Fertility health is a broad term, compassing far more than the reproductive organs. A healthy lifestyle is essential for women and men trying to start a family, especially when infertility factors are involved. The below Apps are primarily to help patients conceive while they are waiting for NCFMC to take over their fertility monitoring and treatment with cutting-edge technology and professional, individualized, in-person care.
6 Apps That Support Fertility Treatments
We recommend anyone trying to get pregnant look into apps that support overall health and well-being, focusing on the apps that resonate with your needs.
Here are six of our favorites.
1. Clue Period & Cycle Tracker
If you’re just embarking on the fertility treatment journey, we’ll want to know everything we can about your menstrual cycle. The Clue Period and Ovulation Tracker is a user-friendly way to do that. It’s especially helpful for women with PCOS or endometriosis and those with a history of missed or irregular periods.
Keeping daily track of all symptoms, markers, and other health benchmarks, Clue is excellent at predicting an ovulation cycle rhythm – or lack thereof.
2. Ava Fertility Tracker
This app is currently the only FDA-approved device clinically proven to predict the five-day fertility window. The Ava Fertility Tracker app is used in conjunction with a bracelet users wear in their sleep. The bracelet monitors five critical ovulation predictors:
- Skin temperature
- Heart rate variability ratio
- Breathing rate
- Resting pulse rate
- Blood flow (perfusion)
We appreciate that AVA promises to donate 20% of each sale to women’s health research and development.
3. Glow Period Tracker
Like Clue, the Glow Period Tracker is one of the most popular fertility apps on the market. This is a good choice if you’re ready to embark on the fertility journey. The app offers four different phases, depending on where you’re at. Patients pursuing IVF appreciate it because it helps organize appointment dates and times. Once you’re pregnant, the Glow Nurture phase is adapted from fertility to prenatal appointments (hurray!).
And, once your baby is born, you advance to Glow Baby, which supports all aspects of postpartum and infant/child health.
4. Progyny
Progyny is a fertility insurance company (worth looking into if you haven’t already). Progyny also has a fertility app designed to support individuals and couples pursuing fertility treatments. In addition to supporting fertility treatment financing, planning, and scheduling, Progyny also has mindfulness apps and stress-relieving games to support you along the ups and downs of fertility treatments. NCFMC was one of Progyny’s first supporters and continues to support Progyny; however, not all employers offer Progyny to their employees.
5. Fooducate
Diet plays an important role in fertility, especially for women with PCOS or women and men who are under or overweight – both of which compromise fertility success. Overall, we recommend fertility patients adhere to a Mediterranean-style diet, or other healthy diet, easily modified to accommodate specific fertility or existing health conditions. Women with PCOS that are above their ideal body weight will lose weight with a low-carbohydrate diet if combined with any exercise.
The Fooducate app is a great way to learn more about the foods you eat, including those you find healthy. For example, there are far more sugar and processed ingredients in most foods than you know. Fooducate helps sort that out and adapts to your personal needs. It uses a variety of inputs, including eating habits, exercise, and hydration, to provide real-time stats and information.
6. Headspace
Like Fooducate, this app continues working for you long after you’re done with fertility treatments. The Headspace app supports relaxation (stress management) as well as healthy sleep habits.
Don’t forget that these things are as essential for a male partner as they are to a female, as studies who men who get less sleep or experience high stress levels have reduced sperm count and higher rates of sexual dysfunction.
In addition to meditation and mindfulness support, Headspace also provides self-care ideas that stick and become a part of your daily life, easy-to-use breathing exercises to help you cope with stressful moments wherever they find you, and tools and strategies for coping with traumatic events. This is an app that benefits the individual as well as the whole family.
NCFMC Takes a Holistic Approach to Fertility Treatments
The team at Northern California Fertility Medical Center knows that fertility health is a multi-faceted process. Obviously, the cutting-edge fertility monitoring with ultrasound, highly-trained embryology and andrology microscopic examinations of living sperm and eggs, preimplantation genetic testing and treatment at NCFMC are light-years ahead of any at-home APP, but we realize that everything helps. We want patients to have access to all of the tools out there to help them get pregnant with the least invasive methods available. These useful apps for fertility patients are one way to get full-spectrum support while you work with your fertility specialist. Contact us to begin a personalized and big-picture approach to fertility.
