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We Cannot Ignore Birth Control Side Effects

Published on March 24, 2022

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It is interesting and devastating to look at the story arc of hormonal birth control’s acceptance in the medical community. At the time of the Nelson Pill Hearings in 1970, many top physicians were upset because they felt The Pill had been forced upon them by the drug industry. They were alarmed by significant side effects they were seeing in their young patients.

Today, the numbers have dwindled. Very few doctors recognize a problem with hormonal birth control, or at least, very few speak out about it. However, the evidence is clear that the problems persist. In fact, many of the concerns raised at the Nelson Pill Hearings have proven prophetic. So, where is the outrage from the medical community?

In his revolutionary classic, Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote,

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right… Time makes more converts than reason.”

Time has certainly made converts. It’s ironic that a booklet titled, Common Sense would so aptly describe the medical industry’s current attitude toward birth control.

Is Birth Control Safe?

Each package of hormonal birth control already comes with a large patient information pamphlet filled with infinitesimally small print that is intended to warn patients of all the dangers. But even this tiny tome is insufficient.

I recently wrote about a citizen’s petition that has been submitted to the FDA requesting that new black box warnings be included on the labeling of these potent drugs. That petition is currently posted on a government website, and your comments are requested.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of stories to be told about the negative consequences of taking hormonal birth control. If one of those stories is yours, please share it! Here’s the link to the petition:

FDA Birth Control Safety Petition

So far, comments have come in from women who have experienced consequences (some minor and some deeply disturbing), from mothers and fathers who have lost their daughters, and from medical professionals who have seen the startling side effects in their work.

Your Voice

The Regulations.gov website boasts the tagline: Your voice in Federal Decision-Making. Please take advantage, and make your voice heard if you’ve experienced any kind of negative side effect related to these drugs. You can do it anonymously, if you choose.

Be warned – this is a government site and is unpredictable. Sometimes it loads like any other website, but other times it can feel like it will never load. Please be patient, and share your story.

Here are some excerpts (in no particular order) from people who have already commented. I chose these examples to demonstrate the diversity of people contributing, symptoms caused, and birth control products implicated:

I began using the Nuva-ring after my first child. It took me months to recognize that the almost daily migraine headaches I began experiencing were from the ring. I took out my last ring, and they never came back. – Amy
I have bipolar disorder. At the time I started using birth control, it was undiagnosed. My bipolar episodes increased dramatically after beginning birth control, with depressive episodes during the 3 weeks I took the pill and manic episodes during the off week. When I started Mirena, my bipolar disorder shifted to rapid cycle bipolar. Additionally, I have had issues with excessive bleeding (heavy and long)…In all instances, the doctors told me to just keep talking it and it would get better, which it never did. – Anonymous
I took the pill for 8 years. It got me very sick. I got Interstitial Cystitis and low libido. My mood was not predictable. I suffered a lot in those years. I don’t want that for any other woman. – Julieth
While on birth control, I suffered from vaginal dryness and an inability to orgasm. Both went away very quickly after I stopped taking birth control. – Anonymous
I am an emergency department nurse. I am continually surprised at how many women I see who have a wide variety of physical problems related to various types of artificial birth control. I have witnessed hormonal birth control causing depression, mood swings, deadly blood clots, and at time hemorrhaging…- Christopher
I used a few types of birth control pills over a period of several years and suffered from depression during the duration. I was never informed of the link between hormonal contraceptives and depression, so I didn’t make the connection until later, when I discontinued their use. – Brook
My experience with hormonal – estrogen based birth control was partial loss of vision (started while i was driving!) and severe migraines that kept me in bed for a long period of time… – Jessica
Why was I offered this drug as a young woman (early 20s) with little information on possible long-term effects or without any further diagnoses of my acne? My symptoms should have been treated without a dangerous synthetic drug. More doctors need to be doctors instead of drug pushers. FIX IT. Women deserve better. Label contraceptives for what they really are – cancer causing, infertility causing, deadly, PCOS-causing, thyroid disease-causing, ARTIFICIAL hormones. – Anonymous
I’m happy to share my daughter’s story. 2 years ago at age 15 she was started on OCPs for very irregular, heavy periods. At month 4 the pharmacy switched her generic brand for some reason. Within a month of the switch, she developed an extensive left leg DVT and a right pulmonary embolism. It turns out our family had factor V leiden and didn’t know it… – Gina
After using the pill for almost twenty years, off and on, I realized the side effects that it was having on my physical and emotional well being. I most certainly gained weight. I had low libido and had no idea why. I had issues arise with my cervix and had to have it scraped several times for pre cancerous cells. Then a small non-cancerous cyst on my breast. It wasn’t until I met with a breast specialist that she pin pointed most of these issues to having been on the pill for so long, given I have no family history of any the issues I was having. – Alicia
I took the birth control pill at a young age and had nothing but problems from it. It increases blood pressure, causes bloating, weight gain…Doctors hand this out like candy without explaining the risks. – Leisa
In 2011 I was prescribed hormonal birth control to “fix” a very irregular cycle. Three months later I started to struggle with crippling fatigue, loss of appetite and disinterest in everything except sleeping. It was shortly after that diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, and still to this day have to be on medication to remain functional… The only risk my primary care doctor at the time brought up was a slight risk of blood clots, which as a non-smoker she didn’t think was really anything for me to worry about.
Women deserve better. Women deserve to be fully informed of the risks, and deserve better health care that doesn’t begin and often end with hormonal birth control. – T.F.
In my mid-30s, I went on Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo for only 9 days. On day 9 I was curled up in a ball on my floor thinking I didn’t deserve to live. I did not take another pill and woke up the next day emotionally back to normal. But in those 9 days the pill destroyed my endocrine system. I suffered terrible physical symptoms that I never had before that day: shortness of breath, tinnitis, “hot foot”, heart palpitations, loss of libido, loss of vision, burning pain, joint pain, deadened emotions…
My niece developed MS not long after starting the pill and a connection between the two things seems probable. – Holly
As a family practice clinician for over twenty years I have seen within both my direct patient population and indirectly in my community harm specifically from a combined OCP. The most profound are the thromboembolic events…I can think of three patients under my direct care that presented to the ER with CVA symptoms, two of these patients continue with deficits today, the third was more lucky having no current deficits…- Julie
On 2 different types of birth control pills, Skyla, and Mirena, I experienced the following symptoms: total loss of libido, anxiety, depression, cystic acne, brain fog, memory loss, extreme fatigue, and recurrent yeast infections. All of the symptoms resolved when I finally quit hormonal contraceptives altogether. – Anonymous
I have experienced first hand the horrible side effects of hormonal birth control that almost 10 years later I am still trying to reverse. I was young and didn’t know better. I was put on it by a dermatologist who said it could clear up my skin. Please stop marketing the pill as a cure all. It is a cheap band aid that leaves more problems when removed. – Samantha
When I was in my mid 20’s, I was prescribed the hormonal birth control pill, Ovcon, to assist in controlling periodic break-through bleeding. I experienced weight gain, debilitating migraine headaches, depression and such an overall malaise that I vowed when I was finished with this “treatment” that I would NEVER put hormonal contraception pills in my system EVER again. Hormonal contraceptive pills are a true danger to women. – Kathleen
I was never told the risks of being on hormonal birth control and when I had severe depression and anxiety on this medication, was told by health professionals that I must have lied about not having a history of mental illness. Access to contraceptives is vital, and so is knowledge about the risks to the body and mind. – Briana
I would like to add my name to the petition. As a general surgeon, me and my partners ask our breast cancer patients about OCP use since our best cancer textbooks describe an increased risk of breast cancer with OCP use. It is ethically imperative that women are made aware of the risks of ingesting hormones into their bodies. – Anthony
I have been skeptical of the pill for a long time. I was put on a low dose pill very early in my marriage. When we moved overseas due to my husband’s army assignment, I was switched to another low dose pill. Unfortunately, I developed Stage 3 cervical dysplasia and my physician was concerned about pre cancerous changes. When I stopped the pill, the dysplasia went away. The physician at the time told me that they believed the pill could cause these changes in the cervix. I learned a natural method of fertility awareness eventually and used it for 20 years for family planning. I would never recommend the pill to any woman. – Susan
I suffered horrible side effects as a result of birth control pills for years. I first started taking the pill at age 18, and immediately lost my libido, experienced sexual malfunction, severe migraines and depression. When I discussed these symptoms with my doctors, I was told that I wasn’t drinking enough water, I was simply underweight or that there was something wrong with me- not the medication… – Rachael
We lost our 23 year old daughter Alexandra to MPE caused by Lutera. She was on it for six months and dropped dead with no warning…- David
While I was on varying forms of birth control pills, I suffered crazy mood swings and severe depression issues. then I was given an IUD – the Mirena – during which i had severe mood problems, severe depression and severe anxiety including anxiety and panic attacks. – Erickajen
I had severe depression with suicidal thoughts. I had no libido and I got severe fatigue. I took on weight and was not able to lose it. And I got a Candida infection of the intestine.
After stopping with the birth control pill these symptoms vanished. But the Candida infection of the intestine remained. – Ursula
When I was taking Hormonal Birth Control (HBC) I underwent a massive weigh gain. From 120 lbs to 155lbs. That’s almost adding 30% to my body weight! I also suffered with severe stomach cramping, constant discomfort, constipation and diarrhea. My doctor diagnosed it at IBS. I was only on HBC for 8 months, and got pregnant while taking it. I stopped taking it upon pregnancy and have never touched the stuff again! – Anonymous
On July 2nd, 2015 I received a phone call no parent ever wants to receive. My 19 year old daughter Shelby had died. Shelby was very athletic, did not smoke and had no history of a blood disorder. The coroner’s report confirmed that Shelby had died from a pulmonary embolism. She had a DVT behind her left knee that traveled to her lungs causing her bilateral embolism. The coroner also confirmed that her DVT was caused by her birth control the NuvaRing. – Carol
I experienced major mood swings and depression while taking the pill (Orthotricyclin?). I stopped taking it and noticed less depression and no longer had mood swings. – Melissa
I was put on the Apri birth control pill by my PCP as a teenager due to having “short” menstrual cycles with “long” durations of bleeding (without any need for pregnancy prevention). When I felt sick for a week after beginning the medication, I returned to my PCP, and she reassured me to keep taking it and the symptoms would subside. While the gastrointestinal symptoms subsided, depression symptoms started to gain ground. After two months of persistent depressive symptoms without any triggering events in my life (everything truly was great), I went back to my PCP and told her about my new, severe depression symptoms. She prescribed Zoloft for me and I started to feel better. I steadily increased my dose under the supervision of a psychiatrist until I was able to function again. I stopped crying for no reason, but didn’t feel like my normal self. This continued for about a little less than a year until my mother looked into the side effects of birth control pills. She informed me that depression could be a side effect. I immediately discontinued the birth control pill…I was able to reduce my use of antidepressants and I felt like myself again.
Unfortunately, while the physiological depression trigger had been removed, the negative thought patterns that developed during this prolonged depressive episode had been given sufficient time to ingrain themselves into my thought processes. Though I have been to counselors and worked hard to incorporate cognitive behavioral therapy techniques into my daily routine, I still, 10 years later, daily struggle with the thought patterns that were developed during my time on Apri. I still am required to take a low dose of Zoloft. – Anonymous

Put the Informed in Informed Consent

Thanks to the silence of their doctors and the inadequacies of current warning labels, too many young women are unaware of the many risks they are exposing themselves to by taking birth control. These excerpts represent just a few of the voices of victims of The Pill who want to stop this madness.

Add your voice. Let’s make this a chorus so loud it will be impossible for them to dismiss.

FDA Birth Control Safety Petition

Share Your Story Here on Hormones Matter

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Learn More about the History of Birth Control

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The FDA approved The Pill despite it not being proven safe. Today, it has been linked to everything from blood clots and cancer to lupus and Crohn’s disease — and still has not been proven safe.
This book explores the medical and historical disconnects that brought us to this point.

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The Spin Doctor’s Prescription for Birth Control

by Mike Gaskins

Published on November 9, 2021

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The term ‘Spin Doctor’ wouldn’t be coined until much later, but it was already clear by the time of the Nelson Pill Hearings that some prominent physicians were willing to twist statistics, incorporate doublespeak, and create confusion in any way they could to defend hormonal birth control. They were Spin Doctors in the truest sense. Fortunately, within the context of Senate Hearings, their ‘spin’ was frequently challenged.

Let the Spin Begin

Dr. Robert Kistner from Harvard couldn’t find a bad thing to say about The Pill if his daughter’s life depended on it. However, simple challenges to his testimony made several of his statements seem comical. Consider this exchange with Ben Gordon from Senator Nelson’s staff, when Dr. Kistner compared pill deaths with those of cigarettes:

Dr. Kistner: For every pill-induced death in Britain there are at least 1,500 cigarette induced deaths; based on the total sales of the two products during 1967 one cigarette is three time as dangerous to life as one pill.
Mr. Gordon: Dr. Kistner, may I interrupt for just one moment? Since you compared the risks of smoking with that of the pill, do you know of any cases where smoking three packages of cigarettes has caused either serious illness or death? Three packages?
Dr. Kistner: Smoking three packages?
Mr. Gordon: Right.
Dr. Kistner: Obviously the answer to that question is no.
Mr. Gordon: I have here the proceedings of a conference held… at the headquarters of the American Medical Association… there are case reports, several reports where people have either died or have become seriously injured taking the pill for only 3 months, in other words, three packages of pills.
Dr. Kistner: Is there a cause and effect relationship demonstrated or proved?
Mr. Gordon: Well, it just says “Case reports: Thrombosis and embolism in patients taking the pill.”
Dr. Kistner: There is no cause and effect relationship so far as I can understand.
Mr. Gordon: They said the same thing about tobacco.

Then, there’s this exchange when Senator McIntyre tries to clear up which side effects Dr. Kistner thinks should be shared with women:

Sen. McIntyre: Well, Doctor, there is one thing that occurs to me, could you distinguish for me the difference between a side effect and a complication?
Dr. Kistner: Yes. A side effect of a drug is one that is generally accepted as occurring in some individuals as an undesirable effect other than that for which the drug is given. If one takes estrogen, one frequently becomes nauseated, estrogen “pulls in” sodium and some women don’t excrete the excess fluid and they become edematous and “blow up.” These are side effects: but if a woman takes estrogen and gets a blood clot and dies that is a complication.
Sen. McIntyre: That is more than a complication.
[Laughter]
Dr. Kistner: Well, that is the difference. I think if you asked me to explain the difference, I did.

Today, the spin is just as silly, but the humor is missing. No longer are the distortions challenged. What used to be a laughable punch line is now presented as a valid counterpoint.

Strokes Linked to Hormonal Birth Control

In 2012, the New England Journal of Medicine published the results of an extensive Danish study showing that women on birth control pills or other hormonal contraceptives are up to twice as likely to have a stroke or heart attack than non-users, but a funny thing happened to the story on its way to the press. Industry experts analyzed, mitigated, and diluted it beyond recognition.

ABC News offered the most balanced report. Their story begins with a young woman, a ‘former smoker and birth control pill user’ who suffered a stroke. However, after sharing some of the details of the study, they downplayed the results with the aid of a Spin Doctor, a gynecologist, to be exact, who said, “…pregnancy is far more likely to cause an MI or stroke than hormonal contraception.” Whenever someone dismisses a comprehensive 15-year, peer-reviewed study with a statement like this, they should be required to provide supporting evidence at least as comprehensive as the study itself. In this case, the doctor is repeating an old fallacy – a misinterpretation of statistics that has been around since the beginning of birth control.

Don’t Question Birth Control

One could argue that it is good journalism to seek out a dissenting voice – to effectively present both sides of the story. In this case, I disagree. It’s dangerous. And I have to admit, reading the responses from ‘expert’ physicians frequently brings out my snarky side. Consider the dissenting voices from these spin doctors in articles related to the same Danish study:

Huffington Post interviewed Dr. Diana Petitti, who told them:

“The amount of attention paid to these miniscule risks…detracts attention from more salient issues, like preventing unwanted pregnancy.”

Miniscule risks?! I’m not sure, but I think Dr. Petitti is saying she would rather double her daughter’s chance of having a stroke than risk her getting pregnant.

Later in the same article, Dr. Kathy Hoeger explained:

“The risk might be as much as two times greater, but when you know that the rates are 1 in 10,000, you’re just bringing it up to 2 to 4 in 10,000.”

Those numbers sound so cute, but when you think about an estimated 18 million women in the U.S. currently use hormonal birth control; we could be subjecting an additional 5,400 women per year to strokes and heart attacks.

My favorite may be Dr. Isaac Schiff, who told Boston.com:

“I would say in many ways, this is a good news story. This is a lengthy, large study that helps to confirm that the birth control pill is relatively safe, recognizing that no drug is 100 percent safe.”

He’s ecstatic that hormonal birth control only doubles the risk! He probably turned somersaults when he read that women on The Pill also have a 30% higher risk of developing Multiple Sclerosis, a 50% higher risk of developing Lupus, and could triple their chances of having Crohn’s Disease! (I will talk more about The Pill and the rise of Autoimmune Disease in future posts.)

Dissenting Voices

So, why is it dangerous to present these dissenting voices? Imagine you’re a young woman who’s just been diagnosed with a chronic disease. You begin puzzling the pieces together, and recall that your first symptoms appeared within weeks or months of starting The Pill. You take your suspicions to Google, and stumble upon an article that confirms your fears… or does it?

So, you click on another article. For example, this lupus article that tells you, “The risk was greatest during the first three months after starting “the Pill” — when there was a 2.5-fold increased risk.” You think you’re on to something, but then a prominent doctor from Johns Hopkins is quoted, “One shouldn’t oversell this. Women taking oral contraceptives need to weigh the risk/benefit of unexpected pregnancy versus a very small increase in lupus.” We can’t blame the reader for concluding her diagnosis probably didn’t have to do with The Pill after all.

The Risks versus The Optical Illusions

Optical Illusion - birth control spin

You probably saw this image floating around the internet not too long ago. It reveals a lot about how our brains process information. Our eyes take in all the curves, lighting, and shadows that define Blocks A and B, allowing our brains to analyze the difference in colors. However, when you cover the middle of the image, you discover the blocks are actually the exact same shade.

Only by covering the embellishment do you see the reality.

Media reports on epidemiological studies associated with The Pill often work like this illusion in reverse. They first give us the reality of the image – sharing some of the alarming facts or statistics from the new study. Just as the reader grows concerned that The Pill may be too dangerous, the author bevels the edges, moves the light source, and casts a different shadow.

As laypeople, we tend to assume they know more than us. They minimize the importance of the findings, and we — well, we start to look at it in an entirely different light. We walk away thinking it must not have been as bad as it originally sounded.

We can no longer afford to let reality be obscured by these tactics. Rather than having blind faith in a doctor quoted in some article, we need to consider that we could be dealing with a Spin Doctor. We’ve seen examples of some of these above, but here are five red flags that should make you think twice about the motivation of the speaker:

1) “Those Statistics Aren’t Really That Bad”

Pill proponents will attempt to re-frame numbers so that they seem insignificant. We saw a stereotypical example earlier in this article – “…you’re just bringing it up to 2 to 4 in 10,000.”

Another form of statistical acrobatics seen less frequently today is the attempt to convince us that nature is more dangerous than The Pill. You will recall the gynecologist mentioned early in this article: “…pregnancy is far more likely to cause an MI or stroke than hormonal contraception.”

I believe this method has lost some steam over the years because the mathematical contortions are so easily untangled. Consider this historical example: in his testimony at the Nelson Pill Hearings, Dr. Alan Guttmacher, President of Planned Parenthood/World Population, gave statistics suggesting pregnancy was more dangerous than The Pill (Competitive Problems in the Drug Industry, Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, Page 6565). This was a common argument at the time, but it was refuted beautifully by world-renowned neurologist, Dr. David Clark, speaking to the American Academy of Neurology,

“The woman who takes oral contraceptives is, in effect, pregnant and delivering every month. In the normal course of her life, the average American woman has 3.6 pregnancies. She is fertile for approximately 30 years. If she takes oral contraceptives, she will be pregnant and delivering 360 times in that span of time. Expressed differently, she has 90 times more chance of showing the complications of pregnancy.” (Barbara Seaman, A Doctors’ Case Against the Pill, Page 26)

2) “Old Smokers Beware”

Media reports frequently stress that the risk is greatest for women who smoke or are over 35. This is a true statement, but the slight-of-hand comes in the implied message, ‘If you’re young and don’t smoke, you have nothing to worry about,’ which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Sure, they may try to convince you that you have better odds of winning the Publisher’s Clearinghouse than developing a deadly disease, but you don’t want to be on the backside of this one, saying, “That’s what I used to think.”

3) “There is No Proof of an Association”

The US tobacco industry played the ‘Proof versus Evidence’ game masterfully for decades. In 1954, they responded to early lung cancer studies by releasing the ‘Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers.’ In part, it said:

“Distinguished authorities point out…that there is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of the causes.”

As recently as 1998, John Carlisle of the Tobacco Manufacturers Association said:

“There is no such thing as conclusive evidence when you are talking about such a vast subject.”

The subsequent public release of internal communications from the tobacco industry revealed exactly what they knew, and how they strategized to maintain credibility while continuing to deny the overwhelming evidence. While we can’t assume Big Pharma has been consciously playing the same game, there are signs dating back to the early days of The Pill that eerily parallel the tobacco industry’s stance:

Complete denial of the association to cancer and strokes
Maintain credibility by admitting danger to a ‘small number’ of consumers
Agree to include a warning of the dangers with the product

By 1965, Morton Mintz, in the Columbia Journalism Review, expressed dismay at the ‘significant volume of reporting’ in medical journals that attempted to cast doubt on studies by using the argument that The Pill had not been proven unsafe. This was a 180-degree paradigm shift. The FDA had never been required to prove a drug unsafe. The onus was/is on the manufacturer to prove the drug safe. Clearly irritated by the ‘parroting’ in the press, Mintz wrote:

“…there was no acknowledgement that more was required – a disclosure as to specifically what weight of evidence of harm, in the eyes of the advocates, would add up to proof. Also missing was a recognition that for scientists there is no proof in the black-and-white sense, that all that can be had is evidence in one or another shade of gray.”

4) “It Could Have Been Something Else”

This is essentially a nebulous tangent of the ‘Proof vs. Evidence’ game. Despite the fact that criteria for publishing a study are extremely stringent, naysayers will attempt to cast doubt by questioning other variables that could have influenced the study. I recall one doctor actually asking, “How do we know it wasn’t the breakfast cereal the women had been eating that was causing these strokes?”

I suggest to you very few studies get published if they don’t eliminate Cocoa Puffs as a variable.

5) “The Benefits Still Outweigh the Risks”

Then there is the ubiquitous, “The benefits still outweigh the risks.” This phrase, more than any other, makes my head want to explode.

What kind of scale are they using to measure the benefits and risks? Are they looking at the isolated risk in a vacuum, and forgetting about all of the other associated risks? How do you compare a decreased chance of pregnancy with an increased risk of a deadly disease, regardless of percentages on either side, and determine that the benefits outweigh the risks?

Even if there were no other fertility control options available, I cannot grasp the idea of a healthcare professional saying, “Take this pill. It will greatly reduce the likelihood of you getting pregnant, but it doubles your risk of having a stroke…Did I mention that it will help clear your skin?”

Take Your Thumb Off the Scale

Clearly, when weighing the benefits to risks, someone has their thumb on the scale. The result is that there are many prominent physicians willing to perpetuate a pattern of denial and obfuscation anytime a new study is published. We have already seen how medical dogma can trump scientific evidence. So, whenever you read about a new study linking birth control to a deadly disease, remember that the media has run it through a decades-old filter of dogma and distortion. Isolate the Spin Doctor quotes, and take them with a grain of salt. Then, focus on the findings of the study itself. In other words, remove the embellishments and see the reality.

#1

37 customer reviews

Books

In the Name of The Pill*

by Mike Gaskins

The FDA approved The Pill despite it not being proven safe. Today, it has been linked to everything from blood clots and cancer to lupus and Crohn’s disease — and still has not been proven safe.
This book explores the medical and historical disconnects that brought us to this point.

Price: $ 17.95

Buy now at Amazon*

Price incl. VAT., Excl. Shipping

Last updated on October 21, 2023 at 9:38 pm – Image source: Amazon Affiliate Program. All statements without guarantee.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

This article was first published on September 13, 2016.

Birth Control: The More Things Change

by Mike Gaskins

Published on April 15, 2021

3306 views

The medical and drug industries are notoriously arrogant. While each generation of practitioner may acknowledge the errors of the past, they continue down the path of contemporary errors with an inexplicable faith in their own omniscience. Unfortunately, the magnitude of collateral damage from these mistakes has tended to grow exponentially with each passing generation, but no medical mistake (so far) can match the horrific toll still being wrought by birth control.

Time After Time

We aren’t terribly far removed from doctors promoting the health benefits of smoking cigarettes. Nor, in the grand scheme, has it been that long since leeches and bloodletting passed for cutting edge technology – or perhaps sucking edge.

Reflecting on errors of the past shouldn’t imbue today’s doctors with a sense of supreme knowledge. Instead, it should give them pause to wonder what tomorrow’s doctors may find laughable about their current practices.

The modern doctor may laugh at the doctor who promoted cigarettes, while that doctor laughed at those who promoted lobotomies, as those doctors laughed at snake oil salesmen.

While today’s doctors may have largely discarded lobotomies and leeches, the part that sucks most is that we seem to have lost the art of doing away with antiquated medical dogmas once they’ve been proven unsafe… at least, until lawsuits and settlements tip the balance.

Mea Culpa

The drug companies sit in the shadow of a well-documented history of business practices which promote profits-over-people. Examples like thalidomide, DES, and Vioxx should be enough to call into question this industry’s trustworthiness. Whether it’s greed or hubris, the industry consistently releases new drugs with authoritative assurances regarding their safety, and it’s rare to see them back down from these assertions – even as the courts begin to say otherwise.

So, consider how rare this admission was from Dr. Harry Rudel, one of the developers of The Pill:

The pill is something we entered into with the best of faith, something we truly believed affected only ovulation and fertility. It was a relatively small dose of a drug, and it appeared that it was not affecting anything except fertility. Then as we began to look, we began to see that we are influencing many systems in the body.

Change Is in the Air (Or Is It?)

Hormonal birth control remains the one persistent drug that seems to be made of Teflon – nothing sticks. It has been linked to dramatic rises in diseases affecting everything from the heart to the liver. With each newly identified risk, ‘experts’ assure us the benefits still outweigh the risks, and, somehow, that seems to be enough to just make it go away.

At some point, we (meaning ALL of us around the world) need to stop accepting this myopic minimization of all these disparate negative consequences. Sincerely, we are all stakeholders in this fallout, which has grown to a scale that would now be impossible to measure.

Recently, thoughts about the sheer magnitude of this tragedy hit me like a gut punch. I’ll explain what happened and share three scenarios that should be enough to make us seriously rethink our position on hormonal birth control.

Changes in Lupus

I recently participated in a webinar with Sara Harris and Rebecca Asquith from Follow Your Flow, during which I discussed the dramatic evolution of lupus in a relatively short amount of time. I explained how lupus used to be an old person’s disease. Then, with the rollout of birth control, doctors were alarmed that they began to see young women coming into their clinics with lupus.

Fifty years later, lupus is thought of primarily as a young woman’s disease. The tides have shifted so significantly in such a short amount of time that what used to be the norm is now called ‘late onset lupus.’ Women in their 40s and 50s are surprised to learn they can even develop lupus at ‘such a late stage of life.’

Shortly after the webinar, I encountered one of the attendees, who told me that her husband’s sister had been diagnosed with lupus in 1966 at the age of 17. Her specialist had been “so in awe of her condition that she attended presentations/lectures with him.” She died at the age of 24. While it isn’t certain that she was on The Pill, the timing in relation to the wave of young women who suddenly began developing this old person’s disease makes it very plausible.

Thinking of this 24-year-old woman who died so many decades ago struck me. Her family never even knew that her lupus could have been connected to birth control. How many other young women have been struck down so young because of these potent drugs, and nobody was ever the wiser? Please – pause for a second and ponder that – what is the potential body count of young women who have died in the past 60 years from lupus, a stroke, a pulmonary embolism, a heart attack? How many of them were buried with their family wondering why she had the misfortune of being taken so young – without ever knowing how easily it could have been prevented?

Changes in Breast Cancer

Unfortunately, lupus isn’t the only disease that looks different today than it did when hormonal birth control was introduced. Just as expert testimony at the Nelson Pill Hearings (1970) revealed concerns about changes in lupus, other experts testified about how The Pill would likely contribute to breast cancer numbers. One of those experts was Dr. Max Cutler, who warned that The Pill should never be used chronically. He called it a cancer time bomb whose fuse could be 15 to 20 years.

Dr. Cutler practically guaranteed we would see a dramatic rise in breast cancer. At that time, 1 in every 20 women would be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in her life, which equated to about 75 to 80,000 diagnoses each year.

This year (2021), we expect to see over 281,000 breast cancer diagnoses, and 1 in every 8 women will be diagnosed at some point in her life. That’s an increase of over 250-percent!

Many doctors now dismiss the breast cancer scare as old news attributed to the first-generation pills. They assume the newer ‘low dose’ formulations resolved that problem (because that’s what they’ve been taught). However, a recent Danish study confirmed that women on these newer formulations still faced a 20-percent greater risk of developing breast cancer than women who didn’t take hormonal birth control.

Changes in Multiple Sclerosis

As I’ve written previously on Hormones Matter, multiple sclerosis is a naturally discriminatory disease in terms of gender because of how particular cytokines within the immune system interact with estrogen. This is true of many autoimmune diseases.

So, if the disease has a natural gender bias, how do we know what role birth control is playing in its incidence?

In 1940, well before the introduction of hormonal birth control, twice as many women as men had multiple sclerosis in the US. However, by the year 2000, as the number of overall cases grew, the gender gap also widened – 4 out of every 5 diagnoses were women. That represents a 50-percent change in the gender bias over each decade.

Epidemiological studies from other developed countries revealed similar shifts in the gender ratio over the same timeframe. For example, a Danish study found that men experienced a 30-percent rise in their cumulative incidence rate (CIR), while the CIR for women more than doubled.

The Epidemiological Significance of Rapid Change

Commenting on some of the multiple sclerosis studies mentioned above, Sreeram Ramagopalan, Ph.D., research fellow at University of Oxford, said this:

A change that occurs within a century is too short a time for a genetic cause. This suggests that environmental factor(s) are at work in a sex-specific manner.

Any of these examples alone should be enough to make us feel as if we’ve been collectively punched in the gut. Hopefully, it will eventually spark an epidemiological curiosity in a researcher somewhere.

If you happen to know of an epidemiologist who’s trying to figure out what the sex-specific environmental factor(s) might be, could you direct them my way? I’ve got a thought or two I’d be willing to share.

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More Side Effects From Birth Control- The Liver and the Gallbladder

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on December 3, 2018

14385 views

birth control liver and gallbladder damage

This time of year, the holiday season, can be a time of overindulgence for many of us. And how can we talk about overindulgence without taking a look at the liver? To say the liver is important is an understatement. It is the body’s largest gland and while estimates of the number of functions of the liver vary, many textbooks generally cite around 500. Nearly everything we ingest, from drugs and alcohol to vitamins and nutrients, is metabolized by the liver. The vital role it plays in the functioning of our bodies makes the testimony from the 1970 Nelson Pill Hearings about the effects of oral contraceptives on the liver that much scarier.

Research Presented at the Nelson Pill Hearings

Dr. Victor Wynn was one of the first physicians to testify about the effects of hormonal birth control on the liver.

On page 6341 he states, “if you will take cells out of the liver and examine them under the electromicroscope of women taking oral contraceptive medication, you will find some extraordinary changes.” Of these and other changes caused by the pill, he says: “When I say these changes occur, I mean they occur in everybody, more in some than in others, but no person entirely escapes from the metabolic influence of these compounds. It is merely that some manifest the changes more obviously than others.”

Later to testify was Dr. William Spellacy who was specifically called upon to speak about the metabolic effects on the liver. His testimony about the liver begins, “The biochemical effects of the sex hormones on the liver are legion.” Below is a list of liver functions that, based on the research presented in Dr. Spellacy’s testimony, are altered or impaired (NPH 6427):

Lowering of total plasma protein level
Decrease in the albumin and gamma globulin and increases in other fractions
Tests may be abnormal in women on oral contraceptives without disease being present
Estrogen (including that in oral contraceptives) interferes with liver function and varies with dosage
Some women taking oral contraceptives have abnormally high blood bilirubin levels
1/3 of women who have jaundice on oral contraceptives will get it when pregnant
Discontinuation of oral contraceptives “cures” jaundice

He summed up his thoughts on the liver damage caused by hormonal birth control:

“The immediate effects include the alteration of several of the laboratory tests used in medical diagnoses. Aggravation of existing liver disease, if present, to the point where jaundice may be seen has also been shown. There is no answer to the query of will permanent liver damage result from the use of the oral contraceptives.”

The honorary Chairman of the Population Crisis Committee, a “pro-pill” organization focused on population control added his two cents about the effects of oral contraceptives on the women using them. “While metabolic alterations affecting the liver and other organs do result from use of the pill, there is no evidence at this time that they pose serious hazards to health;” General William Draper, Page 6705.

Of course, we shouldn’t assume that just because a medication causes a “legion” of biochemical effects on the livers of otherwise healthy women that there will be any lasting problems, right?

Research Since the Hearings

“Women more commonly present with acute liver failure, autoimmune hepatitis, benign liver lesions, primary biliary cirrhosis, and toxin-mediated hepatotoxicity,” according to a 2013 article in Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Like I mentioned in my piece about rheumatoid arthritis, whenever a health issue affects women disproportionately, there is often a connection with hormonal birth control. While this study doesn’t specifically mention that, it does call for further studies assess the role of sex hormones and other behaviors on liver problems in women.

These connections were well-documented at the 1970 Nelson Pill Hearings but the subsequent research gets more confusing.

Timeline of Liver Research

1980: Lancet published an article showing the connection between malignant liver tumors and women using oral contraceptives.

1989: The British Journal of Cancer found “confirmation in this population of the association between oral contraceptives and hepatocellular carcinoma” and “the relative risk was significantly elevated in long-term users [of oral contraceptives].”

1992: “This study, the largest to date, adds to the number of investigations demonstrating an increased risk of primary liver cancer with use, particularly long-term use, of oral contraceptives.”

2006: “Long-term use of oral contraceptives (OCs) and anabolic androgenic steroids (AASs) can induce both benign (hemangioma, adenoma, and focal nodular hyperplasia [FNH]) and malignant (hepatocellular carcinoma [HCC]) hepatocellular tumors.”

Yet a 2015 meta-analysis concluded that “oral contraceptive use was not positively associated with the risk of liver cancer.” However, the analysis also conceded that “a linear relationship between oral contraceptives use and liver cancer risk was found.” And the authors noted the need for further research into specific formulations of oral contraceptives and the duration of usage.

It makes you wonder how we went from pretty convincing and highly damning connections between oral contraceptives and liver cancer to no positive association at all. Did all the scientists from the 1960s to 2006 get it wrong? Or is something else going on here?

What About the Gallbladder?

Perhaps we can look at the liver’s little buddy, the gallbladder, for some more information. The two are intimately connected in that the liver is constantly making bile and sending it to the gallbladder for storage and dispensation. Like problems with the liver, women are more likely to develop gallstones than men. According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, “Extra estrogen can increase cholesterol levels in bile and decrease gallbladder contractions, which may cause gallstones to form. Women may have extra estrogen due to pregnancy, hormone replacement therapy, or birth control pills.”

This was proven shortly after the Nelson Pill Hearings. According to the revised edition of The Doctors’ Case Against The Pill by Barbara Seaman:

“The Pill also has serious adverse effects on the gallbladder, and women who take the Pill face an increased risk of someday facing surgery for gallstones. Pill use causes higher levels of cholesterol saturation in the bile, according to a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1976. This high level of fate in the bile is considered ‘an early chemical stage of gallstone disease,” according to Dr. Donald Small of the Boston University School of Medicine… The risk of gallbladder disease rises with the length of time a woman has been on the Pill… In some studies, Pill users are two and a half times as likely to suffer from gallstones as comparable women.”

A meta-analysis conducted in 1993 found “Oral contraceptive use is associated with a slightly and transiently increased rate of gallbladder disease” and “Considering…the rapidly changing formulas of oral contraceptives, the authors suggest that the safety of new oral contraceptives be evaluated by studying bile saturation and biliary function rather than by waiting for gallbladder disease to develop.”

A much more recent study (2011) found that there was even more risk of gallbladder disease with the newer formulations:

Long-term use of an oral contraceptive is associated with an increased risk of gallbladder disease compared with no use
There was a small, statistically significant increase in the risk of gallbladder disease associated with the use of desogestrel, drospirenone and norethindrone compared with levonorgestrel
Both estrogen and progesterone have been shown to increase the risk of gallstones
Estrogen has been shown to increase cholesterol production in the liver, with excess amounts precipitating in bile and leading to the formation of gallstones
Progesterone has been shown to decrease gall-bladder motility, which impedes bile flow and leads to gallstone formation

The gallbladder shows us that these hormones are damaging the body.

What Now?

So what do you do when you have a gallbladder that’s not functioning properly? The current practice is to take it out! Of course, removing the gallbladder is not the quick fix many think it is and often leads to other health complications like irritable bowel syndrome, acid reflux, and Sphincter of Oddi Dysfunction.

What about when your liver isn’t functioning properly? That’s not as simple. You can’t just take a liver out. How can the gallbladder, an organ so fundamentally connected to the liver, experience drastic and dangerous changes from hormonal birth control but the liver is supposedly unaffected? Have we researched ourselves out of that problem by declaring that it isn’t a problem? Has there been some spin-doctoring going on when it comes to the liver?

As Dr. Wynn said at the hearings, “There are more than 50 ways in which the metabolic functions of the body are modified, and to say therefore that normal physiological function has been demonstrated in the years of oral contraception is to overlook a very large amount of information.”

I think a very large amount of information has indeed been overlooked.

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Laboratoires Servier, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This article was first published December 15, 2016.

It’s Not All In Your Head: Mental Health and Hormonal Birth Control

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on August 22, 2017

5686 views

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 feeling miserable. The doctor told her the weight gain and depression were not from the pill because those were not side effects of hormonal birth control. Wait, does this sound familiar? It’s the same story I told in my article about hormonal birth control and weight gain. Only this time, I’m talking about mental health.

The truth is that I gave my mood changes and my mild depression very little thought. Once the doctor told me they were not a symptom of my new birth control pills, I figured it was my fault I was sad and not dealing with things very well.

What They Knew in 1970

I remembered the connection between my birth control pills and that bout of depression when I began reading the Nelson Pill Hearings. One of the first doctors to testify pointed out that there had been a suicide during the original pill trials in Puerto Rico. Neither the suicide, nor the other three sudden deaths (of five total deaths during the experiments) were investigated. But what really got my attention was that the page after the mention of the suicide was the only one missing in the nearly 1500 pages of testimony. I have since been able to get a copy of that page and while the testimony doesn’t seem that damning given the laundry lists of risks, concerns, and dangers with hormonal contraceptives that are examined at the hearings, it does bring up an interesting point.

Doctor Edmond Kassouf’s testimony answers questions from Mr. James Duffy, minority counsel at the hearings (page 6112):

Mr. Duffy: One of the five deaths was suicide.
Dr. Kassouf: Yes.
Mr. Duffy: So what I would like to understand is how does one take a suicide and link the case of death to the pill?
Dr. Kassouf: Very simply. It has been of current concern. Many physicians and psychiatrists are concerned about depression and the pill. If this is true, suicide may well be the end result of that combination and, therefore, a reasonable suspect, a reasonable link.

Suicide Attempts While on the Pill

“I’ve really got to look into this more,” I thought. Well, I had to look no further than page 6447 and the testimony of Dr. Francis Kane, Jr., Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina. To sum up his testimony about the studies conducted with regard to mental health and oral contraceptives, he says this (page 6457):

“There is considerable incidence of mild to moderate psychiatric morbidity [disease] associated with the use of combination oral contraceptive agents… In three of the four studies, there seems to be agreement that those who have required psychiatric care in the past will be more at risk for the development of morbidity, including psychosis. One study also suggests that there may be some increase in the depth of illness the longer the medication is taken.”

Dr. Kane describes a study conducted in England of 50 women on oral contraceptives who were compared to a control group of 50 women who had not used hormonal contraception. There were no differences in socioeconomic status, age, or history of past depressive episodes. But in the group taking the pill, 14 women “had depression of mild to moderate proportions, while only three of the control group reported this.” The pill users also reported greater depression as well as particularly high scores for “guilt, self-absorption, and loss of energy.”

He goes on to say, “Two suicidal attempts in the pill sample were found, which had not been disclosed to the general practitioner. Since completing the study, another depressed pill-taker had made a serious suicidal attempt.” Three suicide attempts in a study of 50 women? That seems incredibly high to me. Ludicrously high. Especially given that there are other methods of contraception.

But Wait, There’s More!

But that’s just one doctor testifying about a few studies, right? Sure. But the next person to testify was Dr. John McCain (not the senator). One of the first things the doctor points out is (page 6471):

“The contraceptive pills are potent steroid hormones. Alterations of the anterior pituitary function are produced by them… the potential endocrine and systemic disturbances are almost unlimited. The effects produced through the anterior pituitary may be so indirect that years may elapse before a correlation is established between the abnormality and the administration of the contraceptive pills.”

You know what else is a hormonal medicine? Anabolic steroids. “Roid rage” is pretty well documented. Is it really such a leap to think that hormones in birth control can also cause changes in mental health?

Dr. McCain spent years documenting the patients in his practice who suffered serious side effects from hormonal contraception. In that time, he recorded episodes from 52 patients. And per his own testimony, his largest concern was mental health (page 6473).

“The emotional or psychiatric problems are the complications which seem to me to have the most serious potential danger. Three patients have stated that they were desperately afraid that they were going to kill themselves… After the pills were omitted, the depression and suicidal fears of the three patients disappeared, as did the depression of the other patients.”

He also points out (page 6473):

“It is disturbing to consider the patients on the pills whose depression may have ended in suicide and/or homicide with no recognition of any association with the contraceptive pills… Personality changes could be a factor in other conditions such as automobile accidents and divorces.”

Is it really so much of stretch to think that a potent steroid could cause personality changes that could lead to the damaging of personal relationships that are beyond repair? Plenty of other potent substances can and do.

What They Say Now

Dr. Kane and Dr. McCain, as well as every other expert who testified at the Nelson Pill Hearings, agreed on one thing. More research was needed.

So what does the research say now?

Medscape published an article from the American Journal of Epidemiology with the claim that “Hormonal contraception may reduce levels of depressive symptoms among young women.” Yet when you read further into their conclusions, they say that nearly one-third of women discontinue hormonal contraceptives within the first year, many because of mood changes, and those women are unlikely to restart hormones. Therefore, “hormonal contraceptive users at any time point may be overselected for less depression than nonusers.”

The study also points out that:

“Existing literature on hormonal contraception and depression has been primarily confined to small, unrepresentative samples. Among these smaller studies, few cohesive findings have emerged.”

And:

“Little research has examined the role of exogenous hormone use in suicidality, and existing research has focused on mortality from suicide rather than suicide attempts.”

And according to WebMD, there are a laundry list of medications that can cause depression. What is not included on this list? Birth control pills. The only hormonal contraception included is Norplant. Interestingly enough, the active ingredient in Norplant is levonorgestrel, a progestin found in many birth control pills as well as hormonal IUDs. So am I supposed to believe that when injected into my arm, synthetic hormones can cause me depression but when taken daily as a pill or sitting in my uterus for 5 years, they won’t? Does that make any sense at all?

It doesn’t make sense to Dr. Kelly Brogan. That’s why when she has patients that complain of depression, anxiety, low libido, mood changes, weight gain, etc. she recommends they stop using hormonal contraception.

What Have We Learned?

Hormonal contraceptives can cause mental health issues
Women who suffer from mental health issues are much more likely to suffer from increased symptoms when on hormonal contraception
Often the longer hormonal contraception is used, the greater the symptoms
Discontinuation of hormonal contraception can usually alleviate mental health symptoms
The research promised from the Nelson Pill Hearings has never materialized

Why, if they knew in 1970 that hormonal contraception was deeply connected not only to depression but also to suicide, has it not been further researched? It’s been nearly 50 years since Dr. Philip Ball (page 6493), a specialist in internal medicine, testified before congress. Which makes what he says all the more chilling.

“It is not considered reasonable that there be any mortality or morbidity in a pill used purely for contraception purposes. Medical research has got to offer something better than this. Physicians will probably look back on the contraceptive pill era of the past 5 years with some embarrassment.”

Exactly.

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This post was published originally on Hormones Matter on June 22, 2016.

A Joint Problem: Rheumatoid Arthritis and Hormonal Birth Control

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on November 17, 2016

23944 views

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disorder which causes the body’s immune system to attack the joints, resulting in pain and swelling. About 1.3 million people in the United States have rheumatoid arthritis, and of these, nearly 75 percent are women. “In fact, 1–3 percent of women may get rheumatoid arthritis in their lifetime. The disease most often begins between the fourth and sixth decades of life, however, RA can start at any age.”

At this point in my research into hormonal contraceptives, any disease that affects women so much more drastically than men I find suspicious. While reading the Nelson Pill Hearings (NPH), the testimony of Dr. Giles Boles, a professor of internal medicine, caught my attention. He was discussing oral contraceptives and rheumatoid arthritis. Like diabetes, this is another connection I had never heard about before.

At the hearings, Boles describes a 24-year-old woman who was experiencing mild rheumatic symptoms. After running some tests, she showed three abnormalities commonly associated with lupus. She had been taking oral contraceptives for 8 months and was on no other medication. “She was advised to discontinue her oral contraceptive therapy and within 6 weeks all of her laboratory abnormalities had disappeared.” Doctors continued to monitor her for over 2 years and she remained disease-free.

He also spoke about a two-year study published in 1969 that showed rheumatoid arthritis in women taking oral contraceptives increased more than 50 percent. Another study from the same year reported that 22 women with rheumatic symptoms had their symptoms diminish or disappear after discontinuing the pill (NPH page 6089).

That study, which was originally published in the British medical journal Lancet, was also discussed in Barbara Seaman’s book The Doctors’ Case Against the Pill (page 122):

“Over the past three years we have seen 22 young women who… after beginning oral contraceptives developed [arthritic symptoms]. The joint swelling was usually limited to the hands. On cessation of the oral contraceptive, the symptoms disappeared… We specifically inquire as to the use of oral contraceptives in all young women we see with rheumatic complaints…”

In researching the connection further, my first stop was the Centers for Disease Control. On their page for rheumatoid arthritis under “Risk Factors” is the following:

Oral Contraceptives (OC): Early studies found that women who had taken OCs had a modest to moderate decrease in risk of RA. However, most recent studies have not found a decreased risk. The estrogen concentration of contemporary OCs is typically 80%-90% lower than the first OCs introduced in the 1960s. This may account for the lack of associations in recent studies.

This seems very odd to me for a few reasons. First of all, if oral contraceptives decrease the risk of rheumatoid arthritis, why put it under “Risk Factors?” Secondly, though the “early studies” being cited are from 1993 and 1989, they point to the higher concentration of estrogen from pills in the 1960s as a reason for the conflicting information. Yet in 1970, Dr. Boles testifies about a very real connection between rheumatoid arthritis and the use of oral contraceptives.

Rheumatoid Arthritis on the Rise

A 2010 study from researchers at the Mayo Clinic showed that after four decades of decline, rheumatoid arthritis was on the rise among women. They cited oral contraceptives as one of the culprits:

“The incidence of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in women has risen during the period of 1995 to 2007, according to a newly published study by researchers from the Mayo Clinic. This rise in RA follows a 4-decade period of decline and study authors speculate environmental factors such as cigarette smoking, vitamin D deficiency, and lower dose synthetic estrogens in oral contraceptives may be the source of the increase.”

Yet this WebMD article discusses a small German study that showed that oral contraceptive use could ease some symptoms of RA. Incidentally, the article also points out, “certain patients with inflammatory arthritis may increase their risk of blood clots by going on oral contraceptives.” This statement makes it seem that only some women are at an increased risk for blood clots when using oral contraceptives. That’s untrue. ALL women who use hormonal contraceptives are at an increased risk for blood clots.

While the German study was small and focused on symptoms, a meta-analysis of 17 studies showed no “protective effect of oral contraceptives on the risk for RA in women.”

Perhaps even more strange are the findings presented at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in Boston in 2014. The study presented there showed that choice of contraception may influence rheumatoid arthritis autoimmunity risk, with the biggest risk coming from IUDs (intrauterine device), though the research findings don’t specify whether patients used a copper IUD or a hormonal IUD.

According a meta-analysis by Hazes and van Zeben the overall unsatisfactory state of studies relating RA to the contraceptive pill suggest

“that oral contraceptive use may in fact be a marker for some other causal factor.”

Another article by William H. James from the Annals of Rheumatic Disease describes the problem with determining the connection between oral contraceptive use and rheumatoid arthritis:

“Over the last decade a dozen large scale studies have offered strikingly dissimilar conclusions on this possibility. An international workshop was held in Leiden in 1989 in an attempt to reach a consensus. It is not unfair to comment that consensus proved evasive.”

Is Rheumatoid Arthritis Connected to Hormonal Contraceptives or Not?

In 1970, the research clearly showed a connection between rheumatoid arthritis and hormonal contraceptives. Further research confirmed that. Then other studies attempted to demonstrate that the pill mitigated symptoms, while a meta-analysis showed no protective effect. Yet recent findings show an increased risk for women who use IUDs. In all of the recent research, the only consensus seems to be that there is no consensus.

The bottom line is that evidence about the connection between rheumatoid arthritis and hormonal birth control is inconclusive at best, incoherent at worst, and sometimes downright contradictory. Once again, I have to ask why. Why were there not conclusive studies conducted immediately after the 1970 Congressional hearings? Who gains by there still being confusion about this issue? Who loses? That one I can answer; women lose.

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.

Blinded By Side Effects: Vision and Hormonal Birth Control

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on November 1, 2016

7888 views

I don’t know about you but my vision is pretty important to me. I’m using it right now to type this article. I use it all the time, every waking hour of the day (except maybe when I’m meditating). So when I read the Nelson Pill Hearings and I came across the testimony of Dr. Guttmacher, I was shocked.

“Now, in addition to the danger from thromboembolism which has been described to this committee on several occasions by several witnesses, I think that there are other dangers for the pill… such as high blood pressure, headache, depression, interference with vision, and so on.” (page 6566)

Wait… the birth control pill affects your vision??? How can that be? And how could he just say that in passing? Why did no one on the Senate committee stop him and make him explain that that statement? It turns out, just like diabetes, yeast infections and UTIs, depression, weight gain, and so many other side effects, no one had told me that my vision could be affected by using hormonal birth control.

How Hormonal Birth Control Affects Vision

Hormones affect every system of the body so perhaps it should come as no surprise that they can greatly impact your vision. In fact, it is the fluctuation in hormones that is the primary reason for worsening eyesight with age. So of course, manipulating the body’s natural chemistry by using hormonal birth control can cause a variety of vision problems.

Dry Eye

According to the National Eye Institute (NEI), “Dry eye occurs when the eye does not produce tears properly, or when the tears are not of the correct consistency and evaporate too quickly.” While usually more uncomfortable than dangerous, if dry eye is left untreated it can cause pain, ulcers, scars on the cornea, and in rare cases, some loss of vision.

The NEI also states that it can be temporary or chronic and that one of the causes of dry eye is medications such as birth control. Unfortunately, that means dry eye is often overlooked in young women and teen girls using the pill. As Dr. Reiser of the Cornea Institute at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles points out, doctors “may not even think of it, but these drugs are frequently prescribed to treat skin problems and dysmenorrhea. Some [ocular] symptoms can mimic what you see in menopausal women.”

We also see dry eyes as a side effect of women who’ve had hysterectomies. Robin Karr details her experience with it here. It’s obvious that eye health is linked to hormones but the vision problems associated with hormonal birth control don’t stop there. Dry eyes may be the least of our worries.

Glaucoma

Dry eye may be uncomfortable and inconvenient but glaucoma, another eye condition linked to hormonal birth control, can be much more dangerous. Glaucoma causes damage to the optic nerve and can lead to permanent loss of vision. Perhaps the scariest thing about glaucoma is that most patients have no symptoms and are only diagnosed when having an eye exam. A researcher and ophthalmologist from the University of San Francisco found that use of birth control pills for three years or longer doubles the risk of glaucoma.

The fact that glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness and that there is no cure is very disturbing. The American Optometric Association downplays the findings of this study and calls for more research. Yet, that seems to be the response to all of the research about the dangerous side effects of hormonal contraception. How much more research do we need to show that these medications are dangerous and dangerously over-prescribed? A woman could literally go blind from a medication she’s been prescribed to treat acne.

Retinal Occlusion

As someone who had a stroke while using hormonal birth control, this risk probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. Retinal occlusion is a stroke of the eye caused by a blockage in the blood vessels of your retina. These blockages can be caused by blood clots, a well-researched and documented side effect of hormonal contraception. Like with a stroke of the brain, recovery isn’t guaranteed. Some people who suffer these retinal occlusions will never see again.

In fact, the risk with oral contraceptive use is so substantiated that you can find it in the “Practicing Ophthalmologists Curriculum Core Ophthalmic Knowledge” on the American Academy of Ophthalmologists website.

It should also be said that many of our Real Risk: Birth Control and Blood Clots study participants experienced vision changes before and during their blood clots. This was the case not just in the women who had had strokes but surprisingly also in the women who suffered pulmonary embolisms.

Seeing Clearly

I used birth control pills for 10 years and I never once had a healthcare professional- not my gynecologist, not my general practitioner, not my ophthalmologist- tell me that vision problems were a side effect. That Dr. Guttmacher mentioned it in passing at Nelson Pill Hearings seemed to indicate that the risk was well-known, even back in 1970. Current research supports that hormonal contraceptives adversely affect vision. Where does that leave us? What would you be willing to give up for a medication? Your physical health? Your mental health? Your libido? Your vision? Your life?

What else do we need in order to see that hormonal contraception is not worth it?

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.

Deconstructing Contraceptives: What Do We Really Know?

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on October 20, 2016

2164 views

Over the last several weeks, I have been preparing a report regarding our research on birth control and blood clots. In doing so, I have been reviewing past work and stumbled upon my notes for the presentation that landed the grant allowing this research to begin. The talk was filmed, but the video is behind a paywall. So, I decided to post the notes and the presentation. Enjoy.

Birth Control, Big Money and Bad Medicine: A Deadly Trifecta in Women’s Health

As I considered how to put this presentation together, I struggled with where to begin, what to leave in, what to leave out. There is so much that needs to be understood about contraceptives that we could fill a week of lectures and discussions. What I kept coming back to, however, is the notion that if I can teach you how to think about contraceptives, or for that matter, any medical treatment, if I can teach you how to question and evaluate the research, how to find the answers that you need; if I can give you a foundation and a framework for understanding the science, the economics and the politics of this medication, then each of you can find your own answers, and perhaps, if you are so inclined, contribute back to the knowledge base, so that we all have a better understanding of these issues. And so it is from that perspective that I have decided to approach this discussion. I want to give you a foundation and a framework from which to build your own house of knowledge. Sounds a little corny, doesn’t it, but bear with me, learning how to think critically about medical science might just save your life or the life of a loved one.

The Framework of Knowledge

I have a background and a natural inclination towards philosophy. In other words, I tend to think about things a bit more deeply than perhaps I should. This gets me into trouble sometimes.

One of the questions that plague my thinking is ‘how we know what we think we know’. I find that more often not, pondering from where and from whom the knowledge, the science, the politics, even the historical interpretations come from, tells us a lot about what it is we know exactly and what we really have no business claiming knowledge of.

With hormonal contraceptives, and indeed, the entirety of women’s health, when we deconstruct what is known and detach it from how we know it, or at least how we think we know it, it becomes very clear, very quickly, that our knowledge is severely limited.

For example, did you know that most of the science on contraceptives was developed over 50 years ago before the thalidomide tragedies changed FDA regulations regarding women’s health? Did you know that after thalidomide, research involving women of childbearing potential was all but prohibited until the late 1990s?

The post-thalidomide regulations, when combined with the political quagmire that is female reproduction, all but eliminated research and development on hormonal contraceptives, with the large pharmaceutical industries preferring to make only slight changes to dosage or delivery method and focus almost entirely market saturation over all else.

Probably not, unless you study this stuff. But knowing this, understanding how we know what we know about hormonal contraceptives can tell us a lot about these products, even if you don’t know the science.

So, hormonal contraceptives didn’t get the safety research they deserved. Indeed, they did not and continue not to because of the perceived economic and political costs associated with contraceptive science is greater than the perceived benefits.

Why fund new science, when the old science is already approved and the market is mature, in the sense that women and physicians alike consider hormonal contraceptives safe, but more importantly, a necessary component of reproductive health?

The Objectivity Bias

Back to the topic of how we know what we know, not only do we have to consider the science behind these drugs, but we also must consider in what context the science emerged and whether and how that context introduces a bias that impedes our understanding.

I would argue that bias is inevitable, even fundamental to the scientific endeavor, even though we claim objectivity. Consider, for example, the process of research design. What questions are asked and not asked are dependent entirely on the researcher’s individual constructs about what the problem is. Defining the problem, or even whether there is a problem to be investigated, is informed by education, culture, society, advertising, marketing, and in more modern times, by research funding availability. In many ways, bias permeates every aspect of the scientific endeavor. And yet, we hold tightly to this notion that delineating science from every other pursuit of knowledge, is its objectivity, its lack of bias.

In science, in particular, we have exalted the notion of objectivity above all else. The experiments we do are meant to eliminate subjectivity, to eliminate chance and the variables that might confound our data so that we can say with some confidence that this or that treatment is safe and effective.

While these are laudable goals that have contributed largely to the great advancements we have in all fields of science and technology, I think, in some ways, we have taken this reliance on objectivity too far, so much so that we have lost the humanity, and indeed, the humility in our scientific endeavors. This fealty to what I would argue is a contrived reliance of objectivity, to controlled but abstracted data calculations, not only severely limits the scope of our understanding but also poses real risks to human and organismal health. We see evidence of this every day, when human illness mediated by a particular drug or environmental toxicant is viewed only in terms of averages. That is, when a drug evokes a reaction in only small fraction of those who use the medication, but appears not evoke that reaction in others (though I would argue that it evokes other reactions that we are simply not recognizing), then those reactions, those costs, are viewed as inconsequential. They are not statistically significant and because we forget that statistical significance is different that clinical significance, because supplant statistical significance, a mathematical abstraction for clinical and human significance, we fail to recognize the dangers of a particular medication.

And so when I approach medical science, or really anything, it is always with those two things in mind – how we know what we think we know, and how biases, mine and others, influence that knowledge. It is from that perspective, we’ll take our foray into the contraceptive conundrum.

My Biases

Because I believe biases are so important – let’s begin with my biases. We’ll then look at the biases in modern medicine and statistics and how those biases have informed how we know what we know about hormonal contraceptives. Finally, we’ll tackle what is known and what is not known about what hormonal contraceptives do and do not do to the body.

You already know a little about me from the bio I submitted and from the brief introduction. But let me insert myself into the research, give you some idea of the lens through which I understand medical research in general, and hormonal contraceptives, in particular. I stand here today as a woman who has used oral contraceptives and experienced side effects from them (but at the time had no clue about the connections between my health issues and the contraceptives, nor did any of the physicians I sought help from).

I am mom of 21 year old twins, a wife of 26 years and a lifelong jock (even at the ripe old age).

I am as a research scientist. I love figuring out how things work, and to me, figuring out how things work means not only going to down to the smallest possible unit of function – the molecule, the chemical pathways, but mapping the systems involved, not just of the target organ but across the entire body. I think I was an engineer in a former life.

I am writer, as I mentioned, with philosophical tendencies.

I am business owner, whose business involves understanding women’s health and healthcare.

Finally, I am fierce women’s health advocate. For too long, questions about women’s health have been ignored. I want to change that.

I should also mention, as someone who is involved in medication adverse events research, listening to patient stories, seeing the devastation that some of these medications can evoke, and then investigating the mechanisms by which these reactions can occur, I have become increasingly wary of pharmaceutical promises. Admittedly, in that regard, I am probably more biased than others. It is difficult not to be.

So it is this totality of experiences that color, not only my interpretation of data, but I think more importantly, the questions I ask about any given medication. When I look at the safety and efficacy of a drug, I want to know in real terms what the benefits versus the risks are to an individual.

Unfortunately, we don’t have that information for majority of medications on the market, especially for women, and most especially for hormonal contraceptives.

With that long introduction, let’s dig into the topic at hand.

Birth Control, Big Money and Bad Medicine: A Deadly Trifecta in Women’s Health from Hormones Matter

Add Your Experience to the Conversation

As a result of this presentation, we were awarded a grant to investigate the health risks associated with hormonal contraceptives. Some of the early results of the pilot study can be found here and here. You can help us delineate those risks further by adding your experiences to our growing database by taking part in the Real Risk Study and, if you are so inclined, sharing your health story on Hormones Matter.

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.

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