A birth control app has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the first time, but is it as effective as traditional birth control methods?
Our team set out to Verify those claims.
Natural Cycles is the first contraceptive app approved by the FDA. It costs $80 a year, and uses a woman's menstrual cycle timing and daily body temperature (using a basal body thermometer) to track when she's most fertile.
When it detects a minor increase in temperature (about half of one degree Fahrenheit), the app alerts the user she's ovulating and should use protection if she's sexually active.
The methods Natural Cycles uses are nowhere near new; women have tracked their rhythms as a natural birth control method.
According to a handful of studies, Natural Cycles has a failure rate of 6 to 8 percent for "typical" users.
Comparatively, birth control pills have a failure rate of about 4 percent and IUDs have a failure rate of less than 1 percent.
Dr. Leo Han, an assistant professor of gynecology and obstetrics at OHSU, recommends women who use the app are following its recommendations closely.
"You need someone that's going to be extremely fastidious when it comes to entering data into the app... being accurate, taking your temperature at the exact same time in a controlled fashion, doing what the app suggests and not breaking the rules, so to speak," Dr. Han said.
Northwest University Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology Lauren Streicher told Vox earlier this month just going to the bathroom before taking your temperature, having a cold or having a sip of coffee can disrupt that rythm.
Globally, Natural Cycles has more than 900,000 registered users and has been classified in Europe as a medical device.
However, critics are quick to point out the app has its flaws. A Swedish news outlet reported at least 37 women out of 668 who had used Natural Cycles last year sought abortions after unwanted pregnancies.
“This isn’t science; this is craziness,” Professor Streicher said. “We’ve already developed good, safe, reliable methods of contraception that are available to us. This app is completely taking women back in time.”
Dr. Han said we should keep in mind the cases in Sweden are anecdotal.
"Are there women out there who used this app and got pregnant? Of course!" he said. "I'm not sure how useful those stories are to a woman deciding whether or not to use Natural Cycles. That just an anecdote. Is it a few out of many? That's why data is helpful... it's about 6 out of a 100 [who get pregnant after using the app]."
KGW can Verify the Natural Cycles app has a higher failure rate than more traditional birth control methods like pills or IUDs.
"With any birth control there's a failure rate. There's not a single birth control out there that's perfect in its ability to prevent pregnancy, some much lower than others," Dr. Han said.
If you're interested in trying it out, have a conversation with your gynecologist first to see if it's the right method of birth control for your body.
A representative from Natural Cycles sent KGW the following statement:
We care deeply each and every time one of our users becomes pregnant while using Natural Cycles and we understand the great difficulties faced by women who find themselves pregnant unintentionally. One of the ongoing challenges with all forms of contraception is that there is always a statistical chance of unintended pregnancy, since no method is 100% effective. The number of pregnancies reported with Natural Cycles has consistently remained within the expected threshold based on our published typical use effectiveness rate of 93%. Of course this does not take away from the difficulties faced by women who become pregnant unintentionally, and it is our mission to provide our users with the very best care; we take our responsibility in educating women about how to use Natural Cycles very seriously and offer ongoing support to our users.