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Why ask one friend about her experience with fertility when you can hear from millions?
Our newest feature Glow Pages collects the experiences of millions into one searchable directory. Glow Pages provides crowdsourced reviews of fertility clinics and products, searchable both online and in the Glow app.
Consider it the next step in our mission to empower you and your health :)
New lovers are so fun but so tricky. You’re trying to figure out if they *actually* like you, and then there’s the physical stuff: holding hands becomes a first kiss, clothes come off, you’re sleeping over…
Before things get too hot and heavy, it’s a good idea to have the talk. Yep, the talk—the one where you learn about past sexual history and when they last got tested for STIs.
This may sound like an insanely awkward convo, but in general, women are unfazed. Over 60% of women discuss past sexual histories before sleeping with their partner, and almost 20% of women require their partner to get tested before sex, according to polls in Glow Community.
These women are wise: Recall that 1 in 3 Americans currently has a sexually transmitted infection (STI). And STIs can be transmitted via a number of intimate situations; they’re different than pregnancy, so they’re not limited to P-in-V sex!
No matter how cringe-worthy it is to bring up STIs, it’s way better than freaking out because you don’t know your partner’s status. So, how do you float the topic without killing the mood? A few ideas:
Setting Matters
Find a private spot for the conversation—your place, their place, maybe even in bed! Feeling a sense of privacy will help both of you feel comfortable opening up. Definitely avoid bars, restaurants, and other public places; the last thing you want is an interruption (or an eavesdropper)!
Say You Like Them
Real talk: It’s 100% amazing to hear your someone say that they’re into you! Why not give that gift to your crush? If you’re feeling good about how things are going, say it out loud. It’s a sure way to get your crush smiling. It’s also a natural lead-in to talking about how things have been heating up—a fact that you should both pause to acknowledge.
Float the Topic
Your crush is going to feed off your energy, so why not keep it light-hearted? Here are a few lines you can experiment with, depending on your style:
The Cool Cucumber: “Hey, tell me about your last relationship!”
The Smarty Pants: “Just want to make sure we’re being smart how we proceed here…when was the last time you got tested?”
The Clean Machine: “I’m clean and I’m planning on keeping it that way so…anything I should know about?”
The Popular Girl: “A friend of mine got an STD recently, so I’m trying to be extra careful moving forward. When was the last time you got tested?“
The Holiday Lover: “In honor of STI awareness month, tell me about last time you got tested!”
Being casual about whichever line you choose sets the expectation that the convo is totally and completely normal. And initiating in general shows that you’re a total badass and not afraid to break the ice with hard Qs. People find that kind of thing unbelievably hot :)
The T Word
Your crush might give you tons of details on past sexual partners and testing, but if they don’t, it’s fair game to be direct. Choosing to intertwine your bodies means choosing to intertwine your health, and you have a right to know what you’re getting into!
If your crush is super experienced with the testing process, then they’ll know the drill. If it’s someone who’s unfamiliar with the process, this is your opportunity to be supportive and show what you know. You can tell them to talk to their doctor, or just order an STI test online and get tested at home! There are a few different at-home STI testing services—myLAB Box is our favorite.
Lead By Example
If you really want to be a leader, you can get tested before you even initiate the conversation. Doing this shows that you take testing seriously, and that you’re more than willing to meet halfway. Having your free-and-clear test results in hand puts you in a great position to open up a discussion about sexual health.
These are hard convos to have, but obviously you’re going to rock it. Best of luck, heart eyes! See you on the other side ;)
Acne is the freaking worst. Clearly you wish you knew what was causing it, right? Well, look no further than your menstrual cycle — turns out the hormones that make you get your period are behind a bunch of other stuff, too.
We dug into our Eve data to see when in your cycle you can expect fabulous skin, and when you’ll want to hide your face. Then we blogged about it on Medium. Check out what we discovered here!
Back in March, we assured you that you didn’t need to panic about the Zika virus. While we acknowledged that the virus was a real condition that was causing birth defects for a growing number of babies in Brazil, it was nothing to worry about for the average American.
Unfortunately, the threat of Zika has grown in the past six months, and the press freak-out has been intense. Reporters and bloggers have warned us to avoid honeymoons and babymoons anywhere near Zika-infected areas. Some athletes even chose to skip the Rio Olympics due to risk of Zika exposure.
Wondering if it’s time to freak out, right? We are, too. To start, here’s what’s changed about Zika since March–and what you can do to protect yourself whether you’re pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or just intent on staying healthy.
Something you definitely don’t need to panic about: mosquitoes the size of kittens
In March, Zika was a serious threat in Brazil only. Since then, Zika has also penetrated the Caribbean and all of Central and South America; the CDC has updated their travel warnings accordingly. Until July, the only instances of Zika in the continental U.S. were contracted when traveling in infected areas. Then Zika-infected mosquitoes turned up in Miami. Forty-nine people have been infected in the Miami area since.
What’s more, mosquitoes are no longer the only beings to blame for Zika’s geographical movement; recently we’ve seen a few cases of American women contracting Zika from sexual contact with infected men. In addition, it turns out that Zika doesn’t just put your baby at risk. Research published just last week shows that those infected with Zika have a higher risk of developing Guillain-Barré Syndrome—a rare condition that causes the immune system to attack nerves and leads to progressive paralysis.
In spite of how scary this sounds and how intimidating the media frenzy is, it’s not worth panicking just yet. Widespread spraying of the affected areas is already happening in Miami, so mosquitoes carrying Zika are unlikely to rapidly move to other parts of Florida (fun fact: Zika-transmitting mosquitoes typically travel less than 400 meters in their entire lives!). Experts say that local mosquitoes are only likely to spread Zika where they’ve previously spread other illnesses, like dengue fever. That narrows the field to small portions of southern Florida and the southern tip of Texas.
Of course, Zika will continue evolving, as viruses do, and the virus will will most likely begin to improve its person-to-person (instead of mosquito-to-person) transmission, so we’ll have to keep an eye on that. What’s more, scientists are working quickly to develop a vaccine for Zika— in fact, it’s already being tested in humans.
So, unless you travel frequently to Latin America or live in Miami, it’s unlikely that Zika will affect your life very much. Despite your location, it’s worth it to take a few precautions. Here’s how you can stay safe, whether you’re trying to conceive and planning travel in Latin America or just working to have the healthiest pregnancy possible:
Stay safe out there, friends!
When we first started Glow, we were driven by the possibility of what data could do to advance knowledge about reproductive health. Mike (our CEO) and his wife experienced troubles conceiving and went through multiple rounds of infertility treatment before having Kaylee. We also understood that not everyone has the luxury of affording those costly treatments. That having a child should fundamentally be a human right. But the way our system is set up, that simply isn’t the case. If data and Glow could help more women conceive naturally, saving thousands in medical costs, we certainly had to try.
Recently a security concern was discovered in one of our apps. When it was discovered, we fixed it swiftly; we addressed and released a fix within days. We immediately emailed our customers about what happened and advised them to take precautionary measures to change their password and update the Glow app on their phone. We are thankful to Consumer Reports for flagging the concern. We’re also extremely relieved that the error did not result in any customer data being compromised.
What we care about most is retaining our customers’ trust.
Glow has never taken customer data lightly. We know we have extremely personal information and it is our duty to keep it safe, which we will continue to prioritize as an organization.
To this end, we are investing in a third-party security audit to independently confirm to our customers that their data is and will remain safe. And although we are not required to be HIPAA compliant, we will become compliant in 2017 to further ensure our users’ privacy.
We’re focused on improving health outcomes for millions. The numbers speak for themselves: well over 300,000 pregnancies have been reported on Glow. Active users on the Glow app were shown to be 40% more likely to conceive, as we presented with Philip E. Chenette, MD at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, on October 21, 2015. The fact that our apps help women understand their bodies and improve their health is what has inspired more than four million women to use our products.
Our apps work because they incorporate the latest medical knowledge and research - not just methodology from the 1960s. A study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine recently called our efficacy into question because it started with the assumption that a limited set of fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs) were the only acceptable ways to track fertility. An app could only score on the study’s “authority” measure if it explicitly adhered to the methodology of one of the FABMs that the organizations authors’ supports, making the study inherently biased against other methods that may be just as viable. Instead of using one of the FABMs that the authors support, we have built a proprietary algorithm to help our users track and measure their fertility. Our algorithm uses the exact same biomarkers as the FABMs endorsed by the study’s authors (e.g. CM, BBT), and, in most cases, offers a more data-intensive method. We think it’s important to leverage the latest technology as well as more traditional methods to help our users understand their fertility.
Our medical advisors reviewed the study and found it to be extremely light in facts and figures. Specifically, after consulting with one of our medical advisors, Dr. Philip Chenette pointed out that the study didn’t share how scores were computed. Reproducibility is a core tenant of generally accepted study methodology. From an academic standpoint, lack of disclosure of computational methodology would make it difficult for anyone to reproduce the study’s results or challenge any of the assumptions inherent in the study. We also clearly state in our Terms of Service, and as in-app disclaimers, that Glow products should never be used as a substitute for contraception - a fact that the study ignored. We reached out to the authors to discuss the merits of the study as well as our disclaimer when it was first published. They responded last week, noting that they would submit an addendum to the publication, excluding Glow from the study entirely.
We leverage our esteemed board of medical advisors to ensure our apps’ content reflects their medical expertise - men and women with highly specialized experience in subjects such as endometriosis, endocrinology, pediatric, male fertility, and neonatology to name a few. Because of their aptitude, Glow has led the industry in many firsts. The first to offer support of women from period to parenting; the first to offer postpartum support; the first to incorporate miscarriage support; the first to offer insights into male fertility (40% of infertility cases stem from male-related issues).
What’s more, we submit our data analyses to top medical conferences for peer review as part of our efforts to advance research in reproductive health. We have presented new findings from our data to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine for each of the past two years and we plan to submit our third paper to the medical community later this year. And we continue to do more to advance research to further our understanding of reproductive health. We do this because we believe that data not only empowers the individual, but will serve to bring us massive insights about this subject at large.
Measuring the definitive impact of consumer-directed health apps is not a straightforward or quick thing to do. We can talk the talk about our successes—but our customers are the ones walking the walk. They remind us of the impact of our apps every day. Cristen D. leaned on the women of the Glow Community when she lost her baby to an ectopic pregnancy; she ultimately conceived again three months after her loss. Glow helped Josie V. find a better birth control method when she had trouble with her IUD and led Nikki B. to discover she had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). Milah F. had a hard time understanding her cycles and what she needed to do to conceive, especially in light of her PCOS. After spending three years trying to get pregnant with her first, she conceived her second in just three months on Glow and continued on to Glow Nurture to track her pregnancy and connect with other moms-to-be in her area.
We are grateful to be able to support women and men as they create families, and impact present and future lives. We remain committed to this responsibility, and we are in it for the long haul.
–Max Levchin (Chairman & Co-Founder) & Mike Huang (CEO & Co-Founder)
Glow Premium just got even better! Your Premium subscription now includes Glow Premium Rewards, which gives you hundreds of dollars of exclusive savings on your favorite brands. We’ve joined forces with a bunch of amazing companies that will help support you from period to parenting and stretch your budget at the same time.
That’s right – you actually make money on your Premium subscription now. You’re welcome ;)
With Premium Rewards, you can:
Pamper your period with Thinx, Flex, Lola, Pink Apple and, Maxim Hygiene
Spice up your sex life with Sustain, OMGYes, Dame Products, Undercover Condoms, myLAB Box, and Uqora
Maximize your fertility with Ava, Clearblue, and Stork OTC
Power your pregnancy with Mayarya, Americord, J-Screen, Three Lollies, and Bundle Organics
Power your parenting with UrbanSitter, Baby Bargains, Babiators, and Icon
Take care of everything else with DoorDash, Ditto, and AC Lens
Starting today, you can access all these $weet deal$ in Eve. Premium Rewards will go live in Glow, Glow Nurture, and Glow Baby in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!
Go forth and treat yo’ self to an affordable shopping spree on us! We know you want to. After all:
P.S. If you haven’t subscribed to Premium yet, head to your Me page in your app to upgrade today!
Women drink. 60% of all U.S. women, and over 75% of women on Glow, to be precise. Drinking is fun. Sex is too! Sometimes they combine to make a great cocktail, but other times, not so much. What’s the best recipe to combine the two?
Sex and drinking have been in the news a lot recently — and haters and lamer sections of society love nothing more than blaming women when sex and drinking go south. Women are told that any dicey sexual encounter that happens under the influence is “our fault,” that dressing more conservatively and not staying out late will help keep us safe.
None of that BS is true. Alcohol may sometimes be a factor in sexual assault cases; it is never the “cause” — and it is never, ever a woman’s fault when she is sexually assaulted, no matter her BAC.
We’re committed to changing the conversation around alcohol and sex. So we took a deep dive into our Glow data to investigate. This is what we learned.
Every once in a while, a creepy post sneaks its way into Glow’s epic empowering sex positive forum. Friday was one of those days.
Ask and ye shall receive. Within minutes, the ladies of Glow swarmed the post with ALL OF THE NUDES.
Shannon had no shame, posting not one, but TWO nudes together.
One nude, two nudes, red nudes, green nudes?
Like WTF but okay.
Then the thread really heated up.
And things escalated. Read: The junk came out of the trunk.
Well look at that, two pussies is possible!
Glow Community gave a #tbt to the ancient nudes.
And contributed some freshly made noods, too 🍜
Let’s just say, this user got far more sexy pics than s/he possibly could have imagined.
Ew. Be careful what you wish for! If you want sexy pics, our community’s always ready to give you more than you can handle 😘
That’s right. Premium’s been live in Glow Nurture and Glow Baby for a few weeks, it went live in the Eve by Glow app on Friday, and now it’s finally hitting the Glow app!
Get ready to know your Glow even better with premium insights, content, and community features. The annual premium subscription costs $3.99 per month (less than a latte!) and applies across all Glow company apps. And you can try the first month for free. So, why haven’t you checked it out yet? :)
The newest version of Eve just hit the stores, and it’s everything: tons of new buttons in the health & sex log, swank insights that interpret what’s up down there, and *Glow Premium*.
Dazzled? Figured. The new log will help you keep on top of many aspects of your health, and the new insights will spell out what’s happening with your bod. And you get all this for free because, yes, Eve loves you that much.
Eve users don’t shy away from the occasional “treat yo’self” moment (y’all log a lot of desserts and salty snacks!), so this release lets you indulge in powerhouse Glow Premium features. $3.99 per month unlocks the magic—addictive Fact or Fiction quizzes, nerdy cool comparative insights, and a dolled up Eve community with cover photos and private messaging. Chai lattes are great but Premium is yummier. Take a few bucks out of your caffeine budget, and voilà!
This all comes at a super exciting time for Glow the company (shoutout to the Evelings who never understood the “by Glow” part lolz). Glow now supports 4 million women tracking their health on our platform! You heard us right: We hit the big 4-000,000, and we’re jazzed. Thanks for being part of our wild ride.