Like so many other bodily functions to which people on less and worlds gave little thought, menstruation was a matter of great concern to the Fremen Their approach to it was partly evolu tionary, partly cultural-and entirely unique Following then; move to Arrakis m 7193, the Fremen recognized immediately that they were more imperiled by water loss than by any other threat which faced them It was because of that recognition that their Water Discipline was created and their water conserving devices developed Primary among those was the stillsmt, that amazing garment which was a Fremen's second skin (more carefully guarded at times than the first) and was capable of holding total water loss to under a thimbleful a day m the desert From their earliest designs, stillsuits for women were constructed differently from those of the men m addition to the thigh pads which processed urine and feces, the women'b suits included a third processing unit for reclaiming the water lost m menstrual blood In the later, even more efficient versions, these units kept female water loss on a par with that of the male, in spite of their physiological handicap The suits did not eliminate all of the danger to a menstruating woman, however Reclaimed the moisture might be, but it was still water leaving the body m far greater quantities than would occur at any other time Dunng their first two generations on the desert planet, the Fremen watched a depressing number of their women perish from shock and dehydration when they were unable to return the water to their systems quickly enough By the thud generation, they had discovered a partial solution Dunng the two weeks that bracketed a woman's flow, she could be put on a carefully regulated diet which decreased the water level of her body even below the Fremen norm, to bare minimum This regi men both lessened the amount of moisture available to be passed and dropped the level gradually, to avoid the sudden shock The Fremen also discovered during these years that the bodies of the women were making their own effort to adjust The length of the menstrual cycle gradually lengthened, increasing the interval between flows and thus decreasing the number of times a woman would menstruate between puberty and menopause by 8570 the average cycle had leveled off at fifty six days, double the Imperial norm Education concerning this aspect of a Fremen girl s life, along with that involving such related issues as pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing was considered too vital to be FREMEN,