In the last several years, there has been a huge increase in the number of
phone apps designed to help people track their menstrual cycles. Many of them
claim that they will shorten the time it takes for you to become pregnant. Here on Infertility TV,
we like to see scientific proof before we make recommendations.
Is there any science behind these claims? Stay tuned and find out.
When a person is trying to become pregnant, the highest chance for success is during the
fertile window. This is the roughly 5 day period of time ending on the day of
ovulation. People who have intercourse during the fertile window are going to have a higher
chance for conception. How can you tell when you are in your fertile window? There
are a number of indicators including methods like home ovulation tests and
monitoring your cervical mucus. Check out this playlist for information about those methods.
Many phone apps which track a person's periods claim to be able to predict a person's fertile
window and improve their chance for conceiving. There hasn't been much scientific study to back
up these claims. Recently, researchers conducted a study in people who were trying to conceive called
The Pregnancy Study Online or PRESTO. Female participants complete an online questionnaire with
items on demographics, behaviors, reproductive and medical histories and medication use. They
then completed follow-up questionnaires every 8 weeks or until reported conception. In the
absence of pregnancy, patients were followed for up to a year. Fertility treatment was not allowed.
In this part of the PRESTO Study, they looked at people who were using
fertility apps either with or without other ovulation indicators. People in this study
used over 120 different apps. Five apps were designated as being ones the authors
thought were more likely to be effective. They referred to these as “selected apps”
For the analysis, people were divided into the following groups: 1) No use
of any apps or fertility indicators like an ovulation predictor test 2) Use of fertility
apps without any fertility indicators and 3) Use of fertility apps along with a fertility
indicator. They also analyzed success using their “selected apps” versus all of the other apps.
Ultimately, they were able to study over 8000 people trying to conceive. The chance
for a pregnancy in a given month was highest for the group that used a phone app AND a fertility
indicator like an ovulation predictor test or cervical mucus. This group was about 23% more
likely to conceive compared to the group who didn't use any method to improve their
chances. The group that used an app alone had a 17% better chance for a pregnancy each month.
This was better than doing nothing, but not as good as using an app combined with a fertility
indicator. Interestingly, the group that used the selected apps, the ones the authors thought
would work best, actually did not work as well as as the other, non selected apps
Our InfertilityTV bottom line is this. The use of phone apps to track fertility
seem to improve the chance for a pregnancy each month by a small amount. Combining an
app with a method to detect ovulation worked better than using an app alone. Overall,
there wasn't one app that worked significantly better than another.
One other issue to be aware of when using these apps. Privacy. If you live
in a state in which abortions are being severely limited or banned,
there is a very real concern that people who have an abortion or assist someone to have an abortion
will be be criminally charged or face lawsuits. Authorities in those states can and will obtain
your private fertility information and can use it to prosecute you. This has already happened,
last year a popular tracking app was found to be selling personal information from
millions of users to 3rd parties even though they claimed to protect that information. Last month,
police in Nebraska used social media posts to arrest a mom who helped her daughter get
an abortion. If you are going to use these apps, you need to be aware of these risks.