Science Questions

How does monitoring temperature in the 21st century differ to methods of the 80s?

I was having problems conceiving in 1980. Before I got up every morning, I had to take my temperature. It was a very simple method. How does that really differ from this new technology which seems similar but a bit more complicated? Barbara, Friday Bridge

We put this to Shamus Husheer from Cambridge Temperature Concepts

Shamus -   That’s exactly the same technique that my parents used to have me.  It was very common on the 70s and 80s.  But unfortunately, it’s not highly prescribed to everyone.  The DuoFertility monitor, which we’ve created, ensures primarily that you have no missed measurements which can cause the data to be uninterpretable.  And it’s much more reliable because it measures up to 20,000 temperatures per night and your movement to get the sleeping temperature because when you wake up, the body changes in temperature very rapidly.

So if you change the time that you measure, you can introduce a lot of noise on that data. That means if you’re one of these women with a 0.3-degree temperature change on your cycle, you can completely lose that.  If you’re lucky enough to have a one and a half degree change in your cycle, you’re probably going to be okay.  So it comes down to the accuracy measurement in the noise and also the statistical analysis of that data, rather than waiting for three days after ovulation to determine that you have seen the rise using the old method. We can spot that within a day, which means the egg is still alive, and you still have time to conceive that cycle.

November 2009