Ep. 201: Why is Creighton better than basal body temp or others? (Listener Question)

In today's episode, Caitlin answers a question submitted by one of our listeners: Why is the Creighton Model System more useful than basal body temperature based methods? 

She gives an overview of the main differences between the methods, including the reproductive biomarkers observed and the different information they provide, as well as the unique benefits of the cervical-mucus only fertility appreciation method, the Creighton Model System. 

If you're trying to decide which fertility awareness method to use for women's health care or natural family planning use, this episode is designed for you! If you're curious about the differences between these very popular methods, this episode is a great place to start!

NOTE: This episode is appropriate for all audiences.

OTHER EPISODES AND HELPFUL INFO: 

Ep. 108: Choosing a Natural Family Planning (NFP) Method

Ep. 1: BASICS - How your body works

Ep. 59: Can I really use Creighton myself??

Creighton Effectiveness: PMID: 9653695

Transcript

Caitlin (00:24)
Welcome back to the Woven Well podcast. A while back, I opened up a Q &A on Instagram and I got some really great questions, ones that I really appreciated. And most of them I went ahead and replied to there, but there was one that I thought deserved just a little bit more exploration than I had room for on a story slide. Emily Renee asked, what makes the Creighton model system more useful than basal body temperature and other methods?

First, in case those terms are totally new to you and the question feels a bit unclear, it may be helpful to give a little bit of quick context as to what she's talking about. When you think about a woman's reproductive cycle, a lot of times we think about a period. When we have a period, how often that's gonna be, whether our cycles are regular or irregular, but the main event of a reproductive cycle for a woman is actually something called ovulation.

This is when the egg is actually released from the ovary and there's the possibility of pregnancy. Everything about a cycle is leading up to this point. Everything that happens afterwards is in response to this point. So ovulation is the main event and it's actually only during this time in a cycle when a woman could possibly conceive the days leading up to ovulation and the 24 hours afterwards.

So if there's only this short period of time, every single cycle, when a woman could possibly conceive a pregnancy, then we want to understand when those times are. And our body actually provides really great ways to do this. We call these reproductive biomarkers. And it's just basically a way that the body is communicating about what's going on internally. So external signs of an internal process. Well, the reproductive system specifically is preparing for that main event through rising hormones like FSH, estrogen, and LH, and these provide signs that we can learn to interpret to be able to spot that buildup to ovulation and then actually know that it's over. Basically, you can know when a woman has the potential to conceive and when she doesn't if you learn to understand these biomarkers. So you can do this in your own life as well. Well, if you understand a little bit about biomarkers, you have to first start with what are they? So,

They are cervical mucus, basal body temperature, LH or hormone tests, and cervical position changes. Now, cervical mucus, basal body temperature, and LH or hormone tests all have methods of family planning that are actually built around them.

Now, what I love about any of these methods of family planning that these reproductive biomarkers is that they encourage education over suppression. They create a relationship of trust with your body instead of a relationship of fear. They're empowering you to participate with your cycles instead of strong on them. It is worth it, okay? I fully believe in them and think they are so helpful for so many different reasons.

Now we have other episodes out there that go into more detail and so I'll be sure to link those in the show notes for you, but hopefully that's some helpful background just to understand what Emily Renee's question is. So going back to that, why is the Creighton model system, which focuses on cervical mucus, better than methods that focus on basal body temperature, urinary hormones, et cetera? Well, I think it's a great question. And I'd like to start by saying that some out there may disagree with me. Fine. We're all gonna have different opinions when it comes to this. as strongly as I feel about it personally, it's definitely not a black and white issue. So you may have another method that works better for you and that's great. Some ladies will just prefer a method that works with one of the other reproductive biomarkers over cervical mucus. But I just wanted to share what my reasons are that I feel that the Creighton model system is more useful than those other methods. Okay, number one, and I'm not going to count them, so I shouldn't even say number one, but one of them is you only have to use one sign, whereas all the others require some sort of a cross check. So family planning methods that use basal body temperature or urinary hormones, they also want you to use cervical mucus. It's just that good.

So very practically, you have to? I've talked with women who have tried a little bit of everything and when they start working with me, I encourage them to just set aside all the others just while they're learning and most never go back to them. You just don't need them. You really can learn so much from cervical mucus and it provides so much data and you no longer need that cross check once you understand it. And I do want to clarify that there are apps out there that will ask you about cervical mucus. This is different. Okay, the Creighton model system is a full system of protocols around the cervical mucus itself. So you really want to be able to understand the details of it. And if you've ever worked with a fertility care practitioner, and you're just feel like, I don't feel like I got enough data to feel really confident about ovulation, then I wouldn't necessarily say that it's the Creighton model system, but you may benefit from having another opinion from another fertility care practitioner. Okay, another thing that I think is a benefit, cervical mucus just works for everyone. There are ladies who have mucus every single day of their cycles, and there are ladies who rarely see cervical mucus at all, but even in these situations, they are easily managed with the Creighton system.

I don't think that I've ever met anyone that couldn't use Creighton effectively because of her mucus. This is also why you don't learn it on your own. You know, I just mentioned an instructor. When you have an instructor, certainly someone who is a certified fertility care practitioner like myself, but we have lots of amazing, fantastic fertility care practitioners at Woven. They are instructed on how to help you. We have seen, my gosh, hundreds, thousands, it has to be thousands, of charts over the years and different scenarios. And we've been there before. We know how to walk you through that, even if it may be the first time for you to see it. And it doesn't look like any of the examples in the book. I promise you I've seen it before. Methods like basal body temperature don't necessarily work as well for ladies who are maybe getting up in the middle of the night with little ones or those who don't sleep very well, those who may have had alcohol the night before, even those who get sick and have a fever. those can be troublesome, especially if it's for a woman who is postpartum or getting up in the night. It can be a little bit challenging, even if she's using one of the aura rings or one of those other avenues and not just actually taking her temperature in the morning. And then methods that use urinary hormones like Marquette don't always work as well for women with long or irregular cycles or those who have very mild LH rises that may not be captured by the monitor. So this is what I've been told from clients that I've worked with in the past who had really long cycles. Maybe they were struggling to ovulate and so their cycles were very irregular and the Marquette method just ended up being very expensive for them because they kept having to take the tests and it would always say low. And then I've had other clients who they were ovulating, but their hormones were very, very low, which is something we want to work on. And we were able to see signs of that through their cervical mucus. But actually using the Marquette method didn't give them as much information about that. And so they didn't necessarily fit into the rules related around Marquette. Even though they were ovulating regularly, they couldn't catch it on the monitor. So those situations can be kind of troubling and concerning for some ladies. 

So in my experience, I guess I'm not saying this is across the board, but in my experience and what I've heard from clients, that's another reason why I feel like Creighton is a little bit better. Another would be that Creighton is a prospective method, not a retrospective method. What I mean by that is Creighton actually tells you when the window of fertility has begun, not only when it's over. And this is helpful for every woman, but especially those women with non-traditional cycles like women with PCOS or those with unusual bleeding, long cycles, irregular cycles. It's just as important to know the beginning as it is the end. Now, basal body temperature is fantastic for seeing that temperature rise that signals that ovulation is complete and that hormone progesterone has risen. But when did that window of fertility actually start?

When did it begin? Well, basal body temperature based methods use averages from previous cycles to make informed guesses. I just don't love to leave it to a guess. Okay, I'm just a little more specific than that. And that's actually one of the things that really led me to want to use Creighton on my own in the beginning is that I liked that it was not informed guesses. It was actually real time data. So yes, I do not love guesses, which I feel like leads me to my next point, which is that Creighton is well studied and very precise. And there are other methods that are also well studied. So I'm not trying to say that we are well studied and others are not, but just that that is one of the things that I really appreciate about the Creighton model system. And by the way, if this episode is helpful for you, if you're learning new things and feeling more knowledgeable about this area of your life and how to make the decision about what's right for you,

Would you take 10 seconds and leave a review for us? Reviews are the lifeblood of podcasts and we want as many women as possible to know that natural fertility options are out there for them. A quick review would mean the world. Okay, getting back to this testing. When used correctly to avoid pregnancy, Creighton is 99.5 % effective at avoiding pregnancy, like...

That is really good. And like I hinted at earlier, it's one of the main reasons why I chose to use it personally and one of the main reasons that I continue to recommend it. So not only is it well established and well tested, but the effectiveness is very high. 

So it's actually more effective than the birth control pill and just as effective as an IUD. And that sounds crazy when we think about how often the others are promoted as the ways to avoid pregnancy. But in my opinion, Creighton is where it's at. When you're using the system, you can know on each given day whether or not you're fertile. And that is so empowering.

You can make an informed decision about how to use that day. Do you want to try to conceive? Do you want to try to avoid? How strongly do you feel about either? All of that can go into empowering you to make those decisions as a team, as a couple with confidence and with peace. All right, finally, the Creighton method gives the most medical data. This is going to be the last reason that I talk about today, although I do think that there are even more reasons.

But the fact that Creighton gives incredible amount of medical data is a huge reason why I think it's worth it. It gives by far the most insightful medical information of the reproductive biomarkers. Now I realize that you may be wondering about the new tech and gadgets that are out there right now. So let's just chat about those for a quick second, because obviously they do give a lot of information.

We now have incredible hormone monitors like the Mira monitor that can actually tell you exact levels of estrogen, progesterone, LH, FSH. This is amazing. I love it. it can give really detailed data without having to get daily blood draws and without having to pay hundreds of dollars in order to do it. But what monitors like these don't give you are the skills to interpret that data. So if you're partnering with someone knowledgeable, they're amazing. But they're best used when you need specific hormone data for a short amount of time and maybe when you're working with a physician or someone trained in interpreting those results. So Creighton is just a better option for medical data for really two reasons. First of all, once you learn it, it's a simple system that helps you interpret the information as much as you observe it.

So it equips you to prepare for the effects of stress or surprising hormonal changes. It makes you aware of changes to fertility or your general women's health and hormones, and you don't have to have any additional tools in order to interpret it. You could actually travel across the world without access to electricity or Amazon shipping, and you'd still be fine. As long as you have toilet paper, you can use the Creighton model system. And even more useful than that is the fact that the Creighton system doesn't only reveal hormone issues. Charting with this system can reveal underlying issues like infection, thyroid disease, insulin resistance, organic issues like polyps or fibroids and more, without you having to do anything differently. It's incredibly empowering. And then there's NAPRO technology. So the second reason that Creighton is more useful for medical data is that there are actual medical professionals trained in interpreting it for themselves. Over the years, there have been so many health issues that were constantly revealed through the Creighton charting that the founder actually begins studying them formally. He was like, okay, something's happening here. We're learning information about their health, not just their fertility. so decades later, Napro technology was born. It's a set of protocols for investigating, diagnosing, and treating these issues to support the healthy functioning of the reproductive system. This means that you can bring your Creighton chart into a doctor and immediately have a better idea of what may be causing your symptoms or concerns.

and they won't look at you like you're crazy for noticing when things are different. And they won't just do an ultrasound and run a basic blood panel and say, ⁓ that looks good. They will actually see what's going on based on looking at your chart. They'll know exactly what you're talking about, and they'll be able to guide you in how to get to the bottom of it. There some restorative reproductive medicine avenues that focus on charting as well.

And if you're interested in those, would focus specifically on neo fertility. if you're not looking at NAPRO technology. By the way, these should not be in competition. You should be able to use all of these. So you can use your Creighton model chart and bring it into any restorative reproductive medicine physician and they should be able to utilize that information Remember, ultimately, I am a fan of any fertility awareness method that brings awareness and appreciation for women's cycles. They are incredible, marvelous designs of God that are actually for our good and in my opinion, for God's glory.

They are worth exploring and studying and valuing and nurturing. God did not give them to us as a curse. They are a gift when we take the time to see them for what they are. So I'm not anti any other method or anything like that. I love them. fully support them. It's just personally, this is why I have found Creighton to be the most useful method out there.

If you have a question you'd like to submit, scroll down in the show notes to the place where it says, text the show and feel free to send one our way. We can't actually reply to those messages, but we can answer them on air. And if I can, I'd love to. As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.