Science behind Powerly
Powerly is the first science-based app supporting women in all parts of their motherhood journey: from planning, trying to get pregnant, and being pregnant, to postpartum.​ Let's see why and how it works!
01
Role of stress in conception
and before pregnancy
Why do we recommend Powerly even before getting pregnant? First, stress significantly reduces the probability of conception each day during the fertile window (Buck Louis et al., 2011. Fertility and Sterility). Second, studies suggest that maternal exposure to stressful life events prior to conception may lead to premature birth, a lower birth weight, and poorer health of a child even up to two years after being born (Cheng et al, 2016. J Epidemiol Community Health, Mahrer et al., 2021. Annals of Behavioral Medicine).
02
Mental well-being during
and after pregnancy
Up to 20% of new mothers suffer from postpartum depression (Stewart & Vigod, 2019. Annual Review of Medicine). It affects not only the mother's mental and physical health, and relationships but also the baby's sleep, cognitive, behavioral and emotional development (Slomian et al., 2019. Women's Health). This is a preventable suffering of millions of women and their families.
03
Building resilience
Everyone experiences stress. Stress resilience, however, is defined as a phenomenon that some people maintain their mental health or only temporarily become mentally ill despite significant stress in their life. Resilience is an outcome of processes involving many factors, such as optimism, social support, history of life, or gender (Mancini & Bonnano, 2009. Journal of Personality, Kalisch et al., 2015. Behav Brain Sci).
04
Our app
Each part of our app has been tested in a randomized controlled trial with female participants experiencing lowered stress resilience. We found significant decreases in perceived stress, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms after just one week of regular app use (see: Marciniak et al., 2022a, 2022b).
