Tracking Events, Moods, and Symptoms

Statistical Event Tracking

The Hormonal Forecaster includes powerful features that enable users to track personal symptoms and events. These features can be used completely independent of its role as a fertility chart and ovulation calendar. Some users even use the Hormonal Forecaster exclusively for event tracking.

Events can describe any mood, symptom, behavior, or occurrence you are interested in tracking. These can describe health conditions (e.g. migraine headaches, upset stomach, muscle spasms, fatigue), additional fertility symptoms (e.g. breast tenderness, menstrual cramps, increased libido), moods (e.g. general irritability, happiness, anxiety), activities (e.g. medication, exercise, extensive traveling), or anything else you are interested in tracking. The Hormonal Forecaster will help generate statistics about these events to help you look for patterns and understand when they occur.

Event Reporting

Once you begin recording the occurrence of events, you can use the Hormonal Forecaster desktop version to generate detailed reports about the events. Other editions are capable of viewing and recording events, but you will need to synchronize with the desktop version to do full analysis. These reports describe the frequency of occurrence, the correlation between events that may suggest causation, and the likelihood of reoccurrence based on past history.

Frequency reports will indicate how often events have been recorded. For example, you can see how many migraine headaches you have had in the past year. It is also possible to quickly see the longest number of days you went without a headache. Monthly charts can display how frequency patterns are changing over time as well.

If you are tracking multiple events, you can also view relationship reports. These reports indicate how well correlated different events are. For example, if you track consumption of spicy food and instances where you experience heartburn, you may see a correlation between these two events if spicy food causes your heartburn. It could be that you always experience heartburn the day after eating spicy food. Relationship reports will help you catch on to this pattern.

The Hormonal Forecaster is also capable of looking for cyclical patterns in your recorded events. The recorded events can be analyzed relative to your menstrual cycle, the lunar cycle, or the days of the week.

Menstrual Cycle Based Analysis

For many types of events, the most useful cycle for women to compare against is their menstrual cycle. You simply need to enter the start of your menstrual periods to establish your cycle history to take advantage of this. The Hormonal Forecaster can then look for patterns in recorded events when compared against your menstrual cycle. This information can be used to estimate future occurrences based upon past history when combined with future cycle projections.

Lunar and Day of the Week Based Analysis

The cyclical nature of the lunar cycle or days of the week can also be applied to your recorded events. This is done in a similar fashion to that described for your menstrual cycle. In doing so, patterns can be detected and future predictions made. As a simple example, you may have sore muscles the day after you exercise. A relationship report would help to identify this pattern if both events were tracked. If you only tracked muscle soreness though and exercise on the same days each week, future predictions of muscle soreness would show a strong likelihood of reoccurrence when calculated against the days of the week. This information could be helpful to understand possible cause and effect relationships.

Migraines and Other Practical Applications

As one could imagine, there are many practical uses to the program’s event tracking capabilities. Over the years users have found many different uses for this feature. One of the more common uses is for women with hormonal problems. The natural hormonal fluctuations that accompany your menstrual cycle may also trigger other symptoms. By comparing your recorded events against your cycle history, this information can be uncovered if present.

Many other users have reported success or at least found value in using the Hormonal Forecaster to track migraine headaches. Although migraines can be triggered a wide range of causes, the Hormonal Forecaster can greatly help you understand the magnitude of your condition by seeing exactly when migraines occur. It can also point to possible causes if the right information is tracked along side it.

Some users have also reported success tracking drug side effects. By tracking symptoms against types of medicines, you may be able to see patterns to suggest that particular medicines are aggravating your symptoms. You can talk to your doctor about this information to see if another alternative may be available that does not lead to the specific side effect which you are prone to. You should never base your decision to take prescribed medication on this data though. Instead, you should consult your doctor or pharmacist with possible concerns and seek their professional advice.

With everything said, it is very important to point out that correlation does not imply causation. This means that simply because two events always happen at the same time does not mean that one necessarily causes the other. You may always take your medicine with milk and then feel sick afterwards. There may be a high correlation between taking your medicine and feeling sick, but it does not mean that your medicine is responsible for making you sick. It could instead be that you are lactose intolerant and it is the milk that is responsible.

Event tracking within the Hormonal Forecaster allows you to view information about recorded events in a convenient format that may not otherwise be apparent. This information can be insightful, but it certainly cannot prove anything. To this extent, users are encouraged to take advantage of this program feature but to think critically about the results to understand what is actually going on.