Finally getting accurate temps

[Rachel2033]

I just got my non-mercury glass thermometer 5 days ago, it's been great. Couldn't stand the basal digital thermometer, it would give a different reading every time I'd use it within a 10 minute period. So I'd have to pick which measurement to use.
  True it takes 10 minutes for it to read but it's worth the wait. Morning basal (under the arm) temp has been consistently at 97.2 my husband who was born without a thyroid has been anywhere from 95.6-96.6 he's on Armour 90mg I plan to make him an appt soon once I see how my labs are and how my new doctor handles it.
As for women, when is the best time to track temps? I started using my glass thermometer the day after my menstrual started. I read on STTM that you should check your temp at 3pm, has anyone tried this?

[Rachel2033]

I have that book and at the time when I was tracking ovulation I was using the basal digital thermometer and that's what clued me in that my temps weren't right. Those things were never accurate.
   My doctor recently increased my dose so I'm hoping this will bring my temp to normal range. It's at 97.2 now. Only a few more to get to 97.8. :)
   My husband's doctor just raised his dose today so hoping it's all he needs but he goes back in 6 weeks to get his labs done...we'll see. :)

[ahmee]

BTW, Taking Charge of Your Fertility recommends the glass thermometer route, and I did at first. But more recently I used a digital basal thermom for tracking fertility. It may not have been as accurate, but I was still able to see my post-ovulation temperature shift each month, which meant it was accurate enough for my purposes.

[ahmee]

Best time to track basal temps is right when you wake up, before going to the bathroom or moving at all. When I was hypo, a couple of weeks was all it took for me to see that my temps were seriously abnormal (similar to your husband's). That made sense, since I felt cold all the time. This was all corrected once I got to taking an adequate dose of thyroid hormone. Anyways, I am not sure why STTM would recommend 3pm. The added benefit to taking morning basal temps is you can easily track your fertility while you're at it. For much more info on that, check out Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler.

[Rachel2033]

Hahaha! Very true. I doubt I'll ever go back to digital after this experience. Good to know there's research to back it up though. :)

[sblythe]

In regards to your thermometer: I taught a "Statistics for Health Planning" class. We did a study comparing the good old mercury thermometers, the digital under-the-tongue thermometers, and the digital in-the-ear thermometers. We looked for consistency with the same operator repeating the test with the same thermometer for ten tests. The mercury thermometer was +/- 0.1 degrees, the oral digital was +/- 0.8 degrees, and the ear thermometer was +/- 1.7 degrees!  When we checked variation "between operators" - with different people doing the measuring, the difference with the mercury thermometer stayed the same while the others was even larger. I don't think that in this case technology is so great. And definitely not good enough to base decisions such as when you ovulate on!