53% of Brazilian women use apps to check their menstrual cycle

Knowing how your own body works can be a tool for female empowerment. It is crucial to prevent or stimulate pregnancy, for example, and in this context, a study conducted by the website Trocando Fraldas found that 53% of Brazilian women use apps to control the menstrual cycle.

The website interviewed more than 6.100 women across the country between January 29 and February 04 and discovered that 52% of Brazilian women want to get pregnant this year, but only 48% of them know how to recognize the signs of the fertile period.

The fertile period, in turn, is the time of the month most conducive to conception. On average, it occurs 14 days after the start of menstruation and lasts up to seven days. However, this can vary from woman to woman, which is why using apps to track the menstrual cycle has become the preference of 60% of women trying to conceive.

Can you trust it?

According to the Gynecology Manual of the Gynecology and Obstetrics Society of Brasília, the use of apps to monitor the menstrual cycle and ovulation can be useful, but is not universally indicated.

The use of apps like this can increase stress and psychological pressure for those trying to conceive, who feel stigmatized and powerless due to the difficulty in conceiving.

Furthermore, not all menstrual cycle control apps are reviewed by experts or standardized, according to a study by British Medical Journal. Thus, they can be used as support, but not as a 100% reliable way to predict the right time to conceive.

Image: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels / CC