What is BBT?
Basal body temperature tracking is an effective way to manage and track your menstrual cycles. BBT Tracking allows women to clearly see when in their cycle they are ovulating, this is important for many reasons including:
- Contraception
- Regulating menstrual cycles
- Track progress of hormone support
- Fertility
- Hormone balance
How does it work?
When you are sleeping, your core body temperature naturally drops, and this resting temperature is called your Basal Body Temperature (BBT). Women who have natural menstrual cycles have a bi-phasic BBT pattern, meaning their BBT goes through two phases. This first phase is in your follicular phase- from 1st day of your menstrual cycle to ovulation, Your temperature is naturally lower at this time. The second phase follows ovulation (the Luteal phase), when progesterone is released from the corpus luteum, stimulating a rise in BBT. Tracking this ovulation can be very helpful to determine what is going on with your cycles and to track ovulation for contraception or fertility purposes.
How do I do it?
Tracking is easy, all you will need is a good quality thermometer (read on to the next page to learn more about thermometer’s).
Once you have this, pop it next to your bed, and every morning when you wake up, before you get out of bed, take your temperature and record it in a chart (it’s as simple as that).
What do I use?
If Basal Body Temperature Tracking has been recommended to you, the next step is to choose the best and most accurate solution to track your BBT. For most people, it is beneficial to get the hang of tracking your temperature with a normal Thermometer that you get from a chemist. However, once it becomes a habit and part of your life, it is beneficial to look into a device that will be more accurate, and charts your temperature by itself into an app- this is the easiest, most accurate way to track your BBT.
There are many devices out there, starting from Basic Level to Gold Standard- these are some that I recommend:
- For the Beginners; Chemist Warehouse (thermometre to 2 decimal places)
- For the Restless Sleeper, PCOS, Irregular Sleep Patterns; TEMPDROP
- Receive 10% off TEMPDROP with SCNH.
- The Gold Standard; DAYSY
