Earlier this year Love is Blind star Alexa Lemieux posted a TikTok announcing her pregnancy; followed by another video revealing her method for conceiving: The secret of her success was Mucinex. The video currently has over a million views. As it turns out, the method of using guaifenesin (the primary ingredient in Mucinex and Robitussin) as a fertility aid is not such a secret: for a few decades it’s been muttered about in mom circles, and even suggested by some doctors, as a hack for those struggling to get pregnant. Type Mucinex into the TikTok search bar, and fertility is the first thing that comes up. My son is a mucinex baby; We tried for 3 years and had 2 miscarriages. I used mucinex the same way you did and BOOM pregnant 🤪 / My Mucinex baby is now 4; I went 15 years without getting pregnant. / I also have PCOS, I got sick, took Mucinex, got a surprise baby who’s almost 2 now lol / My daughter is a Mucinex baby after 12 years of trying!! I tell everyone now!!
The theory behind the Mucinex method is about cervical mucus. Something that first entered the conception conversation back in the ‘50s when Masters and Johnson were taking a scientific approach to understanding human sexuality. “They noted that sperm needs to go through a process of getting ready to penetrate an egg called capacitation, and that cervical mucus plays a big role,” says Neel Shah, MD, an OBGYN, assistant professor of reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School, and chief medical officer of Maven Clinics, a virtual clinic for women’s and family health. “A big part of trying to figure out how to get people pregnant was this fascination with cervical mucus.”
One of the notions that has come out of the conversations around the topic is that the viscosity of cervical mucus may play a role in one’s ability to get pregnant. “Guaifenesin, what’s in Robitussin and Mucinex, thins mucus everywhere, so if it works when you have a head cold it could work in theory at thinning cervical mucus,” says Shah. The idea: Mucinex thins mucus in the cervix, sperm travels through more easily to fertilize the egg. Birth control, by contrast, works by thickening it. “The idea of a thick mucus blocking sperm does make intuitive sense and Mucinex here would represent a simple, over-the-counter solution,” says S. Zev Williams, MD, chief of the division of reproductive endocrinology at Columbia University’s Fertility Center. But, he adds, the problem is that this presumes that the cause for infertility is too-thick mucus and also that Mucinex is helping it. Only one small study published in 1982 examined the connection between guaifenesin and cervical mucus (patients took it from the fifth day of their cycle until ovulation) and though it did show an improvement in sperm survival, doctors agree that the experiment was flawed. Williams points out that there were no randomized control groups in the study (meaning there was no one taking a placebo, the hallmark of a reputable study), that it hasn’t been replicated, and that it wasn’t conducted on a generalizable population (rather on a specifically selected group shown to have no motile sperm). “We can’t say for sure that Mucinex caused the improved fertility,” says Karen Tang, MD, a gynecologic surgeon in Pennsylvania and author of It’s Not Hysteria, of the study. But, while doctors are very cautious to say that there is no evidence-based data to say that Mucinex works, Tang allows that the potential is there: “In my opinion, there probably is some sort of effect,” she adds.
For those who are struggling to conceive, the notion of “probably” may be enough. Shah traced the more recent buzz around the Mucinex method back to a TikTok user who, during the pandemic, took it to treat her Covid-19 symptoms and ended up getting pregnant, which she attributed to the drug; afterward there was a significant spike in Google searches for it. More and more anecdotal stories about Mucinex babies have followed on TikTok. “There are a lot of people trying to validate or affirm their experiences and there’s no counterfactual when you take Mucinex: you take it, you get pregnant, and you think that’s what worked,” says Shah. And for those struggling, adds Tang, seeing a public figure (like Lemieux) saying confidently that it made a difference makes it tempting to want to try. Particularly if they live in an area where access to healthcare providers is limited: using Google Analytics, Shah and his team found that there were far more Mucinex searches in the parts of the country that are maternity deserts, meaning there is a lack of women’s health and fertility clinicians. “There are a lot of people who need help and aren’t getting it so they’re turning to TikTok and resorting to alchemy,” says Shah.
