How the Internet can aid or prevent pregnancy

| credits: mashable.com

Every morning Kayla Strata takes her temperature using a basal digital thermometer to check her cervical fluid. She then enters those readings into a smartphone app to determine where she is in her monthly cycle.
Known as the Fertility Awareness Method, this is a way to track ovulation to either help a woman to become pregnant or prevent a pregnancy. Strata started using this method in 2014 when she decided hormonal birth control was no longer an option for her because of its side effects.
“You have to be disciplined, but I’m so passionate about this that I follow it diligently. I’m part of a group of women who use this method, and they have been able to avoid pregnancy for years,” she says.
Before the contraception pill, women regularly used FAM, or rhythm method, as a way to prevent pregnancy. And until recently this method meant keeping a paper trail of a woman’s monthly cycle data.

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Now the tech scene has taken note and is helping women to understand their monthly cycle with smartphone app charts, including ones from Selene, iCycleBeads and Groove. Strata uses the smartphone app Kindara, which, according to its founder, William Sacks, has had 700,000 downloads and is just as effective as hormonal contraceptives.
This year Kindara introduced a Bluetooth Wink basal body thermometer that automatically syncs with the Kindara mobile app. “People have an intimate relationship with their smartphones, we have so much information on them, and this is some of the most intimate information there is,” Sacks says.
According to Sacks, Wink is four times faster than other basal body temperature products on the market. Women are encouraged to keep Wink by their bedside and take their temperature as soon as they wake up. If they forget, Wink will vibrate to remind them.
“If your progesterone level is low, you’re good to have unprotected sex and have a zero per cent chance of getting pregnant. Or, if your progesterone level is high and you want to get pregnant, today would be a great day,” he says. Eventually, he says, a woman will be able to look at her smartphone to determine their hormone levels with sensing technology.
“In 10 years this will exist. I’m not sure if it will be an implant, patch or clothing based sensor, but women will know what is happening every day, with no confusion about their fertility,” he says.
Chantae Hergenroether used the data to help her get pregnant. She had been receiving Depo-Provera injections, but when she decided to start a family she found out it would take up to two years for the drug to leave her system.
“My doctor told me not to plan on getting pregnant for at least a year,” she says. From there she searched the Internet to see how she could improve her chances of becoming pregnant faster, and decided to track her cycle digitally.
Using the technology forced her to become “baby-focused”. Taking her temperature first thing in the morning reminded her to make healthy choices in her diet and to exercise. Doing this, she became pregnant within two months of coming off the injections.
“This is bringing technology into something we’ve known about for a long time,” Dr. Helen Webberley of the Oxford Online Pharmacy says. According to Webberley, anyone who uses this method will automatically understand their menstrual cycle, and for motivated women who have regular cycles, it can be an effective method of birth control.
“If you went up to someone on the street and asked them if they knew that there’s a completely natural way, without hormones, coils, condoms or diaphragms, to avoid pregnancy, they wouldn’t know it,” she says.
In addition, Webberley says that learning how to track your cycle can also help a woman understand why she’s not getting pregnant.