Pregnancy tests are available for purchase in corner stores, petrol stations, pharmacies and supermarkets, but it would seem women are looking elsewhere to find out if they’re expecting a child – about three paces down the toiletries aisle, to be exact.
HuffPost reports that ladies are taking to their bathroom cabinets in a questionable new method of finding out their pregnancy status.
Apparently, mixing toothpaste with urine can produce a chemical reaction which could potentially indicate a pregnancy (though experts are sceptical).
One YouTube tutorial, which has been viewed a whopping 2.4 million times, outlines the method for the unconventional test.
Step 1: Collect a sample of your first morning urine, as if you are indeed pregnant, the first urine would contain the highest amounts of the HCG pregnancy hormone.
Step 2: Add a few drops of your sample into a separate container of white toothpaste and stir. If the paste takes on a bluish tinge and begins to foam, then the tutorial says you might be expecting.
Check out the tutorial in the video below! Article continues..
While we’ll never quite be able to look at our tubes of toothpaste in the same way, Stuart Gale, owner and chief pharmacist at Oxford Online Pharmacy, has slammed the method’s credibility, saying it’s nothing more than “a bit of fun”.
“The fizz in the toothpaste is caused by the acid in the urine reacting with the calcium carbonate in the toothpaste to give off carbon dioxide,” he tells the publication.
“The more acidic the urine is, the greater the fizz. Whether or not a person is or isn’t pregnant wouldn’t make any difference.”
Gale says a take-home kit, or better yet, a blood test from your GP, is the most accurate way of detecting pregnancy.
It’s not the first time we’ve heard of using cleaning products as a makeshift pregnancy test. Earlier this year, Biggest Loser trainer Tiffiny Hall revealed she’d turned to bleach as a pregnancy indicator, despite undertaking multiple at-home checks and a blood test, both of which came back negative.
“My beautiful husband didn’t believe me when I said, ‘Babe, I’m pregnant,’” the 32-year-old said in an interview on KIIS FM’s Hughesy and Kate show.
“I was nauseous straight away. I had non-stop bloody noses for the first week, like more blood in my body. I was having symptoms.”
As her tests failed to show the telling two lines, Tiffiny looked to the internet to find a DIY way she could convince her husband.
“So I got toilet bleach in a cup,” she explains.“I got my husband and said, ‘Piss on it.’ He pissed on the bleach… brought it back out to the laundry, then I took my own bleach, and I weed on it, and it froths like a beer.”
The fitness guru and husband Ed Kavalee are expecting their first baby in the coming months.
