It Measures Hormones
Many women are lucky enough to have predictable menstrual cycles and know exactly when they are ovulating. If you do not fall into this category, fear not as an ovulation predictor kit, or OPK, may be exactly what you need. These kits are readily available in drugstores and typically come with 5 to 10 sticks that look much like pregnancy testing strips. Unlike a pregnancy test, which measures the level of hCG in your urine, OPKs measure your level of lutenizing hormone, or LH. LH tends to surge in a woman's body just before ovulation takes place. Ovulation predictor kit help you detect this surge, so you can pinpoint your most fertile days even if your cycles are irregular.
It Pinpoints Your Most Fertile Times
When you buy an OPK, the instructions usually tell you to use your first test strip a few days before you expect to ovulate. Of course, if your cycles are not regular, determining this date can be problematic. So how do you know when to start using your strips? Take the number of days in your shortest recent cycle, and subtract 14. This number would be the earliest day in your menstrual cycle that you would ovulate. Once you know this number, subtract a few more days and use your first strip then. For example, if your shortest cycle was 28 days, you would typically ovulate on day 14. In order to catch your ovulation day ahead of time, you should start testing on day 10 or 11 to catch your the LH surge. Because not every cycle will be this short, you will want to continue testing until you get your positive result, even if it takes longer than you expect. If your cycles are highly variable, you may want to have a second OPK on hand in case you run out of test strips.
It Provides Guidelines for Future Attempts to Conceive
While an OPK does a great job of measuring hormones, you must use it correctly in order to accurately predict your fertile days. While manufacturers of pregnancy kits suggest taking a test first thing in the morning, the opposite is true for a ovulation prediction. LH is often not present until the afternoon, so testing in the morning may cause you to miss out on the surge. Try to test around the same time of day every time, or at least as close to it as you can get. This will increase the accuracy of your results. Keep in mind that OPKs use a color-matching system. Unlike a pregnancy test, a positive in an ovulation predictor kit is indicated not just by a second line, but by a second line that is the same hue as the control line. Keeping these things in mind, your OPK can be up to 99 percent accurate in predicting your most fertile days.
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