ursula Macfarlane, and to Hope Damore, who was a victim of his alleged abuse. Join me tomorrow, two minutes past 10. Bye-bye. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Abuse. Join me tomorrow, two minutes past ten. Bye-bye. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. I'm Simon Mundy, host of Don't Tell Me The Score,

the podcast that uses sport to explore life's bigger questions, covering topics like resilience, tribalism and fear with people like this. We keep talking about fear and to me I always want to bring it back to are you actually in danger? That's Alex Honnold, star of the Oscar-winning film Free Solo, in which he climbed a 3,000-foot sheer cliff without ropes. So I mean a lot of those, you know, social anxieties things and certainly I've had a lot of issues with talking to attractive people in my life. I'm like, oh no, like I could never do that and it certainly feels like you're going to die but realistically you're not going to die and that's all practice too. Have a listen to Don't Tell Me The Score, full of useful everyday tips from incredible people on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.