Scrolling through Goop, I can’t help but roll my eyes at the coconut flavoured floss that’s supposed to transform your daily dental experience. The same applies to turmeric lattes, mushroom matcha coffee, and a stone diffuser for your crystals. It’s fair to say I’m somewhat of a sceptic to the majority of what wellness offers and to whom. Yet with organic and sustainable menstrual cups, ‘period pants’ that soak up 8 hours of blood, the wellness industry has moved to our nether regions and is finally trying to make our monthly bodily trials a fair bit easier.

Meet Daye, a female-owned and led sustainable CBD-infused and 100 percent cotton tampon company that is in sync with your cycle and delivers to your letterbox. It sounds like the epitome of millennial convenience, with a pro-feminine lens on what women and non-binary people need. Screen Shot spoke with Valentina Milanova, the founder of Daye, about what inclusivity, CBD and wellness should look like for the majority.

“Daye started when I got my first period, at nine years old. No one had sat me down and explained what the menstrual cycle was, so when I started bleeding I thought I had a rare and shameful disease”, recalls Milanova. After hiding it for a year until she was taken to the emergency room by her father, who suspected something was wrong, her early experience of shame cemented her interest in calling to dismantle the taboos surrounding female health.

Reading research papers and anything she could get her hands on, Milanova discovered industrial hemp and in her words, “had a Eureka moment”. The fibres of the hemp plant are more absorbent than traditional cotton tampons, plus the extract from the flower are pain-relieving and thus help women who suffer from painful menstrual cramps.

Launching with two products—naked tampons and ultra-soothing CBD-infused tampons—the main question on everyone’s mind is: do they really work? Or is it no different than popping into Boots for a pack of Tampax and Paracetamol? “All our tampons are made from sustainably-sourced cotton fibres that are batch tested for cleanliness and pesticides”, explains Milanova. Keen on making sure there is no bacterial residue (seeing as tampons are not considered medical devices the regulation of feminine hygiene products are lax), Daye ran a microbiological analysis on various mainstream and organic tampons and found them bacterially contaminated. Tampon manufacturers aren’t even legally obliged to disclose the ingredients of their product.

Daye tampons also use a cotton protective sleeve that covers the whole tampon and prevents fibre loss so there is a smaller chance of Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) and Toxic Shock Syndrom (TSS) happening. Yet when it comes to any CBD-infused wellness products, many medical experts have rejected the use of CBD as its thought that only a high dosage of the ingredient is needed to have any kind of a palpable effect.

Daye’s CBD infused tampons have 150mg of 30 percent concentration of CBD, with the THC extracted. “Since they’re administered vaginally they have a much higher bioavailability than if the compound were administered orally”, explains Milanova. “If you were to ingest CBD, the compound would have to go through your digestive tract and be metabolised before reaching your bloodstream, so your gut and liver take a huge chunk”.

When asking what the results showed, Milanova has stated some women felt their cramps subside after 15 minutes and some after an hour. Have I mentioned that all packaging is biodegradable, sustainably sourced, compostable, and water-soluble too?

Is Daye helping women? Tick. The planet? Tick. Heightening our expectations for menstrual products? Tick. What about inclusivity? When heading to the brand’s website, there is a glossary of terms explaining everything from ‘period poverty’ and LGBTQI+ to burnout and pelvic inflammatory disease. Daye also has its own platform for women’s health called Vitals where conversation and transparency around its research will be audio-recorded and published.

Daye, therefore, looks like it’s made for women. That said,  as cultural practises and  lack of sanitary aid has meant pads and cloths are more familiar in the east, making tampons significantly more common in the west , what kind of woman is the company targeting?

Founder Milanova says plainly, “We don’t want to force tampons on anyone. We’re simply here to raise the standards in period care and upgrade the tampon, a product that has been overlooked for way too long”. Raising standards in female health and bridging the gender gap in medical innovation seems to be the intention behind Daye. 

Daye plans on manufacturing locally in places like China and India, where femcare is almost non-existent. The brand’s micro-monetisation in these areas could result in local commerce and entrepreneurship for women, because it’s crucial that women get invested in helping other women. CBD-infused tampons are just the beginning.