Basal body temperature

There's so many reasons why that day of when ovulation happen- happens, um, can change.

So that's where body literacy, tracking your cervical mucus, tracking your BBT, getting really comfy confirming your ovulation is going to be step one, so then you can test progesterone seven days after your unique ovulation.

And that's important because we know that progesterone does, in a healthy cycle, have this crescendo effect.

It's gonna start lower.

But that would be [laughs] like, you know, the gold standard of you're testing your hormones literally every day of your cycle at multiple points to get that, to see that true fluctuat- true fluctuating pattern.

Um, but anyways, now with all this said, you know, no testing is perfect, and that's why I really appreciate also having the fertility awareness integrated in my practice because tracking your menstrual cycle in this, um, diagnostic way, it's giving us daily feedback on your fertility.

We're seeing, are you spotting? How long is your luteal phases? What is your BBT doing? These are all context clues that we are getting straight from your body on a daily basis to let us know how hormones are fluctuating and how they're doing.

Again, nothing is perfect.

But if you ovulate on cycle day 12, if you ovulate on cycle day 18, cycle day 22, if day 21 doesn't make sense so you really just want to make sure that you're getting progesterone evaluated relative to your actual ovulation not a random calendar day and so again the goal is that you're testing seven days post peak and that peak day is the last day of your fertile cervical mucus last day of anything clear stretchy slippery You can also potentially use your LH surge if you're not so great with cervical mucus.

You could use a BBT shift potentially too, or if there's other appropriate tracking.

But the most important thing is that you're taking that data that you have, whether it's cervical mucus, LH surge, BBT, and talking with your doctor and saying, what day should I be testing progesterone based on this information? Because I wouldn't want you to get worried about a progesterone number if it's not actually being timed correctly after when you ovulated.

Because one test isn't always the whole story.

So one blood draw gives us a snapshot.

So don't build your entire fertility identity around one poorly timed number.

We want to be looking at the patterns over time.

And that's why I'm so constantly talking about cycle tracking and proper cycle tracking, because you will be able to tell what your progesterone is likely doing by looking at your luteal phase length, by looking at your fluctuations in BBT month after month after month.

I've had clients that start spotting like right after they ovulate all the way up until they get their period, right? So it totally depends on your level of low progesterone and how, you know, low it actually is.

But that's a sign of low progesterone and of this weak ovulation for the the purposes of this actual question, your BBT not staying high for 11 to 14 days.

So again, when you ovulate and we are producing progesterone now from that leftover follicle, that's the corpus luteum, your basal body temperature numbers should stay high for three days in a row.

That confirms ovulation, right? They have to be 0.3 to 0.5 degrees higher than the previous six temperatures for three days in a row to confirm ovulation.

If it was strong ovulation, we will have, and you have strong progesterone levels because of it, you will have that higher number stay high for 11 to 14 days before you either get your period or before, well, if you get pregnant, then they're just going to stay high because that's just your progesterone levels are staying high when you're pregnant, and that's why that BBT is high.

So if you are having, you know, three days in a row of that higher temperature, but then it dips down or it even dips down sooner than 11 to 14 days of eluteal phase, that is a sign of weak ovulation, right? So it's really just signs of low progesterone or signs of weak ovulation.

If you have really heavy or long periods, like periods that are seven days or longer, or they're really heavy, like you need to change your cup or your tampon or your pad multiple, multiple times a day, every hour, every two hours.

I see this a lot.

But what we actually discovered when we looked at her cycles is that she was really relying way too heavily on BBT and LH testing, and she was not, you know, baby dancing at the right times.

Once she started learning her fertile cervical mucus though, then she was.

She actually had a, a luteal phase that was not long enough.

So if you're wearing a tracker, please have a look at how long and how many deep sleep phases you have per night, because that's really gonna impact your cycle.

And I would go ahead and start tracking your cycle either with BBT, basal body temperature, thermometer, or using, like, a urine met- metabolite device like a Mira device or something to that effect, because it's gonna really show you where your ovulation levels are, where your progesterone levels are, and if you're getting the nice, perfect kind of hormonal pattern that we wanna see for optimal fertility, and your sleep is directly tied to that.

So when you don't sleep enough, right, now we're not making as much melatonin, our cortisol levels are higher, and when that starts to happen, we're now dysregulating ovulation fundamentally, and this is a, a big issue.

Then, of course, when we don't get enough sleep, we also have increase in ghrelin neurotransmitters that are secreted throughout the day and less sensitivity to leptin, so that means you're gonna be hungrier, hangrier, and l- feeling less satisfied, so you're gonna overdo carbohydrate exposure, which is then gonna throw off your blood sugar, and it's gonna impair ovarian health, right? So it's all so consistent.

So why am I not pregnant?" [laughs] And that's where I start to ask very different questions.

So when, you know, I talk to women, if you were to come to me and you were to say, like, "I'm tracking my ovulation," I would assume you're probably going to say to me that you're tracking, and I'm air quoting here, "tracking" ovulation because you get a positive LH test, or you have an Inito or a Mira monitor and that confirms ovulation for you, or you get a BBT rise, or because your cycles are regular, that 28- to 30-day window, or some app said that you ovulated, or maybe you've had the most, the, the biggest one that can confirm it, maybe you've had a progesterone blood draw.

And all of those things can tell us useful information, but they still are not telling the whole story of your cycle.

You can have an LH surge and still have questions about the ovulatory process because LH does not confirm it.

When did you start noticing more of that fertile quality cervical mucus? What was your most fertile day? Did you have a day where all day long you were noticing clear, stretchy, slippery? Amazing.

That's a really great sign.

If you track BBT, when did your temperature rise? And then how many days until your next period? So kinda start there.

There's more things we can dive into.

And you're then waiting for your bleed to come or that positive pregnancy to confirm that the egg actually has been released.

So can we just move on then and talk a little bit about basal body temperature and why that can be so helpful now? for PMOS? Because obviously what we've talked about so far is that, you know, predicting ovulation, but let's talk about the second half and BBT.

So what's happening there?

Yeah.

So I like to think of cervical mucus as like your crystal ball.

You're looking into the future of like, it's on the horizon.

Whereas BBT is like, it's just the visuals I have in my head.

You're in the lab currently clipboard and you're like, yes, tick ovulation has happened.