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View Full Version : Ovulation Predictor Kits- helpful tool for monitoring LH



Jelisej
12-26-2012, 06:41 AM
I came across this text and I decided to copy-paste it as Ovulation Predictor Kits are really cheap, and it can be helpful tool as a part of PCT in determing if HPTA is starting to recover.

There are commercially available OPKs or Ovulation Predictor Kits, which are ordinarily women used by women who are trying to get pregnant as a way of telling when they're about to ovulate. What they actually consist of is test strips that detect LH (luteinizing hormone) in urine. In women, LH is produced just before ovulation occurs, however LH is also the same hormone that in men ordinarily stimulates the testicles to produce testosterone, and is deficient in men with secondary hypogonadism.

The way SERMs like clomiphene and tamoxifen work in men who are secondary is to encourage the hypothalamus and pituitary to churn out more LH. I'm currently using clomiphene to treat my hypogonadism, and thought these test strips might be useful as a way of keeping track of how much LH I'm producing on a day to day basis.

These ovulation test kits have one whopping advantage over blood tests: they're not very expensive, since a pack of 50 of the high sensitivity (20 mIU/ml) ones cost me £8. A single blood test to measure LH levels costs around £100, so these urine test strips are incredibly cheap by comparison. Plus there's no needles involved, and you don't have to go to a laboratory or need a doctor's say so to use them.

The disadvantage is that they are intended for use by women, whose LH production is in general quite a bit higher than in men. That means they're always going to produce a very weak reaction in a man with secondary hypogonadism. I've always had quite a faint pink colour in the test line and several times I've had no visible reaction at all. With the strips I've got, a LH level of 20 IU/litre would give a test line with the same intensity of colour as the control line, but for me it's always been much fainter - my strongest reaction looked to be about a quarter the intensity, i.e. about 5 IU per litre.

Urine LH levels are broadly similar to blood LH levels but not necessarily the same, and they depend on how concentrated the urine is as well as how much LH you're actually producing. I've been using the first urine of the morning as its the most concentrated, has collected over the longest period of time and has a reasonably consistent volume, all of which make it by far the best choice for getting results that can be compared day to day. Probably the fact that morning urine is more concentrated means that LH measurements from it are likely to be somewhat higher than the blood equivalent, whereas urine taken at other times of the day is generally quite a bit more dilute so would tend to have lower LH than blood.



I got a postmenopausal woman friend to provide a sample for testing, and the reaction from that (even though it wasn't her first urine of the day, and she's on diuretics) was stronger than any I've ever done, which shows that these tests do work. Postmenopausal women (and men with primary hypogonadism) tend to have quite high LH levels, so if nothing else this confirms I have secondary hypogonadism. It has been quite useful to see how my LH levels vary from day to day as well though (for instance I now know that finasteride is something to stay right away from, even at 0.5 mg per day!). I've been using a flatbed scanner to take a picture of the test results, so I have something to compare against later. Alternatively, if you don't mind the hygiene aspects it seems like you can just let the strips dry out and the colour change will stay put (at least going by some of the pictures I saw posted on the internet by women who were trying to get pregnant).

If anyone else wanted to try this, you definitely want to get the high sensitivity ones - the normal or low sensitivity ones would probably show no reaction whatsoever. I bought mine off amazon. They are ovulation predictor tests (which measure LH), NOT pregnancy tests (which measure hCG)!

h2s
12-26-2012, 10:04 AM
Interesting, thanks for sharing j.

Grape Ape
12-31-2012, 05:32 PM
Very interesting. A supp company could probably make bank marketing an LH test towards BB builders.

Jelisej
12-31-2012, 07:41 PM
Actually those OPK are dirt cheap- around 12$ for pack of 20- so compared to 20 blood tests its much cheaper- and as LH comes in peak I dont think that blood tests for LH are far superior (though I havent test OPK myself, yet). Anyway- I can see OPK as a part of any post-cycle in future.

O_RYAN_007
01-13-2013, 10:18 PM
Great info J!