Apple Watch Knowledge now works with Pure Cycles, the contraception app

When you’ve got an Apple Watch Collection 8 or Extremely and use the Pure Cycles app, you will now have the ability to use temperature knowledge out of your smartwatch to feed a contraception algorithm, in keeping with a Tuesday announcement from Pure Cycles.

Pure Cycles is the one cycle monitoring app authorized by the FDA to be used as contraception. Not like different menstrual cycle monitoring apps, Pure Cycles requires each day, extremely constant measurements of basal physique temperature to detect ovulation and predict somebody’s “fertile window,” which is the few days by which an individual is ready to conceive.

The Collection 8 and Extremely fashions of Apple Watch, in addition to the brand new Collection 9 and Extremely 2, include temperature sensors, which can accumulate delicate temperature modifications that happen throughout menstruation when worn in mattress in a single day. Basal physique temperature will also be measured precisely if taken very first thing within the morning utilizing a basal thermometer, which Pure Cycles affords with its $100 annual subscription. However the hope is that the automated temperature-tracking capabilities present in wearables just like the Apple Watch and Oura Ring, which Pure Cycles has additionally obtained clearance to pair with, will make the entire course of simpler.

Pure Cycles co-founder and CEO Dr. Elena Berglund Scherwitzl mentioned in a press launch that the corporate has begun medical testing on whether or not the corporate can use temperature knowledge from the Apple Watch in its algorithm. They weren’t dissatisfied.

“We have been thrilled with the outcomes and submitted them to the FDA, and with this authorization we’re excited to provide our customers the power to seamlessly measure with a tool that many already personal and love,” Scherwitzl mentioned.

Importantly, Pure Cycles’ integration with some Apple Watch fashions doesn’t imply that Apple’s cycle monitoring characteristic within the Well being app ought to be used as a technique of contraception, or that any of its units ought to be used as a technique of contraception. Because the tech big continues to increase its well being providers, which incorporates the large, ongoing Ladies’s Well being Research, it is turning into clear that ovulation and menstrual cycle estimates are simply estimates, and shouldn’t be used for contraception.

Nevertheless, the truth that the one FDA-approved contraception app is leveraging big-name wearables that proceed to enhance and enhance their health-tracking metrics signifies a bigger pattern towards fertility consciousness being thought-about a normal well being concern. . He additionally factors out that the sky could possibly be the restrict relating to accessing (and really utilizing) well being knowledge that has been traditionally troublesome to entry.

How pure cycles work as contraception

Pure Cycles works by accumulating basal physique temperature measurements and, over the course of some months, discovering a sample that may decide when somebody is ovulating and when they’re more likely to ovulate subsequent month. Temperatures are often decrease within the first half of the menstrual cycle, earlier than ovulation, and rise very barely (solely a fraction of a level) after ovulation happens. When the algorithm collects knowledge from the temperatures you enter, in addition to your reported menstrual cycle days, it’ll start to foretell which days are more likely to be fertile.

With best use, Pure Cycles says it’s as much as 98% efficient at stopping being pregnant and reduces with typical use. However the issue — and the principle criticism of temperature-based contraception or cycle monitoring typically — is that “excellent” use is rather more troublesome to realize than different forms of contraception, together with tablets or IUDs. Widespread experiences corresponding to sleeping two hours roughly than normal, ingesting alcohol and feeling sick all throw physique temperature measurements into disuse and render knowledge from these days ineffective. Additionally, many individuals have irregular menstrual cycles that may be troublesome to maintain observe of. (The precise day of ovulation tends to fluctuate even in individuals with very “common” cycles.)

For these causes, well being care suppliers often advocate that folks use a special type of contraception apart from monitoring their basal physique temperature if they do not wish to get pregnant.

Nevertheless, a mixture of temperature data, luteinizing hormone checks, and cervical mucus monitoring to find out upcoming fertile intervals and ovulation could make strategies corresponding to Pure Cycles extra correct.

Learn extra: Why Apple transfers your well being data to iPad