James E. Ohliger, Jr., DO, FAAFP
The Green Movement and Natural Family Planning
With the use of smartphones becoming prevalent, many women have access to apps for charting their fertility cycles. There are over 40 apps available for this purpose. The primary goal of these apps is to help the woman with her fertility awareness. They can be used for seeking pregnancy and are often desired to be used to postpone or avoid pregnancy. However, there is no standard developed for the testing or certification of these apps. Many of them incorporate modern knowledge of the woman’s fertility cycle and are based on fertility awareness methods such as Sympto-Thermal, Creighton, and Billings and can be used to track cycles and signs of fertility. Women are choosing to track their cycles using these apps with different motivations. Sometimes for moral religious convictions, sometimes out of desire to avoid pharmaceuticals, sometimes as part of the green movement: as a healthy natural choice, sometimes to develop a greater sense of unity with their spouse. A downside of trying to understand your fertility from an app or the internet, is that a woman may not have a comprehensive understanding of how her fertility cycles should operate in a normal healthy manner, unregulated by a pharmaceutical product. A large majority of American women have been on a contraceptive. So there is a lack of cultural understanding of the natural cycle. Additionally, choices in the United Sates related to diet, sleep and exercise have an effect on women’s fertility and can cause women to have amenorrhea (lack of cycles) or irregular cycles; this too contributes to confusion about healthy fertility cycles. The growing movement of young people toward healthier diet, exercise and sleep patterns seems to also be encompassing a decision to move away from oral and implanted contraceptives in favor of fertility awareness methods.
Because the development of these apps is so new, and their quality inconsistent, and in general their efficacy is not known, I recommend my patients to take a class in Natural Family Planning from a nationally certified Natural Family Planning provider in order to use an app successfully. In Northeast Ohio, classes are available – in-person, or over the internet through the Couple to Couple League. These classes are also helpful for identifying and possibly correcting any irregularities or problems in a woman’s cycle. Her cycle charts can be presented to her health care provider or educator for interpretation, guidance or encouragement. Information available at www.neo-nfp.org.
