Salt pregnancy test positive results?

Imagine, for a second, that you | re a woman living in the 1920s. (Think of all the great flapper fashion to perhaps get your mind off some of the more dismal women | s rights issues.) You suspect you may be pregnant but you | re not sure. What should you do?
In the “olden days,” women generally had to wait for telltale signs — a late period, morning sickness, fatigue, and an expanding belly — to reliably know their pregnancy status.

But rumors of homemade, or DIY, pregnancy tests that can tell you whether you | re expecting still circulate in the 21st century. A particularly popular one involves nothing more than common table salt, a couple of small bowls, and — ahem — the contents of your bladder.

How does this salty test work and how reliable is it? (Spoiler alert: Don | t get your hopes up.) Let | s dive in.
What you | ll need to do the test

According to various sources — none of which have scientific credentials — you | ll need the following to do the salt pregnancy test:

one small, clean, non-porous bowl or cup to collect your urine
one small, clean, non-porous bowl or cup for your salt-pee mixture
a couple spoonfuls of table salt

Ideally, use a clear bowl or cup for your mixture so you can better see the results.

The type of salt isn | t really specified beyond “common” on most sites. So we assume varieties like kosher salt — and that fancy pink Himalayan sea salt — are no-nos.
How to do the test

First, place a couple spoonfuls of salt in your clear bowl or cup.
Then, collect a small amount of first-morning urine in the other container.
Pour your pee over the salt.
Wait.

Here | s where things get even more ambiguous. Some sources say to wait a few minutes, while others say to wait a couple hours. A quick scan of popular TTC (trying to conceive) message boards reveals that some testers leave the mixture for up to 8 hours or more.
How to read the results

Check out any TTC online discussion on the salt pregnancy test, and you | ll likely see many posted pictures of salty pee in clear cups with questions like, “Is this positive?” That | s because no one seems exactly sure what they | re looking for and how to distinguish a positive from a negative.

But here | s what folklore says:
What a negative looks like

Supposedly, if nothing happens, it means the test is negative. You have a cup of salt(ier) pee.
What a positive looks like

According to various sources, a positive salt pregnancy test will be “milky” or “cheesy” in appearance. The claim is that salt reacts with human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), a hormone that | s present in the urine (and blood) of pregnant women.
Did you know?

Incidentally, hCG is what | s picked up by home pregnancy test strips — but enough of it has to build up in your system first, and your body won | t produce it right at conception. In fact, the fertilized egg has to travel to your uterus first, which can take up to a couple weeks.

That | s why your levels are mostly likely to be picked up by a urine test on or after the date of your missed period, despite the claims of “early result” tests.

So if you think you | re pregnant but see a big fat negative (“BFN” on TTC forums) on a home pregnancy test, then wait a couple days and test again — or get a blood test from your doctor.
How accurate is the salt pregnancy test?

The salt pregnancy test is best done as an all-in-good-fun experiment. It has no medical backing, scientific basis, or physician endorsement. There | s no reason to believe salt reacts with hCG. There are no published studies supporting this idea or the test in general.

You may get an “accurate” result — because it | s bound to match reality some of the time, just according to the laws of probability.

We had a hard time finding anyone who felt they had a positive salt test and turned out to be pregnant. That doesn | t mean this scenario doesn | t exist… but it speaks volumes about the credibility of this test.

One of our Healthline editors — and her husband — tried the test. Like many folks, they found the results hard to interpret.

Something definitely happened, so the tests results weren | t exactly negative. But “cheesy” or “milky” didn | t exactly describe the mixture either. For both of them, the mixture was more clear at the bottom and over time developed a cloudy, salt glob-ish appearance at the top. Our best guess is that this is to be interpreted as positive.
If you think you may be pregnant, take a home pregnancy test or talk to your doctor. If you | re just dying to test using salt, go for it — but don | t take the results too seriously, and use a tried-and-true method to confirm.