Understand Birth Control to Understand Your Hormones
How many people have been told to take the Oral Contraceptive pill or get a Mirena or rod inserted to “balance your hormones” ?
If I had a dollar for every girl that has said that to me…
Of course I celebrate the fact that female contraception was a huge move for women’s rights and empowerment. I also understand that it can be used well as a medicine for severe debilitating conditions such as endometriosis and heavy bleeding.
But what I really don’t enjoy is the mixed and untrue messages that are thrown around to girls and women right from puberty.
Untrue messages such as:
Hormonal birth control is the only contraception
Hormonal birth control balances your hormones
Hormonal birth control helps all hormonal symptoms by balancing your hormones
Hormonal birth control has no side effects
How hormonal birth control actually works
Birth control like the Oral Contraceptive Pill switches off ovulation and therefore switches off oestrogen and progesterone production in our bodies. It induces a “chemical menopause” and then replaces hormones with synthetic hormones as a type of “hormone replacement.” This may be ok if contraceptive drugs were beneficial like our natural hormones but because they are synthetic there is a plethora of negative side effects.
Contraceptive drugs are molecules such as ethinylestradiol, levonorgestrel, and drospirenone which are very different to our natural hormones so therefore do not provide the same benefits.
For example:
Our beautiful natural hormone progesterone help to promote hair growth, helps us to feel cool, calm and collected and a great hormone for helping us have quality sleep. Levonorgestrel is used in many oral contraceptives, implants, Mirena IUD, and the morning-after pill.
It has a very similar molecular structure to testosterone which is why long term use can lead to high blood pressure, acne, hair loss, anxiety, depression and increased risk of breast cancer.Estradiol (oestrogen) improves insulin sensitivity. The drug equivalent ethinylestradiol may cause insulin resistance. Therefore, it actually makes the pill an inappropriate treatment for PCOS which is a very common prescription to the condition known to be driven by insulin resistance.
Ovulation time is where women are boosted with beautiful hormones to make you feel sexy, happy and relaxed - unfortunately on the pill the opposite can happen.
I acknowledge that contraception drugs do have a place for conditions such as endometriosis and heavy bleeding and can sometimes assist with acne. The main point I would like to make that this is just a temporary ‘band-aid’ fix and usually once someone is to come off hormonal contraception, these issues are usually still underlying.
Contraception drugs cannot “regulate periods” because bleeding on the pill is a drug withdrawal bleed, not a real period or cycle.
Contraceptive drugs are not the only birth control
When I ask clients what birth control they use I hear time and time again people saying “Oh we don’t use birth control, we use condoms.”
This really shows how so many people think that hormonal birth control is the only option.
Did you know that the pill actually only has a 91% efficacy rate? Technically it is higher “on paper” but combined with human error (forgetfulness), the true efficacy is 91% which means that if we were to survey 100 women on the pill, 9 of them would become pregnant on the pill.
Imagine this world where we would routinely switch off the hormones of teenage boys and men:
“We are just going to switch off your testosterone and replace it with a synthetic psuedo-testosterone. It might cause weight gain, depression and low libido but don’t worry, lots of other boys take it!”
I have a feeling this might not fly too well for too long.
On a side note - it blows me away still that so many women take hormonal birth control so that they can prevent pregnancy but then have such low libidos that they rarely want to have sex anyway.
Loss of libido is one of the most common hormonal symptoms I hear of in clinic across all age groups.
If I was to make the effort to pay for and remember to take hormonal birth control I would at least want to feel sexy and WANT to have sex during that time yeah?
Natural Contraception Options
Did you know that your basal body temperature changes dramatically at ovulation? For some women tracking this may be too complex or too much room for human error which is why I love this hormonal tech device - the Daysy. It is 99.3% effective at preventing pregnancy and all this little device requires is for you to take your temperature under your tongue each morning and it does the rest! Check out more about it here.
I hope this helps you to understand more about your hormones, options on contraception and that just because it may seem like the norm to be on hormonal contraception - there are many other options to save your sanity, hair and keep you healthy and happy.
Ellen xx
