ovulation test reviews

Q: When can I do the test?
A: After you determine the best day to start testing based on your monthly cycle (see When to Begin Testing), you can do the test any time that day. You do not have to use your first morning urine. However, you should do the test at about the same time each day. Reduce your liquid intake for 2 hours before testing.

Q: What if no band appears in the result window?
A: If no band appears in the result window after 5 minutes, the result is invalid and you should repeat the test using another test kit. (see Invalid Results)

Q: I have used all five tests and I do not see a surge, What do I do?
A: Since not every woman ovulates mid-cycle, you may not detect the LH surge in the first five days of testing. This could mean you have not ovulated yet and you should continue testing with additional ovulation tests.

Q: I have tested for 8 days and I did not see my LH surge, what is wrong?
A:  About 90% of ovulating women with regular cycles will see their surge during 8-10 days of testing [2]. If you do not, it could mean that you have not ovulated this month.  If you are having a short cycle this month, it is possible that you have ovulated before you started testing. If you are having a long cycle this month, you may not have ovulated yet.  You may continue testing or test again next month. Don’t worry; it is normal to have an occasional short or long cycle, or to have a cycle without ovulating.

Q: I have used the ovulation test for three months, and each month I have seen a surge and have had intercourse that day or night. I have not become pregnant yet. What is wrong?
A: First, it is important to remember that it can take normal, healthy couples many months to become pregnant. There are many factors, which affect your ability to become pregnant even if you have been able to have intercourse during your most fertile time. If after several months you have no success, consult your physician.

Q: What could interfere with my test result?
A: If you are actually pregnant, have recently been pregnant, or have reached menopause you may get a misleading result. Some prescription drugs, such as menotropins for injection and danazol may affect the result you see, please consult your physician if you question your test results.

Q: If the Ovulation Test can determine my most fertile time, why can’t I use it for contraception?
A: Sperm can survive up to 72 hours, and this test predicts your LH surge only up to 24 to 36 hours in advance. Therefore, if you have intercourse before you discover your surge, the egg can still be fertilized.

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morning after pill effectiveness

“Morning After Pill” Introductory Story

Elizabeth thought about the events of the night before as she drove home. Everything was a complete whirlwind, from the party at her best friend Nicole’s to waking up this morning in her boyfriend Jeremy’s room.

Elizabeth and Jeremy had only been dating for a month. Jeremy was her first “serious” boyfriend, but he had had previous sexual partners. Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel unsettled as she pulled into her driveway and parked. Jeremy’s condom had broken last night, and although neither of them thought anything of it at the time, thoughts were now racing through Elizabeth’s mind: What if I’m pregnant? What if I contract an STD from Jeremy? What if my parents find out?

She called her best friend Nicole for advice. Nicole had a pregnancy scare last year; surely she would know what Elizabeth should do.

Nicole recommended that Elizabeth try the “Morning After Pill”. Although it wouldn’t protect Elizabeth from an STD, it would prevent a pregnancy if she took it right away.

Elizabeth made an appointment with her doctor for that afternoon.She had a lot of questions about this pill, and she needed them answered…fast.

What is the “Morning After Pill”?
The Morning After Pill is a so-called emergency contraceptive that can be taken within the first 72 hours after intercourse to prevent pregnancy.1  The Morning After Pill is a high dosage of the birth control pill, and when it is used properly, it prevents or ends pregnancy.2 Typically, each kit includes a pregnancy test, pills and an information book.

A pregnancy test is included with the Morning After Pill. Why?
The Morning After Pill comes with a pregnancy test. No urine pregnancy test will show positive until 7 to 10 days after conception; therefore, a positive pregnancy test at this point means that the woman is pregnant from an earlier sexual encounter. The instruction in the kit say that “it will give you ‘peace of mind’ to know you are not pregnant from sex earlier in the month or in previous months.” The literature provided in the kit states over and over that women who are pregnant should not take the pills. The effects of doing so are not known because no direct studies have ever been done.

Are there any other names for the Morning After Pill?
Yes. Although Plan B © is the most common brand of the Morning After Pill, there are other brand names as well. You may know the Morning After Pill by the names Ovrette©, Cryselle© and Alesse©.

How does the Morning After Pill work?
Depending on what brand you use, a set number of pills need to be taken with in the first 72 hours, followed by more pills 12 hours later.3 According to where you are in your menstrual cycle, the pill could affect you in three different ways:
1.    Ovulation will be prevented if you haven’t already started ovulating (the egg will not be released to meet with the sperm.)
2.    Your normal menstrual cycle will be altered, delaying ovulation (the release of the egg from the ovary.)
3.    If the egg has already been released, the lining of your uterus will become irritated, and this irritation will interfere with the ability of the fertilized egg to implant in your uterus. (Your body will reject the baby, and he/she will die.)3

Are there health risks?
Yes. There are both short-term and long-term side effects to taking the Morning After Pill. Short-term side effects may include:
1.    Nausea and vomiting
2.    Irregular and unpredictable menstrual periods
3.    Breast tenderness
4.    Blood clots

Long-term side effects may include:
1.    Ectopic pregnancy (when the fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tube)
2.    Infertility
    Infertility can also be caused by certain STDs. It is important to remember that the Morning After Pill does not protect you from any sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).4
3.    While there are no long-term studies to show whether women will be permanently damaged by the Morning After Pill, women who take the Morning After Pill do put themselves at risk for such diseases as cancer from these chemicals being given in such high doses.”5

It wouldn’t be like I was getting an abortion…right?
Wrong! If an egg has been fertilized (conception), and you take the pill, the pill will work to prevent the egg from implanting in your uterine wall. If this happens, an abortion will occur, because the egg has already been fertilized. The fertilization of an egg can occur as early as 15 minutes after intercourse.6  The fertilized egg contains all 46 human chromosomes. These chromosomes are the complex genetic design that will determine the hair, sex, eye color, skin tone and height of a child.7

If the Morning After Pill is taken after the egg is fertilized, the egg may not be able to implant because of the effects that the hormones in the Pill have on your uttering wall. If these are the circumstances inside your body when you take the Morning After Pill, the Pill is “not a contraceptive; it’s a very, very early abortifacient drug.”8

The Morning After Pill cannot guarantee the prevention of pregnancy, nor does it protect you from STDs. The only real prevention to pregnancy and STDs is refraining from sexual intercourse.

Keyword:morning after pill effectiveness

Oral Contraceptives Could Lower Breast Cancer Risk

By Jeanne-Marie Phillips and  Sharon Grutman

Oral contraceptives could lower the risk of breast cancer in pre-menopausal women, according to research presented here at the annual meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons.
In his session entitled “Hormone Therapy and Breast Cancer Risk,” Malcolm Pike, PhD, professor in the department of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, looks at the potential preventive applications of oral contraceptives, more commonly known as “the pill.”
“Oral contraceptives are, in a sense, a form of hormone replacement,” Pike said. “They regulate a woman’s hormones by replacing the hormones her ovaries would produce with the hormones in the pill.”
Pike notes that oral contraceptives have been proven to prevent ovarian cancer by strictly regulating the ovaries’ hormonal output. Less clear is the impact of the pill on breast cancer. “I did some studies a number of years ago that showed that if you used a gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist to prevent a woman from ovulating, you could certainly prevent breast cancer,” Pike said. “What we’re trying to understand now is whether the hormones in oral contraceptives—progestin and estrogen, among others—could have a similar effect.”
The key to the pill’s chemopreventive properties, according to Pike, is that it halts ovulation – and regular ovulation over a lengthy period of time increases breast cancer risk. “The average age at which a girl experiences menarche has lowered over time,” he noted. “And the average age at which she has her first child has gone up. Now many women ovulate from age twelve to age thirty without having a child.” The extended range of time in which women ovulate regularly may be partially responsible for today’s elevated breast cancer rates.
Pike’s hypothesis may seem counterintuitive to some. In menopausal women, hormone replacement therapy has been shown to increase breast cancer risk—but Pike notes that lowering the typical monthly dosage of progestin in hormone replacement greatly alleviates this risk. “We’ve learned a huge amount from the large studies on the impact of hormone replacement therapy on menopausal women. These studies indicate that the interrelationships of hormones are complex,” he said. “We’ve discovered the range wherein the dose of progestin makes a difference in terms of breast cancer risk.”
More research is needed, Pike says, to determine the frequency with which birth control would be taken in order to reduce breast cancer risk. “What about taking the pill every day, instead of three weeks out of four?” he asked, alluding to the dosage regimen of most oral contraceptives, which includes seven days of sugar pills per 28-day cycle. “We can predict that this would be better in terms of ovarian cancer prevention. But for breast cancer, we’re not sure that taking the pill every day would not make things considerably worse unless you really reduced the dose of progestin. If we’re going to have women take the pill every day, we have to cut the dose, but at the same time, the pill has to prevent pregnancy.”
Pike hopes that his research will help women and clinicians alike think more positively about the potential of hormone replacement therapy in pre-menopausal women. “I want to encourage people to realize that this really could work,” he said. “Millions of women took the pill this morning. This could potentially be very, very protective against breast cancer.”

how to know when you are ovulating with irregular periods?

Today,one of my friends sent email to me,asked “how to know when you are ovulating with irregular periods”?

Actually, i also didn’t know the answer, so i did research on google and found the following info:

how to know when you are ovulating with irregular periods?
here are a number of different natural methods for monitoring your fertility and predicting when you will ovulate – the time of month when you are most likely to become pregnant. These methods include recording your basal body temperature, monitoring changes in cervical mucus (CM), locating the position of the cervix (cervical position), and monitoring physical symptoms of ovulation (ovulation pains or mittelschmerz).

To help organize this information, women use a graphed fertility chart to record and track daily fertility signs and basal temperature data. Rigorously charting natural fertility indicators and ovulation signs is a proven, Ob/Gyn-recommended strategy designed to boost your odds of conceiving.

On your fertility chart, common fields for natural fertility signs include basal temperature, cervical mucus quality, cervical position, mittelschmerz (ovulation pains), ovulation test results, days you had intercourse, and pregnancy test results. In addition, you may wish to note mood, illness, stress, travel, sleeping problems, or general feelings about the ups and downs of trying to conceive.

Can a women who has an irregular period get pregnant?

it is possible, but very difficult. When you are not getting a regular period you may not even be ovulating (this needs to happen in order to get pregnant). I had irregular periods my whole life unless I was on birth control. I was off my birth control for a whole year to try and get pregnant…nothing I even tried using ovulation predictor kits…nothing My hubby and I made a trip to the fertility clinic to find out what was going on. I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. The doctor put me on a medication by the name of clomid which helps you to ovulate. I became pregnant the first month after taking it! Your gyno can help with everything you’re going through. It’s best to get checked out because your period not being regular can indicate something going on with your body. Hope this helps!

How long do you ovulate for? You can only get pregnant while ovulating correct?

Sperm comes out throughout the entire duration of sex. Sperm can live up to 72 hours (3 days). Ovulation lasts around 3 days. Therefore there is a 6 day window of getting pregnant.