Birth Control - Connecting the Dots
Data collected in 2015-2017 from the CDC states that 69.4% of women ages 15-49 are on some form of contraceptive. That is 46.9 million of the 72.2 million women in the United States.
On May 9, 1960 the FDA approved the very first birth control pill. Making it the first prescription drug approved that did not treat a disease. Development of birth control was initially commissioned by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.
There are different kinds of birth control, such as sterility, the pill, IUD, etc. Each of which come with a different set of problems. I am going to talk specifically about the pill because second to sterility it is the most commonly used form.
How birth control works is it prevents a woman from ovulating. A woman should ovulate one time a month and this has to take place in order to become pregnant. Bear with me as we dive into the physiology a bit. The more you understand about how your body works the better advocate you will become for you and your families health. My hope is that you will walk away from reading this article with a deeper confidence about how your body was designed to function. It was made for health not disease. It was made to thrive not to just survive.
Progestins and estrogens in birth control work synergistically to prevent ovulation. They interfere with the release of gonadotrophin releasing hormone from the hypothalamus and suppress gonadotropin-producing cells from the pituitary gland. GnRH (gonadotrophin releasing hormone) is released from the hypothalamus in response to activity from limbic lobe of the brain. A few things the limbic lobe is responsible for are emotions, memory, mood, sensory input, smell, sex drive, and numerous other things. You can start to see how suppressing GnRH has catastrophic effects on the body as a whole. One study noted that it actually changes brain activity after just one treatment cycle.
Now that we have somewhat of a foundational understanding on birth control let’s take a bird’s eye view of how preventing ovulation takes a toll on the body. Estrogen is the hormone that is released during the first phase of a woman’s cycle. This hormone plumps up the wall of the uterus getting it ready for implantation of an egg. It is also our social hormone. Plan all of your social events/gatherings for the first 2-3 weeks of your cycle. After that progesterone comes into play which is the hormone that causes the uterus to either continue growing a baby if the egg implants or to shed the uterus if it does not. This is the time of your cycle where you are more introspective and tend to be more introverted. Birth control pills are overdosing your body on estrogen causing a woman to be estrogen dominant. Just duckduckgo (a search engine alternative) estrogen dominance and see what all comes up. I don’t have time or space to go into that here.
Estrogen Dominance
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Autoimmune disease
Thyroid Issues
Candida overgrowth
Weight Gain
Liver Overload - which leads to vitamin and mineral deficiencies
Migraines
Mood Swings
So what is a girl to do if she doesn’t want all the babies right now? Even though I bet seeing this sweet picture just gave you a little baby fever.
What to do instead?
Whether you are looking for alternatives to birth control or not every girl as soon as they start their period should be handed the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility. It teaches you all the things about your cycle and what a healthy one looks like.
Natural Family Planning Method - this is what that book will teach you to do through tracking temperatures, cervical mucus, and other things.
Cervical Diaphragm
Smart Women’s Choice
Beyond The Pill - A book to grab if you have been on the pill and want to get off
There is so much more I could write about birth control I might just have to do a saga to this blog post. We shall see.