Once upon a time, a 26-year-old woman went to her doctor and asked to be put on the new birth control pill that allowed women to only have four periods a year. She had seen it advertised on television. Four months later, 15 pounds heavier and suffering from mild depression, she returned to the doctor […]
Dr. Ernst Rietzschel described his findings as ‘startling.’ His fellow cardiologists buzzed in agreement after he presented the findings at the American Heart Association 2007 annual meeting. His Ghent University lab in Belgium had discovered that women taking hormonal birth control and those who ever took them for more than a year have an increased […]
If you’ve read any of my posts, you know that this is one of the questions that pervades my work. Do we really know what we think we know? More often than not, the answer is no. Upon examination, what we hold true falls short. In the field of pharmaceutical medicine, where money plays an […]
I recently began a new project tackling the economics of testing women for clotting disorders prior to receiving prescriptions for hormonal contraception. Hormonal contraception induces chemical blood clotting cascades in all women, and thus, developing blood clots while on hormonal birth control is a very real risk. In women who have genetic clotting disorders, those […]
Let’s face it; if a girl’s period is irregular, heavy, or painful when she goes to her family doctor, the first line of treatment will be to go on the pill.Her well-meaning conventional medical doctor may tell her that the pill can minimize acne, even out moods, regulate menstrual cycles and optimal health seems to […]
Once you become familiar with the wide variety of side effects linked to birth control, you begin to see them everywhere. Daily revelations paint a clearer picture of the large price women have paid for taking The Pill.While recently working on a Fashion Week event, I was reminded of a very common but seldom-mentioned side […]
While researching my hypothesis linking oral contraceptive use to the development of autism in children, I wondered about why so many women are still using a drug that has dangerous side-effect and could cause neurodevelopmental disorders in offspring. The simple answer seems to be lack of accurate medical information. Not only do individual women lack […]
Doctors frequently dismiss irritability and depression as minor side effects of birth control – a mere inconvenience that can easily be treated. All you need is another prescription. In fact, we saw in my previous article on lupus how quickly some doctors will prescribe an anti-depressant for virtually any side effect triggered by The Pill.Trivializing changes […]