The Patient’s Corner is a place where we publish patients’ ideas and suggestions regarding health and wellness. We find that the private conversations of patient and practitioner are also reflective of a much larger anonymous conversation between many patients, since the wisdom and knowledge gained by one is often indirectly shared with another through the practitioner.
This one came from a patient who was dealing with difficult PMS problems. She found that tracking her period was very instructional in discovering how she could modify her lifestyle and frequency of acupuncture treatments to be at her best. She found the use of an iTunes program called “The Period Tracker” important to making this happen (if you don’t have an iPhone or iPad, there are other programs that work on Windows-based computer systems or the Blackberry). We got her permission to tell about her experience with this program below, in her own words!
Period Tracker (Deluxe) and sells on iTunes for 1.99.
“I love that it lets you use it for whatever purpose you want (PMS, fertility, birth control) and is so user friendly. At the minimum you press a button when your period starts and again when it ends. You can also choose to enter moods, temperatures, PMS symptoms, weight, length of days each period lasts and when you were intimate. Its very user friendly and only took me about 15 minutes to figure it all out, as it has cute pictures/symbols to use.
Your cycle is charted on a monthly calendar and as soon as you start using it, the tracker will show when you are most likely to ovulate and when your most fertile times are. If your cycles are irregular, as mine are starting to be, I’ve found it super handy to predict when my next period will start… It predicts the start of my next cycle and has been very accurate to within a day, and also gives me dates up to a year in advance of when my period should fall which has been helpful in planning vacations and life in general.”
I can see how the tracker would be invaluable for fertility planning and also for those choosing to use it for help with birth control as it has proved to help me track my periods so accurately and easily. Plus, even if all you do is push the button when your period starts and ends and not bother entering in any symptoms etc… it still does all the figuring for you-the vast majority of the time this is the only feature I use so it only takes a few seconds! One of the potentially more useful features of this app is that is has a ‘sister’ app called “Period Tracker Companion for Men” for .99cents which allows your partner to sync their electronic device with your calendar so they as well can track your period, ovulation, PMS and fertile times. We haven’t tried this yet but I think many partners would say its worth a lot more than 99 cents (ha ha).”
