Unbiased Reviews by Real People
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Unbiased Reviews by Real People
Why a pregnancy test reads positiveMar 22, 2000 (Updated Mar 23, 2000) Write an essay on this topic.Pee on a stick, hold your breath, and 2 minutes later you dare to peek. I mean this silly little plus sign is the determining factor of the first day of the rest of your life. The anticipation builds and your heart is beating a mile a minute. You look. And nothing. No line. Your heart sinks to the pit of your stomach. Negative. You are one day late, your breasts are sore, your a slightly nauseated and the smell of raw meat just about sends you packin'. Surely this test is wrong. Negative, you think, how could it be negative? There is a great technical answer for that. A pregnancy test works like this...when a sperm meets the egg and a embryo is formed, the female body produces a hormone called HCG or human chorionic gonadotropin. This hormone is what makes a pregnancy test read positive. A pregnancy test can not read positive unless the HCG hormone is in a woman's system. Therefore, you can not get a false positive pregnancy test, unless your test was broken, or unless you were just recently pregnant and you still have small amounts of HCG in your system. HCG is detected in your blood and your urine. When you take a HPT or home pregnancy test, you urinate on the testing stick and in under 5 minutes you get a quick result. Usually in the form of a color change. Now, if you accurately followed the HPT directions and you are 4-7 days past your missed period, then you should get accurate results, as pregnancy tests are 95% accurate (assuming you are in fact pregnant) It is important to know that hpt's, when done too early will indicate you are not pregnant, when in fact you really are. This mistake occurs because your hcg (remember that hormone I talked about?) is too low and it goes undetected. That is the reason some test results that are negative are more often wrong than test results that are positive. HPT's are only a screening, and if your test result is negative, and you have symptoms of pregnancy, please consult your health care provider for further testing. They can take it a step further, and do a blood test on you, which picks up the HCG at lower levels.  |
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