Device Review: Eli: At Home Hormone Monitor

Hormone monitoring has become the norm these days, thanks to more and more women realizing their health is in their hands. This is particularly true when it comes to reproductive health. Young people are waiting longer to have babies, and that means they run into more fertility difficulties. The solution? Understanding your body and how it works. That’s where Eli comes in.

This unique device is the latest in femtech, designed by a Canadian company with an eye for making life simpler for women of child-bearing age. The idea of hormonal contraception is rather unpleasant for many, but with so few choices and minimal advancement in this area, women are often forced to make difficult choices. Eli changes this by making it possible to monitor your hormones daily, without the need for testing urine or blood. All you need is your saliva and the device.

Everything can be done at home without an outside clinic, which is a huge plus for most people.

What is Eli: At Home Hormone Monitor

Eli: At Home Hormone Monitor is a way for women to control their own reproductive health. However, this is no app that guesses based on your basal temperature. Instead, it is an actual device that lets you test your saliva to check your hormones daily.

The information puts the power back in a woman’s hands. When you know exactly how many of the most important hormones are working in your body, you can determine when you are most likely to conceive safer. The information provided gives you the option of determining the best time to try for a baby or be more careful to avoid pregnancy. However, since the device measures multiple hormone levels, it’s also useful for pre-menstrual and peri-menopause to give you a better look at how your body works.

Since hormones change drastically throughout the month, it can be helpful to know exactly how your levels fluctuate. It’s also possible to use that information to understand PMS symptoms better and predict when irregular cycles are most likely to change.

How It Works

Eli is a good choice for those looking for a safer, hormone-free method of contraception. It’s better than the apps that use the woman’s base temps she takes each morning since it measures actual hormone levels rather than just the temperature, which may not be taken correctly.

Eli lets you put a cartridge in your mouth to soak it with saliva. The cartridge is then placed into the device, which measures certain hormones. It sends this information to the helpful app, where you will be informed of your levels and the likelihood of pregnancy on this particular day. With the information collected, the app can accurately predict which days are best for conceiving and when to avoid sexual intercourse to avoid pregnancy.

Pros and Cons of Eli: At Home Hormone Monitor

There are pros and cons to any device. Eli is no exception. However, it’s set to be an excellent replacement for less secure methods of contraception and fertility apps for many women.

Eli has plenty of upsides, including:

• It was developed by a woman, Marina Pavlovic Rivas, and her husband.
• It doesn’t require hormones being injected into the body or ingested.
• It is an accurate way to detect hormones, no matter what stage of life you are in.
• You only need saliva instead of urine, which other tests use.
• Eli can be done at home, quickly and easily.

Of course, there are a few downsides, though. For example:

• It hasn’t launched yet, so you may need to wait a bit.
• Some consumables need to be purchased periodically.
• We don’t currently know the price, but it’s likely to be on par with the average fertility device, so it may be pricy to buy.

While there are still a few unknowns about the project, Eli appears to be a unique solution to an age-old problem. Since it also gives you a hormonal profile at any age, women can track their hormonal changes from childhood to menopause and beyond.

What People Are Saying About Eli

At this point, Eli is so new that the company is still in the process of fundraising and has raised $1.9 million in CAD to develop the project as of January 2021. Despite being a brand new startup in femtech, Eli is taking off with its innovative idea for making life easier for women.

If the investments aren’t enough to convince you that people are interested in this type of technology, then the developer is a woman who wanted a better option for birth control should help. After all, who better to create a contraceptive alternative than someone who will be using it daily.

Alternatives for Monitoring Hormones

Hormone monitoring is nothing new, but the method of doing it has changed drastically with Eli. Other hormone monitors include:

Mira: Women do a urine dip test each morning and place it into the analyzer. The device syncs to your app within a half hour to let you know how likely you are to conceive on the day you test. The app works out your fertility schedule to help you determine when you should have intercourse to conceive.

Modern Fertility: This method requires a blood sample, which you need to do yourself or at a local clinic. From there, you send your sample in and receive a fertility profile within a few days. While it may be accurate, this does require sending out results, which most people are not interested in when they sign up to test at home.

Most of these tests require sending your blood sample in or testing your urine, which can be messy and time-consuming. Testing saliva, which has previously been available via external hormone monitoring, is accurate and easy. With Eli, it’s also now available to do at home.

In the end, Eli looks like it will be a definite game-changer in the world of hormone monitoring. It’s already drawing plenty of interest and is likely to be a big seller. After all, who wouldn’t want an easier way to monitor their hormones over time?