tracking your period when you have pcos

Have you considered using a fertility app or monitor to help you conceive? With so many available, you may feel confused about which one to try and you are not alone; my patients tell me that they feel really bewildered as to which is the best fertility App or Monitor to use. Recent media attention based on research studies highlighted that fertility apps used alone are generally ineffective and do not accurately show a woman when she should try and conceive (Setton et al. 2016; Duane et al. 2016), resulting in even greater confusion. | Read More on PCOS Diva

In this article, I review the most commonly used fertility Apps and Monitors, explain what they are, how they work and who they are useful for. Most importantly, I review their accuracy, including their ability to identify fertile days and ovulation, as well as considering the customer support they offer and the all-important cost. However, before I start it’s really important to explain one crucial difference between fertility apps and monitors. | Read More on PCOS Diva

There are many fertility apps that you can download to use on your smartphone, and many are free. Used alone, these apps calculate your fertile time using a calendar method. These apps rely on traditional thinking about predicting the ovulation, which is based on the assumption that ovulation consistently occurs 14 days before the onset of your next period – so in the ‘middle of your cycle’ if you have a 28-day cycle. In fact, we now know that only a small percentage of women ovulate exactly 14 days before the onset of their period (Baird et al. 1995; Lenton et al. 1984 a & b). So the calendar method is often really ineffective, and all these apps are doing is keeping an electronic diary – more detailed and convenient than writing your cycle down on paper, but not much more than that. Some fertility apps go a step further by taking into consideration how long your previous cycle lasted. The problem here is that ovulation timing can vary even when you have consistent cycles, data from previous cycles don’t provide enough information to reliably predict individual fertility. Even though there is no doubt that tracking your fertility enables you to take some control and leads to a greater awareness of your cycle, to increase reliability and to be beneficial for conceiving, you need to observe the physiological signs of fertility as well. This is where a fertility monitor comes in. | Read More on PCOS Diva