Home pregnancy test with iodine: how to do and check?

The absence of menstruation on time causes joy in some women, while others are frightened. In the modern world, it is not difficult to determine whether pregnancy has occurred; special tests are sold in pharmacies. The simplest of them are test strips. Having collected morning urine and dipped the test in it, the confirming result is the coloring of both strips. Perhaps this is due to the reaction to the hormone, which begins to be synthesized from the first day of fertilization of the cell and its attachment to the wall of the uterus. How can you find out about this in conditions when there is no pharmacy nearby or far from civilization? It turns out that there are folk methods of determination. One of them is a pregnancy test with iodine.

The norm of iodine in urine during pregnancy

Iodine is a very important chemical element in human functioning. It is involved in the production of thyroid hormones, which stimulate the growth and development of the body, regulate many metabolic processes and biochemical reactions. It is especially necessary during pregnancy, when the parameters of the future person are laid down: muscular, circulatory, nervous, skeletal systems. Iodine deficiency, like excess, is dangerous for the fetus. Deviations from the norm can cause various pathologies, up to mental retardation of the child, early birth. Most of it enters the body with food. Fish, including freshwater, and seafood are especially rich in iodine. The amount of iodine in the urine depends on nutrition: on a day of greater consumption of iodine-containing products, the analysis will show a higher figure and vice versa. Therefore, doctors recommend taking it several times every other day to get a plausible result. The normal indicator of the trace element in the urine for a pregnant woman is 200 mcg. It is also indirectly reflected by a blood test for the hormones thyroxine and thyrotropin.

Accuracy of Iodine Pregnancy Test

Reviews of those who have tried the iodine pregnancy test on themselves advise not to rely on it too much. Sometimes, having applied it to men and children in the family, they received a positive result. There were cases when it showed the absence of pregnancy when it was present. Therefore, this is most likely an experiment before buying a pharmacy test or going to the doctor. Sometimes even a test with iodine can mislead women with serious pathology and attribute everything to pregnancy, which means wasting time and exposing health to the risk of irreversible consequences.

Determination of pregnancy with iodine

There are two methods of determining pregnancy with iodine. In both cases, morning urine and iodine itself are used. Before performing it, you need to wash yourself well, wipe yourself dry and collect urine.

The first option involves using a sheet of clean white paper. It is soaked in urine, iodine is collected in a pipette and dripped onto the paper. If it turns purple or blue, it indicates pregnancy, and if it turns brown, it indicates that there is no pregnancy.

The second option is to collect urine in a container in the morning and very carefully drip iodine into it from a short distance. If the drop does not spread immediately, but sinks a little, then comes to the surface and disperses in the urine, then there is pregnancy. You can check pregnancy with iodine at home only up to the 10th week.

Why does this happen? Pregnant women experience changes in urine acidity, hormonal levels, and various reagents react to this in their own way, including iodine. Since other factors also influence this, no one can give a 100% guarantee of the test's effectiveness.

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How to determine pregnancy without iodine?

The most reliable way to determine pregnancy without iodine is to consult a gynecologist and undergo an ultrasound procedure. Physiologically, it can be felt by a change in taste preferences, nausea, a short-term nagging pain in the lower abdomen, swelling of the mammary glands, a change in the smell of your body, mood swings, and frequent urination. There are other popular recipes for determining pregnancy:

• using soda - collect urine, put a spoon of soda in it. If the urine foams, there is no pregnancy, if it settles - there is;
• People believe that dreaming about fish indicates the imminent birth of a child;
• There is evidence that pregnancy can be determined by a curdled egg broken into urine;
• measuring basal temperature for several days - this is the lowest body temperature during rest, in particular night sleep. The method is based on the fact that during ovulation it increases by 0.25-0.5 ⁰ C. To conduct this test, you need to prepare a thermometer in the evening so as not to get up in the morning. Lying down, insert the thermometer into the anus, hold for 5-8 minutes, record the readings. If the ovulation period has passed, and the temperature remains within 37 ⁰ and has not dropped to 36.6 ⁰ -36.7 ⁰ C, then the probability of conception is very high. In fact, if everything is done correctly, this is the most accurate method for diagnosing pregnancy.
• popular electronic pregnancy tests.

Useful links

• Urine test with tincture of iodine, a new pregnancy test https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14954761