Ah, the Internet.
Home of Rise and Shine memes. Land of the influencer. A place where you can find a great recipe for banana bread and now, apparently, guides to DIY pregnancy tests.
As Refinery29 has shared, a video featuring a home-made pregnancy test is making the rounds at the moment, instructing women on how to do a “bleach” test.
Credit: NBC Universal
The video states:
“It is a DIY method to test pregnancy at home using bleach. This pregnancy test is easy to do and quite accurate.”
Note the word “quite”.
Apparently, as R29 continues, the aim is to pour bleach into your pee and monitor how much the cocktail (ew) fizzes up. If you’re up the duff, the mixture is meant to foam up considerably.
Credit: Universal Pictures
As bizarre as this might sound, it’s not a new trend. The bleach test has been around for years now and, unsurprisingly, experts have been telling women not to rely on this method… also for years.
Bleach is not the only tool for home pregnancy tests, either. People claim that mixing pee with toothpaste and sugar are other ways to decipher whether or not you’re preggers.
But, as Brianne Raccor, PhD, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Campbell University, told Cosmopolitan, there’s no science to back up these claims:
“I don’t see any reason why adding bleach, sugar, or toothpaste to urine would specifically detect that hCG,” she told the publication.
(hCG or human chorionic gonadotropin is a hormone produced after pregnancy occurs – it’s what some pregnancy tests look for to get their results.)
Anyway. Long story, short: I know buying a pregnancy test can be awkward, but this is one test you want accurate results on. Don’t place your trust in a cup of bleach. Speak to your doctor about a blood test, or have a pal come with you to buy a test.