Written by: Dr. Amy Beckley, PhD, Founder and Inventor of the Proov test — the first and only FDA-cleared test to confirm successful ovulation at home.
Kati Bicknell, founder of Kindara, tells us why she’s a huge supporter of Proov!
I founded Kindara, one of the early Fem-Tech companies, intending to help other women experience the confidence, insight, and empowerment that I had found through tracking my cycle. Fertility charting was enormously useful, game-changing information for me, as I believed it could be for many others.
One of the key metrics that Kindara relied on was basal body temperature (BBT) charting, as a proxy for progesterone. Progesterone, produced after ovulation, causes a slight but sustained rise in BBT. Daily basal body temperature charting can help confirm if and when ovulation occurs.
However, there are some challenges when charting BBT that had me wish for a way to measure progesterone directly, without having to access it through a proxy sign. Fortunately, Proov has now developed a simple and inexpensive urine test strip that measures PdG, a metabolite of progesterone, which is the only hormone that can confirm that ovulation has occurred.
Proov helps answers a very important question:
- Did I ovulate? Confirming that ovulation has happened is a key piece of the fertility puzzle. If a woman isn't ovulating naturally she has a low chance of getting pregnant without intervention.
This is high-level, high-grade information that would usually be obtained through an expensive blood test done in a laboratory. Besides the expense of a laboratory blood test, the invasiveness and inconvenience make it very difficult to test multiple days in a row. Testing for multiple days can be important, as progesterone is not a hormone that peaks and falls quickly; it needs to go up and remain elevated for an extended period of time to confirm healthy ovulation.
The other types of fertility test strips on the market (LH strips, and pregnancy tests) don't provide these important pieces of information. LH strips tell a woman that she may ovulate in the next 24-48 hours, but can not confirm if or when ovulation actually takes place. Pregnancy tests can confirm if a woman is pregnant, but they can not tell her if she has enough progesterone to sustain the pregnancy without treatment.
I believe Proov has the power to assist countless women in understanding their bodies and their fertility, and to provide must-have information on their fertility journey. I'm grateful for Amy and the Proov team for creating this cutting-edge technology.
