Contraception now has its’ own app!

There is an App for that. Really…..

Being an older Doc, I would have thought that there could be no such thing as an app for contraception, but as a billion dollar industry progresses, they continuously prove me wrong!

Up until now only condoms had a 99% effectiveness, and birth control pills only 93%.

Traditionally other methods like taking ones’ temperature or counting days of fertility had only a 75% success rate in preventing pregnancy.

Contraception magazine recently reported that a new study regarding the new fertility app called “Natural Cycles” is 99% effective when used correctly. Using body temperature readings, the app determines when it’s OK to have unprotected sex (called green days) and when to use contraceptives (called red days).

Researchers gathered information from 224,563 menstrual cycles from 22,785 women during a one year period in order to come up with the app’s “Pearl Index;” which is traditionally used to measure the efficacy of a given contraceptive.

The study found that using protection on red days with the Natural Cycles app was 93% effective in preventing pregnancy. Use of the app “perfectly” yielded a 99% prevention rate. The researchers stated that other methods are only about 75% effective; while use of the pill is only 91% effective.

 “What we see in our data, which I find very promising, is younger women getting pregnant less when using the app even though they are more fertile, because they really don’t want to get pregnant. Slightly older women are those that get pregnant the most using the app…People usually say what they like the most about the app is that it knows their body and helps them understand what’s going on inside…70 percent of our users come from hormonal contraception, and we see in our data that it’s very common that disrupts your cycle, sometimes for up to one year. 70 per cent of our users come from hormonal contraception, and we see in our data that it’s very common that disrupts your cycle, sometimes for up to one year,” Natural Cycles developer Elina Berglund said.

In 2016 a similar but smaller study of 4,000, 20-30 year old women showed similar results where 143 unplanned pregnancies occurred over the course of one year … 10 of these pregnancies occurred during green days, which calculates to an amazing 99.5% effective rate; which is comparable to birth control pills

Lead author Kristina Gemzell Danielsson stressed that the app was not recommended for women who were very young (due to irregular hormones and ovulation) or those who were really keen to prevent pregnancies when only abstinence would do.

Some skeptical critics feel that abstinence is still better than having unprotected sex, and the app would not be as good as abstinence; i.e. .5% vs 0%; duh!

Berglund wrote, “It is important to notice that our study was a real-life study, which means the performance of Natural Cycles was assessed as close to reality as possible. In controlled clinical trials, the performance is always better because there is a lot of supervision from clinicians that remind for example women to take the pill, to use condoms, and so on,” 

As far as we know, Natural Cycles is the only app of its kind, and is actually regulated as an approved medical device.