Natural cycles is often a person’s first introduction into the concept of hormone-free birth control, and their first introduction to tracking. While it is pretty amazing that there is an app out there trying to offer this freedom to women, I have a few thoughts on Natural Cycles which might change a person’s mind about paying monthly to use them.
I also have solutions for what to use instead for hormone free birth control, that is far cheaper, more effective, and more freeing. In order to ensure the accuracy of my comments, I signed up for Natural Cycles for several months in order to test out my theories.
What is Natural Cycles
Natural cycles is the most well known hormone-free birth control app out there. It’s been FDA cleared by analyzing more than 15,000 women over 180,000 cycles (which is funny to me since I am not sure why the natural rhythm of our bodies needs to be approved by the FDA in order to be considered viable).
It uses an algorithm that relies on a woman’s Basal Body Temperature and period data in order to determine the fertile times in a woman’s cycle. This means that through the algorithm people cna plan to either plan or prevent pregnancy depending on their stage of life.
How Does Natural Cycles Work
Natural cycles works through the utilization of an oral thermometer, Oura Ring or apple watch. Every morning before a woman gets out of bed she takes her temperature with the oral thermometer and plugs this temperature into the app. Or she sinks her Oura RIng Temperature data.
Other data such as LH tests or period data can also be inputted to further improve the app’s algorithm.
As the app receives data the app adjusts its algorithm and gives an output of red days and green days. The red days represent fertile times when protection or abstinence should be practiced in order to prevent pregnancy, and green days represent infertile days when no protection is required. (Please practice safe sex at all times no matter what an app tells you!)
Cost of Natural Cycles
Natural cycles costs $119.99 annually or $14.99 per month ($179.88 annually).
Pros of Natural Cycles
While I have many issues with natural cycles, I will first mention some good things that the app does.
- It is often what first introduces people to the idea of natural pregnancy prevention.
- Unfortunately for many of us, we are not taught how female fertility works when we are young,. This app, however, changes that and presents new information to women which can be absolutely freeing. While it does not give complete education on cycle health, it is a good starting place.
- It is very easy to use. It is simply laid out with clear guidelines for each day so a woman knows exactly what rules to follow and when.
- There are many informative articles that can offer good education on female fertility within the app.
- It can give confidence to women who are just beginning to take charge of their body literacy. Again, it is a good starting place, but something that I think is worth graduating from and transitioning to more sophisticated, accurate, and informative methods.
- It is accurate in preventing pregnancy. With typical use, it is 93% effective, and 98% effective with perfect use. (I have heard many anecdotal cases of women receiving unplanned pregnancies, however, so this is something to be aware of. Take this anecdotal evidence with a grain of salt though!)
Con of Natural Cycles and My Problem with Natural Cycles
Despite the great pros, I have many issues with natural cycles as someone who has spent hours studying true Knowledge Based Fertility Awareness Methods. Unfortunately their marketing is good, and I think a lot more people become pregnant while using it than we are led to believe… But that’s just speculation.
I have used the app in order to see for myself whether or not I should recommend it.
These are the main reasons I do not recommend Natural Cycles for hormone free family planning:
1) Natural cycles algorithm is based on Basal Body Temperature, and nothing else. Basal Body tempurature CANNOT predict ovulation. I repeat, it CANNOT PREDICT OVULATION, it can only confirm it. This is a problem because for some woman the onset of ovulation can happen suddenly, or they may experience other fertile signs that the app does not use in its algorithm. If cervical mucus is present, sperm can live up to 5 days in a woman’s reproductive system, but the algorithm does not factor this vital piece of the puzzle.
Basal body temperature is also extremely nuanced, as it is difficult to truly confirm ovulation when we are not tracking other biomarkers like cervical mucus.
This means that there can still be temperature rises without actual ovulation occurring.
2) Natural Cycles treats each bleed as if it’s a period which can be extremely misleading when it comes to understanding hormonal health. This goes back to the fact that Basal body temperature alone can’t truly confirm ovulation has 100% taken place.
There are other biomarkers that give better indications into ovulation and overall hormone health. Even a positive LH test can be misleading for women with hormonal issues and confusing cycles. When cervical mucus is not tract, it is hard to truly understand the health of a cycle and predicting ovulation is less reliable.
3) Using a fertility awareness based method should be free (unless you get the health of a coach for a short time which is highly recommended if you 100% don’t want to get pregnant), but natural cycles is pretty pricey.
4) Being able to confidently know for yourself whether you are fertile or not, without needing the confidence of an algorithm is so empowering. You know your body better than technology does. We should not need to rely on the power of technology to be confident about our bodies.
Overview of My Honest Natural Cycles Review
While natural cycles can be a great introduction into the world of natural family planning, in my opinion it should not be the end game because it does not provide complete body literacy. Learning how to read various biomarkers such as Cervical Mucus changes, etc. allows for a deeper dive into being empowered within out own bodies.
Want to learn how to take charge of your own fertility? Check out this post here.
