What To Know About The Viral Claim Mucinex Can Help Get You Pregnant

For thousands of years, couples have been trying to increase their chances of pregnancy with homemade remedies like salves, teas, and even dances. Certain dance moves like belly dancing or the tarantella have all been touted as "fertility dances" and women performed them for centuries in the hopes of appeasing the fertility gods (via Mother to Mother Midwifery). These days, there are lots of online message boards and chatter about the at-home hacks women performed which they swear helped them conceive. There's an entire video on YouTube with over 45 million views that humorously aggregated the different Yahoo searches people have performed, wondering if doing this or that will result in a baby. And as the funny video shows, spelling the word 'pregnancy' correctly is just as difficult as becoming pregnant seems to be for some people!

One of the newest at-home hacks has gone viral and it's quite the doozy. Some people are claiming that the over-the-counter cough decongestant medicine known as Mucinex actually improved their chances of conceiving, and disbelief is spreading from TikTok to Twitter. Is there any validity to that claim? And should we all stock up on Mucinex when it comes time for ovulation if we are hoping to become pregnant?

So how does Mucinex supposedly increase your chances of pregnancy? According to Health, if a woman's cervical mucus is too thick, it could hinder the chances of pregnancy. And as anyone who suffers from cold or flu symptoms knows, Mucinex is an expectorant that thins out your mucus so that you're not stuffed up and congested. While Mucinex is clearly patented only to work on sinus and throat mucus, some women are swearing that it was the cough medicine that sent the stork their way, above any other mitigating factor like ovulation, good diet, decreased stress, or family planning.

Experts, however, aren't sold. "While data has shown a slight improvement in chances of conception comes from a case report and small studies conducted 40 years ago, there is no evidence from large randomized clinical trials showing that Mucinex can help people conceive," fertility specialist Marie Facadio Antero told Parents.

The idea that cough expectorants could increase the chances of pregnancy is nothing new. In 2010, The Globe and Mail reported on the claim that Robitussin, another cough medicine, had helped some women conceive. 

If you were banking on Mucinex to be your secret fertility weapon, it might be time to reconsider. "The theory for women is that Mucinex may make the cervical mucus thinner, but the mucus at ovulation is usually already thin, so it is unlikely to have much of an impact," explained Dr. Lynn Westphal to Health. But don't lose hope. Dr. Gloria Bachmann told CNET that there are plenty of tried and true methods to increase the chances of reproduction. "If I were going to spend my money, I'd spend it on an ovulation kit," the OB-GYN said.

If all else fails, perhaps people with wombs vying for pregnancy should follow the mating rituals of the redback spider. In 2017, a study found that the female redback spider actually fully devours the male as he's inseminating her (via University of Toronto Scarborough). According to the study, that act of cannibalism actually helped increase the chances of reproduction. So human men, consider yourselves lucky. Women at least let you live.