New wearable data could lead to early diagnosis of fertility issues – without needles

Fitness wearable company Whoop claims data from its screenless wristband has revealed a “novel biomarker” for tracking menstruation, which could make some health issues easier to catch earlier on. 

Vital signs, including body temperature and heart rate, change through each phase of a person’s menstrual cycle. But Whoop’s research, published on Monday, indicates that the amplitude, or size, of those changes can tell us more than previously thought. 

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The company’s study reviewed data from more than 11,500 women who opted in, ultimately including 45,000 menstrual cycles. “Amplitude was found to be suppressed in individuals with characteristics linked to reduced fertility, such as higher BMI & older age. This non-invasive marker could help identify reproductive health issues earlier, cutting time to diagnosis,” Whoop Founder and CEO Will Ahmed shared in an X thread on Thursday. 

The study explains that for women who get a period and are premenopausal, menstrual cycle changes can indicate potential health issues, like hormonal fluctuations that suggest certain disorders. 

“Those experiencing irregular menstrual cycles have been found to have a higher risk of coronary heart disease, cancers, and osteoporosis later in life,” the study notes. “Unfortunately, recognizing these cycle disruptions can be challenging as it may take several months before an individual identifies irregular or missed menses.” 

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The study suggests that, based on the data Whoop collects, irregularities found by wearables could be used to diagnose conditions more quickly and easily — without the need for blood tests or other more invasive and slower methods of diagnosis. 

“Since wearable technology provides continuous and accurate cardiovascular measures such as resting heart rate (RHR) and the root mean square of successive differences measure of heart rate variability (RMSSD), and these cardiovascular measures are known to vary across the menstrual cycle, the combination of wearable technology and menstrual cycle tracking offers an intriguing opportunity to monitor health across the reproductive lifespan and to rapidly identify menstrual irregularities,” the study continues. 

The data points to the increased popularity of wearable tech and how much we could gain from the ever-growing data pool they make possible. 

“This discovery was powered by our 24/7 data and global scale. Over 1 million days of data enabled insights not possible without an always-on wearable,” Ahmed explained in the thread. 

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More and more people are using their smartphones to track menstrual cycles — data from April to December of 2021 alone tracked 250 million downloads for the top three most popular options. As smart rings link up with fertility trackers like Natural Cycles, that trend is likely to experience an uptick across personal tech. 

That increase in popularity isn’t without security concerns, however. Fertility information can be extremely sensitive, and not all apps share the same privacy standards or adherences. Before using an app, take a look at its privacy policy, whether it’s HIPAA-compliant, and whether the company backing it has had any recent data breaches (and how it handled them).