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Hormoneously Alone: Pill Withdrawal Syndrome from Hell

Published on April 3, 2019

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It was two months since I had stopped taking The Pill. Might I add, I hate how culturally grammatical we have to be when we write, “The Pill”. THE Pill is how I read it. It’s 2019, and it all still seems so covertly retro. Anyway, it is hard to go back in time because the thoughts of what transpired the year I came off The Pill still overwhelm me. I had never really agreed with the notion of loading ourselves with synthetic hormone, and in fact, for 70% of my sexually active life, I used other very successful methods. Regardless, I was in my early 20’s, and like most, decided to hop on the Pill for a couple more years until I knew I had found the guy of my dreams. Well, the time came, I was in a great relationship, I felt safe and comfortable emotionally, as well as financially, and I made the choice to come off. I popped the last little pink pill on January 19^th, 2017. Fast forward to March 10^th, 2017 and here is where it all started.

Peripheral Nerve Symptoms

I woke up with severe, I can’t stress the word “severe” enough, pins and needles in my hands and feet. That feeling you get when you lay too long on a limb, numb it out, and then feel the tingling- that feeling. So, I thought I had slept weird, and continued on with my day, but by night, the severity hadn’t changed. I woke up the next morning, still feeling this tingling but it was now accompanied by extreme feelings of weakness in my arms and legs. The strange part was that I wasn’t actually weak. I was able to lift heavy items like normal, it was just the feeling of weakness. Did I have a stroke? This is where the anxiety started to kick in. I have struggled with anxiety my whole life but over the next 3 months, I had never experienced such an extreme form of anxiety and depression like this. I was in the prime of my life, 25 years old, and I had never felt worse. I had this intense tingling in my hands and feet, weakness throughout my arms and legs, and an unremitting dismal and gloomy cloud following me. I started to research, and although mistakenly started to self-diagnose with brain tumors, Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus, Autoimmune, I ultimately thought I was deficient in electrolytes or vitamins, and bought a Gatorade. Well, that didn’t help either.

Brain Fog and Depersonalization

I decided to take a few days off from work, get a massage and do a few yoga classes. It was a week since these feelings started, and the brain fog was coming in strong. If anyone has ever had this brain fog symptom, I would almost say it’s more debilitating than depression itself. The cloud of depression that hangs over your head is now in your head. Brain fog is like depersonalization, you’re really not sure if you’re even here on this earth, you feel so distant and detached from life, it’s scary. The massage helped me feel a bit better, not so tense, I was able to take a few deep breaths and have a few seconds of peace. When I went into the yoga classes, I would sit in the back. My goal was just to breathe and relax my body and my mind. Well, the second the teacher started, I had waterfalls of tears flowing out of my eyes. Until this day, I couldn’t tell you why that was happening in each class but if that’s not a major sign of depression, I don’t know what is.

Buzzing Bees in My Spine and Brain

The tingling and weakness wasn’t going away. It was now the end of April and my period was two weeks late. I then started to wake up in the middle of the night with a feeling of buzzing bees up my spine and in my brain. The feeling was so off-putting and disturbing, I couldn’t fall back asleep. I would get hot flashes- peri-menopause? At 25? No way. My eyes would randomly hurt. My teeth would randomly hurt. I would have crazy sinus issues. There were times where I was so tired I would take the day off because I couldn’t move. I felt debilitated. I was not myself. I even thought about going on disability.

Could it be the Pill? Absolutely Not, Says Every Doctor.

All my life healthy, I was a kickboxing instructor, an everyday gym goer, something was just not right. It was time to go to the doctor. Getting an urgent appointment with the Gyno is nearly a battle in itself, especially when you call and say, “Something weird is going on in my body, I’m not sure what it is”. Next appointment, 3 weeks away. So I went to the walk in clinic near my house, blood pressure: 150/110. I had never seen such high numbers. Diagnoses – anxiety, solution-anti depressants. No thank you. Something more was going on inside. I have been getting my period almost to the day since I was 12 years old, that’s 13 years of consistency. I’m not pregnant and 2 weeks late? No, something is wrong hormonally. I went to my primary care physician. They did blood work, checked me up and down – nothing. Again, my blood pressure read: 145/108, diagnoses-anxiety, solution-relax. I went to the Gyno, and was told “there’s no way these symptoms are from coming off The Pill.” Shocked, I asked why it couldn’t be, she replied, “The Pill is something that needs to be taken every day because it gets metabolized within 24 hours, so if you haven’t taken a pill since January, it’s no longer in your system. You should get other testing done.” I know that, I did that, but trying to convince someone with a much higher education in this field, an expert in fact, was going nowhere. I knew it was up to me to do my own research and trust what my body was telling me.

Women Know Better

I hopped back online and googled, “hormonal imbalance symptoms”, “after the pill reactions”, “what birth control really does to you”- the list goes on. It had been four months since these symptoms started. I finally came across an amazing blog post where there were 10 pages of women expressing the same symptoms as me after coming off the Pill. It was the most comforting moment of my life. I knew I wasn’t making these symptoms up. This wasn’t all anxiety. This was real; for me, for them, for everyone who had come off the Pill and felt a huge difference in their body. In my adult years, I shied away from publicly posting my feelings and connecting with people virtually, but, I felt like if I didn’t participate, if I didn’t help, that would just be immoral and unethical.

What was interesting to me was that we all initially thought MS or brain tumor. All of our symptoms happened about two months after we took the last pill and all of the symptoms lasted on average 8-9 months. Almost all of us had blood work, CT scans, MRI’s, and all of us came back negative on every test. We exchanged advice about best foods, herbs, and practices that were helping us, and consoled each other in this grueling sea of unknown. Every one of us were told that it wasn’t due to coming off The Pill, and every one of us didn’t believe it. It was from The Pill, it is from The Pill.

Ultimately, this takes time, a healthy lifestyle and patience. Some doctors will say, go back on the Pill to help it, but that seems counter-intuitive to me. When this reaction becomes so real and tormenting, the Pill is the most frightening thing and the furthest from the cure or the answer. I’ve researched endlessly for the past two years, and only recently see the term coined, “Post Birth Control Syndrome”. It’s catchy, for sure, but the description isn’t quite as accurate. There are weirder, stranger symptoms that happen than just the irregular periods, acne, and weight change; that to me seems like it skims the surface, that’s easy stuff comparably.

I’m happy to report that I feel back to normal, but this experience will never leave my mind. Through it all, I feel the injustices for women are brought about because of a terrible patient care system with limited time and awareness in an ever turning patient revolving door. I produced a documentary entitled, “Hormoneously Alone,” now out on YouTube, to shed light on these issues among others involving The Pill.

We’re all in this together, but with the lack of education, awareness and openness, we all may as well be alone.

If you or someone you know has had similar experiences coming off of the Pill, or if you would like to share your story, message me here, I would love to hear from you.

In Health,

Raquel Latona

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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.

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

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on December 3, 2018

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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.

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 December 15, 2016.

Falling into the Planned Parenthood Gardasil Snake Pit

by Paul Haeder

Published on December 4, 2017

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“With 80 percent of clinical trials failing to meet recruitment deadlines in the West, major drug companies are today conducting half or more of their trials outside the major markets, often in countries–like Nigeria–with poor human rights records and weak regulatory infrastructures. Pfizer’s Nigeria trial is unusually sensational and high profile, but its bending of the rules may be more the rule than the exception.” – Sonia Shah, author of The Body Hunters
“It is clear from the evidence presented in this book that the pharmaceutical industry does a biased job of disseminating evidence – to be surprised by this would be absurd – whether it is through advertising, drug reps, ghostwriting, hiding data, bribing people, or running educational programmes for doctors.” ― Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

The entire mess of questioning one vaccination – HPV, human papilloma virus vaccine known as Gardasil produced by Merck, and, Cervarix from GlaxoSmithKline’s labs – has opened up more than a Pandora’s Box for me. A viper pit I have been dumped into. I am facing a Medusa of sorts, a monster I already battled in other arenas, but I never thought I’d be up against it as a social worker for foster youth.

For four and a half decades, I have witnessed up close the Medusa of Disaster Capitalism and the Unfettered Military Industrial Complex as a reporter in the Southwest USA and throughout Mexico and Central America.

Today, that mythical Medusa’s many snakes as hair strands is most troublesome: I call it the Military-Surveillance-Fossil Fuel-Penal-Medicine-Financial-Education-Media-Pharma-Digital Industrial Complex. It’s turned into an all-encompassing monster.

That reality is a given for many of us who question authority, who see a world better served as non-hierarchical, non-patriarchal and earth/ecosystems/cultures focused. The reader can go to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or something like the Earth Charter and get a sense of how millions of us have not only a yearning for something more just than the current global financial Medusa running things, but we’ve worked for that social-earth-economic justice hard and long.

Fear of Advocating for Clients

One of the rights we hold as self-evident, supposedly held as a God-given American tenet, is the unrestricted ability for any person to find work to both help the person survive in this pay-as-we-go society and to, in some cases, help a person achieve some sort of self-worth and dignity.

The careers I have had include college instructor/faculty, newspaper journalist, community organizer and social worker. My work in the past seven years includes working with adults with severe developmental disabilities; with adults in a memory care facility as their educator and outings lead. I’ve worked to help adults in a sheltered workshop find competitive employment; I have worked with clients deemed homeless/addicts/felons to gain skills, services and employment on their road to recovery-reentry-resuscitating.

I was working a pretty cool job most recently as a social worker/case manager for an independent living program, a suite of services set up nationally for foster youth, 16 to 21 years of age, mainly to get them to finish high school and go onto college or trade school. My gifts as teacher, outdoor educator, world traveler, communicator, and creative soul aided me in making deep and profound connections to youth who have seen the underbelly of life and face many challenges tied to the disconnected nature of living sometimes in dozens of foster care homes. Exposure to drug use, pornography, drug dealing, violence, sexual assault and criminal acts are just some of the histories of these youth.

I worked hands on with youth one-on-one and in groups. I got to take them on outings like surfing in the Pacific and a four-day conference at a private university. I had some level of independence and developed great relationships with other professionals in state, county, city public sector jobs and with foster parents and the youth. The job also afforded me decent training in all sorts of areas, including trauma-informed care and motivational interviewing.

Sex Ed and Me

I came face-to-face, though, with the inner workings of Planned Parenthood, as in my first intersection with PP while training to be a facilitator for one five-hour curriculum attempting to get youth to understand the high risks associated with alcohol use and unprotected sex.

The specific training I had taken as part of my job description was focused on case managers becoming trainers, titled Sexual Health and Adolescent Risk Prevention (SHARP). My former employers, Lifeworks Northwest, a 46-year-old non-profit, receives thousands of dollars from Planned Parenthood each year to allow PP to utilize our caseloads, youth, 16 to 21, characterized as high risk for homelessness, dropping out of school, substance abuse, pregnancy and contracting an STI, sexually transmitted infection:

“The goal of the Healthy Youth Collaborative is to reach youth by bringing evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs to scale. To achieve this goal, Planned Parenthood implements Healthy Youth Collaborative programming within each community, in four different settings including schools (middle and high school), health centers, community-based organizations, and juvenile justice facilities. A curriculum has been chosen so that there is an appropriate evidence-based program for each of these settings.”

I’m all for protecting youth and having myriad of ways to incite responsibility through education and modeling. What I found from the training was a bizarrely out-of-touch with current youth culture Planned Parenthood. I found the insistence to follow their curriculum word for word both interfering and hobbling. I also found a lot of condescension, and what I have seen in my many years working in educational circles: both a dumb-downing and infantilizing of many important aspects of a training or course.

While I have always supported the mission to help youth not face unwanted pregnancies, to have strong information and tools tied to sexual health and sexuality, and a place to obtain services for either preventing or curing STI’s/STD’s, I have also worked on the frontlines in El Paso as a volunteer escort for anyone seeking services at that Planned Parenthood. Those Saturday episodes found me face-to-face with angry, picket-bearing extremists who wanted to harass the women we were escorting in for family planning services. I even facilitated media workshops to that same Planned Parenthood on how to handle rough and pervasive anti-Planned Parenthood characters like those in the 1980s and ‘90s making headlines not only in the El Paso Times where I also worked but Time Magazine and the NYT.

Questioning Authority

Ironic, now, that just one month ago, I was in a PP second training, this time at the Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, and I was summarily not only banned from finishing the two-day course, Fundamentals of Sex, but I was then put on administrative leave in Portland by my former employer and then fired ten days later. I’ve pretty much exhausted the scenario tied to that banishment and termination here at Hormones Matter and other venues in the blog sphere.

I had no ax to grind with Planned Parenthood concerning training us – case managers — on how to communicate sex ed to youth. I expected to get through 16 hours of training with flying colors and a three-hour road trip back to Portland.

That did not happen, and Planned Parenthood – four trainers and two supervisors – contacted my employer to not only ban me from the second day of training, but fraudulently stated that I was against Western medicine, was untrainable related to the subject matter, and was a disruption to the learning environment for the other 39 students.

There wasn’t even a kernel of truth to what they stated to my former employer on Oct. 15; however, during my termination meeting Oct. 26, the HR director stated that “the trainers with Planned Parenthood stated you voiced your disagreement with vaccines.” The only voicing I did was anonymously, on paper, about Gardasil. Not vaccines in general.

The relationship between non-profits working with vulnerable youth, including homeless youngsters, and Planned Parenthood is more than just cooperative or symbiotic. My case exposes the fact Planned Parenthood’s falsehoods concerning my participation at a training led directly to my termination.

While I am currently receiving unemployment benefits after the Oregon State adjudicator contacted both my former employer and myself, and here are the findings below, I am really vulnerable on the job market because of the short duration as a case manager (six months) with Lifeworks Northwest when I was really committed for years on this job. The first thing coming to mind for prospective employers is “why such a short tenure with your previous employer?”

You ARE allowed benefits on this claim . . . .
Findings: You were employed by Lifeworks NW until Oct. 26, 2017 when you were fired because you received too many complaints about being unprofessional, confrontational and argumentative. This was not a willful or wantonly negligent disregard of the employer’s interest because there was no policy or rule violation. You deny the accusations of being a disruption to a training that occurred on October 16, 2017. Employer failed to respond to additional attempts to retrieve information.
Legal Conclusion: You were fired but not for misconduct connected with work.

They Say Follow the Money – How about Follow the Compassion!

Writing these articles does bring things into perspective, but anyone with a decent amount of psychological grounding will note that this journalistic process also opens up repeatedly the ludicrousness and trauma tied to what happened to me – wrongful termination without any due process.

I’ve used up my three “free” psychologist visits through the company’s EAP, employee assistance program. I’ve also reached out to a national legal firm on the viability of pursuing a case against Lifeworks Northwest but specifically Planned Parenthood.

I am disenchanted with the characterizations of me as unprofessional, confrontational and argumentative, since I was one of three males at a training with 45 total people, and also, I am working in a field – social services – predominately staffed and managed by females.

Given that, though, I still am following the money:

The 2015-16 budget from Lifeworks Northwest shows some of the money trail, i.e. revenue –
SERVICES BY CLIENT — $24,280,894
PUBLIC GRANTS & CONTRACTS — $16,645,143
CONTRIBUTIONS — $830,512
OTHER REVENUE — $220,952
TOTAL –$41,977,501

The money coming from Planned Parenthood to my former employer — which is money Planned Parenthood receives in the form of federal grant money largely from the Health and Human Services adolescent division – is significant in that Lifeworks NW has dozens of programs, and the Independent Living Program is relatively small so any funding coming into that program is significant.

What’s troubling is that I broke no policy, did not act bizarrely or unprofessionally, and did not engage in argumentative or combative behavior at the Planned Parenthood training, as the Oregon Employment Department’s findings belay –

“This was not a willful or wantonly negligent disregard of the employer’s interest because there was no policy or rule violation.”

The precipitating factor for Planned Parenthood essentially informing my employer that I was not trainable and that I was incapable of imparting sound, evidence-based sex ed information to my clients, was a handwritten suggestion/inquiry solicited by the trainers (stated by them to stay anonymous) after each of the seven modules. One of my two notes was a deep skepticism about one of Planned Parenthood’s money makers – the HPV vaccine, manufactured as Gardasil by Merck. I imparted disappointment that Planned Parenthood trainers were not even aware of or concerned about the negative press around Gardasil.

I never mentioned any disregard for the sex ed training, nor did I state I would not allow my clients to pursue getting any contraceptive or vaccine.

It was clear that the training was all about Planned Parenthood’s word on everything or the highway.

I am not a big fan of any forced (or group-think) hyper rah-rah-rah of any organization, or what I am now calling the “ich liebe dich Planned Parenthood uber alles in der Welt … I love you Planned Parenthood above anything else in the world” syndrome.

Of note, in my six months working with 40 youth, I was asked more than just occasionally about the safety of IUDs, birth control pills, the transdermal patch, Depo-Provera and once, the Gardasil series of vaccines. I encouraged those youth to check out the Planned Parenthood site and to use Google to find out if there were any large forums commenting on those products so my youth would have more information to make an informed choice.

Planned Parenthood never gave me a chance to meet with the three trainers and two supervisors to discuss their concerns. And, after the banishment, my former employer never sought testimony from me concerning my beliefs about contraception and abortion, nor did they solicit comments from two fellow case managers who were at the training with me to determine my participation and commentary at the training.

If the reader looks at the $16.6 million in public grants and contracts the Lifeworks non-profit received last year, ipso facto this large Portland non-profit depends significantly on money coming from the state, county, and US taxpayer in the form of Planned Parenthood.

It’s All About Language, Narrative Framing, Intent

“What, really, is a word? In its written form, it’s a great many things. It is a symbol. A representation of individual phonics that, when assembled in such a sequence, produces a gestalt. Rearrange the letters corresponding to those sounds, and you’ve eliminated or transformed that symbol. A word is an idea. Not simply a representation of an idea, but an idea in itself. The idea that what we think can not only be thought, not only expressed verbally, but also textually, a physical marking of the presence of thought — the evidence of its spatial existence.” — Daniel Choudhury, What’s Your Word Worth?

Before I go further, a quick glossary of terms should be inserted to help the reader see the context from which I am writing this third part of a series I could thumbnail title as “ My Run-in with Gardasil, Planned Parenthood, and a Culture of No Questions Asked – A Firing Story!”

Sacrosanct – An adjective is defined as anything (principle, place or routine) regarded as too important or valuable to be interfered with.
Antivaxxer – A derogatory term used by industry to describe individuals who question vaccine safety or efficacy; typically parents of children injured by vaccines.
Planned Parenthood – A noun defined as a nonprofit organization that does research into and gives advice on contraception, family planning, and reproductive problems.
Big Pharma – A noun defined as large pharmaceutical companies (= companies producing medical drugs), especially when these are seen as having a powerful and bad influence.
Whistleblower – A noun defined as a person who tells someone in authority about something illegal that is happening, esp. in a business or government.

Of course, I could insert the Urban Dictionary’s definitions of these items, and I certainly could link profoundly to various narratives around the mission, vision, and history of Planned Parenthood, what I would call the good, the bad and the ugly of its roots in the 1920’s with Margaret Sanger, a slew of eugenicists, and its oddly racist backers of contraception and sterilization. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, and 21 years later changed its name to Planned Parenthood.

Note that I am now in dangerous territory for many readers – the sacrosanct right to seek contraceptive and abortion services. In some ways, I have crossed that line in the sand by criticizing that Sacred Cow in the minds of many, Planned Parenthood.

I am really just attacking the malfeasance and unethical behavior and then treatment of me as a human being in the context of a Planned Parenthood training. I didn’t even get out of the gate, so to speak, with an adult, robust, discussion about the HPV, cervical cancer, the vaccine and its risks.

Almost everything now that I written about Big Pharma-GSK-Merck-HPV Vaccine-Planned Parenthood came AFTER I was fired on the word of Planned Parenthood staff.

Like this doozy – the 2017 Lasker Awards (sort of dubbed the US Nobel Prize) was given to Planned Parenthood and the developers of the HPV vaccine September of this year:

The winners “are being honored for their work in basic and clinical medical research and in public service,” Claire Pomeroy, MD, president of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, said at a teleconference today.
Douglas R. Lowy, MD, and John T. Schiller, PhD, both from the National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland, won the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for a major advance that improves the lives of many thousands of people. Their research centers on the development of HPV vaccines that prevent cervical cancer and other tumors caused by HPVs.
Planned Parenthood won the Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award for providing vital health services and reproductive care to millions of women for more than 100 years.

The Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award comes with a $250,000 award for each winner. Planned Parenthood in 2012 received 45 percent of its revenues from government health services grants and reimbursements. Now that’s around 35 percent of their revenue stream. In addition, in 2012, 16 percent of revenues were tied to non-medical programs.

From 1939 to 1942 Margaret Sanger was part of the Birth Control Federation of America alongside Mary Lasker and Clarence Gamble in the Negro Project, an effort to deliver birth control to poor black people.

I know my research into Big Pharma’s duplicitous, double-dealing and dangerous schemes is not as risky as throwing down criticism of Planned Parenthood. At Hormones Matter, maybe the idea of questioning Gardasil and Cervarix or even the birth control pill, especially by a white male, also is not dangerous territory.

The reality of how suspect, dangerous and medically unnecessary the HPV vaccine is also puts me into a league of its own vis-à-vis the antivaxxer campaigners, a title I have never adopted or will adopt. I never expected this pebble into the pond – my superficial questioning a vaccine – to turn into a tsunami-like rippling effect in my life.

Vaccines, Science, Anti-Science, Marketing, Propaganda, Resistance to Business as Usual a la Big Pharma

Interestingly, during my research, I came across a story out this February about a meteorologist who questioned the safety of vaccine schedules and chemical ingredients being fired, and hit with the Scarlet Letter, A, as an Antivaxxer.

Did WGBH News hire a science reporter who doesn’t believe in science?
That’s the question being asked by some employees of the PBS affiliate after learning that Mish Michaels, a former meteorologist at WBZ-TV who has been outspoken in her controversial belief that vaccines cause autism, had been hired as the station’s new science reporter.
Among those who wondered whether Michaels was right for the job was Jim Braude, host of WGBH News’s “Greater Boston,” for which Michaels was supposed to report stories. We’re told that Braude this week raised his concerns with station bosses, including WGBH News GM Phil Redo and “Greater Boston” executive producer Bob Dumas, and they have since changed their minds.
“The decision was made that [Michaels] is not a good fit for ‘Greater Boston’ and she won’t be working there, Braude stated.

Most of the 240 comments on the Boston Globe website that carried the news were stinging like this one:

cra-cra-in-sherborn: 02/08/17
Vaccines work because of herd immunity. Everything has risks and benefits and with vaccines the benefit outweighs the risk. What gets me is the antivaxxies lost in the world of narcissistic oblivion who decide they don’t want to take the small risk of vaccinating their kids and mooch off the herd immunity that everyone else created by vaccinating their own kids. If everyone opted out we would all have measles mumps and small pox.
Vaccines should be required for school entry no exceptions. Or home school your kids.

or this one:

mauthedog: 02/09/17
Through work over the last thirty years I’ve made friends across the United States. A few are anti-vaxxers. They constantly share anti-vaxxer posts on Facebook. Over the last couple of years I’ve noted how they have started attacking the “herd” theory and even attacking flu shots.
Most of them are quite religious. Several are right-wing evangelical Christians. They are generally anti-science.
During a FB discussion, one wrote to me how I “chose Science over God.” I didn’t realize there was a choice.
You can’t reason with them. Facts don’t matter. They’ve told me—-Tests can be faked. The CDC is a profit center. It’s about money, not safety. The government is helping big pharma. The government is covering it up.
And so on.
I fear under the current administration, this quackery will grow worse.

Using one giant latex brush, then, by questioning the safety of Gardasil at a Planned Parenthood training, I am now being painted with that same broad stroke into the same corner as the anti-evolution, anti-science “quacks or loonies” or whatever pejorative is the flavor of the digital hour.

Talk of the herd effect is now parlayed into the “rule of the mob,” as everyone, including mainstream and progressive media, attack anyone who dares question Gardasil or the MMR — all the scientists and researchers making a connection with vaccinations like HPV to physical (and brain specific) injuries are vilified. Or the fact that Merck has paid out millions of dollars (and we don’t have all the dollars tied to really how much Merck is shelling out because of courts awarding damages are tied to non-disclosure provisos) gets swept under the rug as “nuisance lawsuits”?

Yet, the story of HPV vaccine and injuries and deaths keeps coming around: Japan pulls Gardasil off the shelves three years ago. A lawsuit, class action, followed this move:

Lawyer Masumi Minaguchi, a representative from the planned lawsuit’s defense team, told a news conference in Tokyo the victims will file the suit sometime after June against the central government, GlaxoSmithKlien PLC, the maker of Cervarix, and Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., the maker of Gardsil, at four district courts in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka.
“The victims wish to live a peaceful life and prevent further suffering by finding out the truth (about the vaccine side effects),” Minaguchi added.
She said the defense team will seek additional plaintiffs to join the lawsuit by holding seminars in April and May. Currently, 12 plaintiffs are taking part in the suit, according to Minaguchi.
Saitama Prefecture resident Nanami Sakai, who plans to be one of the plaintiffs, was one of four to attend the news conference. The 21-year-old, who was given Cervarix twice in 2011, said she did not receive information about the pros and cons of the vaccine before receiving the injections.
“I’d like to know why I was left scarred by the vaccine, why I was not able to receive proper treatment right away and why my situation was not adequately conveyed to the state,” Sakai said.
Sitting in a wheelchair, Sakai said she has numbness in the right side of her body, back and around her chest.

And what about in Colombia, and the injured, dead and lawsuits there tied to HPV vaccine?

Lloyd Phillips, an American researcher of infectious diseases and genetics, has studied the adverse effects of Gardasil for five years. His work has revealed how Gardasil works differently in different people. He has documented related and biologically plausible mechanisms of action which could cause the many serious and life-threatening side effects which are being reported by girls and young women around the world after receiving the HPV vaccine.
In Colombia we have a potential crisis of major proportions resulting from the use of Gardasil because it is “free and compulsory” by “Law of the Republic”. It is assumed that this HPV vaccine is effective when used to combat cervical cancer, which can be caused by human papilloma virus. However, this vaccine has been hotly debated internationally for allegedly being dangerous and ineffective. It is currently being administered in Colombia without obtaining informed consent from young girls and their parents as to the potential and unknown risks of use.

Is the Ending Full-Circle Back to Bad Pharma and Big Non-profits?

So where does the next installment — part four — go now after not getting to the two big definitions left in my glossary – Big Pharma and Whistleblower? There are literally thousands of documents out there from researchers and scientists and whistleblowers on just what is happening to the human population tied to the vaccine for HPV, let alone those other mandatory childhood vaccinations we are supposed to get for our children before they turn three.

Listening to hours of radio shows on the blog-sphere, and viewing hours of interviews and documentaries on the internet and Netflix, I may sound jaded or exhausted, but alas, I am not. The only way through this is to keep up some hope that change is possible, whether as a climate-environment activist or social worker. Writing is just one rung in the ladder helping me and I hope you, kind reader, get above the miasma and smoke and mirrors our Western For-Profit Medical Industrial Complex has deployed with their endless billions for lobbying and marketing and subterfuge and obfuscation.

Keep reading until Part Four comes out.

“No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.” — Thomas Browne
“Big Pharma needs sick people to prosper. Patients, not healthy people, are their customers. If everybody was cured of a particular illness or disease, pharmaceutical companies would lose 100% of their profits on the products they sell for that ailment. What all this means is because modern medicine is so heavily intertwined with the financial profits culture, it’s a sickness industry more than it is a health industry.” ― James Morcan, The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy

HPV Vaccine Debate — Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Gardasil Scandal Brewing in Colombia
Four Year Analysis of Adverse Reactions to Gardasil
Gardasil Syndrome
Clinical Trials
In The Know w/ Lloyd W. Phillips (he starts talking at 10:53 into the interview)
Vaccines/Gardasil

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From DES to the Pill: Are We Doomed to Repeat History?

by Mike Gaskins

Published on November 13, 2017

3263 views

“The doctor wouldn’t have given it to me if he thought it was dangerous, right?”

My wife asked this salient question as we discussed the pros and cons of The Pill. It sent us both into deep reflection. Everything we read said The Pill was dangerous, but the doctor had acted like they should come in a Pez dispenser. To this day, I’m not sure where the cognitive began and the dissonance ended.

The DES Debacle: Origins of Obstinance

Doctors are generally dogmatic, but their nearly universal laissez-faire attitude toward The Pill seems particularly paradoxical when you study the scope and seriousness of its side effects. How can doctors believe that The Pill is safe, when tomes of studies suggest otherwise? Research links The Pill to everything from breast cancer and strokes, to Crohn’s Disease and lupus. To understand where we are and how we got here, it’s important to study the journey that brought us here.

By 1970, the current dogma that ‘The Pill is safe’ was well rooted in the medical community. However, enough doctors expressed concerns that Senator Gaylord Nelson decided to hold Congressional Hearings on the matter. The big three networks covered the hearings extensively, which caused great anxiety among women taking The Pill — and even greater anxiety among pill proponents, who subsequently demanded more ‘pro-pill’ doctors be included.

Senator Nelson took umbrage with their complaints, noting that all but one of the previous doctors had actually been ‘pro-pill’ to some extent, but all had reservations about its complications. Nonetheless, many of the doctors in the second round of hearings seemed more decidedly ‘pro-pill,’ including Dr. Kenneth Ryan, who stated,

I know of no information that indicates that biological properties of the estrogens used in the contraceptive pill are any different than stilbesterol for which we have at least 30 years of clinical experience…(Competitive Problems in the Drug Industry, Ninety-First Congress, Second Session, Page 6541)

Very reassuring… Unless you were actually familiar with the 30-year history of stilbesterol, also known as diethylstilbestrol (DES). Sir Charles Dodds discovered DES in 1938, and rushed it to market in the public domain. The English doctor bypassed the patent process hoping it would discourage the Nazis from further tests on women prisoners in their development of ethinyl estradiol (Barbara Seaman, The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women; page 36).

From DES to the Pill

Despite his noble intentions, Dodds soon regretted the decision. Without a patent, drug companies around the globe were free to produce DES. He never expected that synthetic hormones would be given to healthy women, and was horrified that doctors were prescribing it as hormone therapy for natural menopause.

You Can’t Put the Hormones Back in the Tube

Even worse, Dodds soon learned that an American doctor named Karnaky had begun blazing a new trail – doling out DES to ‘prevent miscarriages’. Alarmed by the news, Dodds sent him a study he had personally performed, which showed that the drug actually caused miscarriages in animal subjects. It didn’t deter Dr. Karnaky or the many doctors who followed his lead. (Robert Meyers, D.E.S. The Bitter Pill; pp. 56-73)

Dodds began to feel like he was fighting a monster that he himself had unleashed. He was most concerned about how his discovery could affect certain cancers. He sent DES samples to the newly formed National Cancer Institute in the United States, and urged them to conduct tests and notify doctors.

Dodds wasn’t alone. The Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry warned,

…because the product is so potent and because the possibility of harm must be recognized, the Council is of the opinion that it should not be recognized for general use at the present time…and that its use by the general medical profession should not be undertaken until further studies have led to a better understanding of the functions of the drug. (Barbara Seaman, The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women; page 44)

The concerns sent murmurs through the medical community, and many doctors began experimenting with lower doses of DES. By 1940, the editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) felt compelled to add theirs to the litany of warnings:

“It would be unwise to consider that there is safety in using small doses of estrogens, since it is quite possible that the same harm may be obtained through the use of small doses of estrogen if they are maintained over a long period.” (JAMA, April 20, 1940)

In 1959, the FDA determined the link to side effects (including male breast growth) was sufficient to ban poultry farmers from using DES as a growth hormone. However, the widespread use of DES in humans continued. In fact, it had become standard medical practice by the time Dr. Ryan assured Congress that The Pill was just as safe as DES – showing how medical dogma often trumps scientific evidence.

The greater irony of Dr. Ryan’s statement materialized one year after his testimony, when researchers first linked a rare vaginal cancer to the daughters of women who received DES during pregnancy. The FDA reacted strongly, listing pregnancy as a contraindication for DES use.

Consumer Groups Take the Lead

You would expect this to be the beginning of the end for DES. Shockingly, the medical community responded with indifference, continuing to prescribe DES for a variety of ‘off label’ uses, including as a morning-after pill, to catalyze the onset of puberty, and the old faithful, hormone replacement therapy. (Robert Meyers, D.E.S. The Bitter Pill; page 185)

It took nearly a decade of passionate effort from consumer movements like DES Action to convince doctors to (mostly) abandon DES. Dozens of lawsuits were filed; some were settled; and some are still pending. There is evidence that the harmful consequences could now be affecting a third generation of DES victims.

The current Director of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the National Cancer Institute, Robert Hoover, M.D. oversees the DES Follow-Up Study to track the ongoing repercussions. With identifiable problems now affecting the grandchildren of women who took DES, the disaster hasn’t yet moved into the past tense of our nation’s history. Despite that, Dr. Hoover says:

There’s essentially a whole generation of medical students who don’t know the story. The story has such powerful lessons that I think that’s a tragedy…For about 20 years now, when I standardly ask in my general epidemiology lecture… how many of you have heard of DES, nobody raises their hand.

Sidney Wolfe, M.D., who headed up Ralph Nader’s Health Research Group offered this perspective,

DES is an excellent example of how drug companies behave, how they take advantage of the ways doctors act, and how they make millions of dollars by ignoring evidence of a drug’s harmfulness, by failing to get evidence that it is effective, and then by marketing a product that plays on fears and misconception. (Robert Meyers, D.E.S. The Bitter Pill; page 208).

In just 20 years, the American Medical Association moved from “It would be unwise to consider that there is safety in using small doses of estrogens…” to embracing the release of insufficiently tested hormones as birth control for millions of women. I’m leery of trusting a dogma founded on such an erratically moving target. In their defense, the dogma really hasn’t moved much in the decades since.

Today, the medical community assures us The Pill is the most researched drug ever. Sorry doc, that reassurance just doesn’t ring true. At this point, it feels more like a phrase learned by rote than a statement based on any kind of empirical evidence. Unfortunately, it’s not the only hollow mantra that should raise a red flag when it comes to hormonal contraceptives. I will discuss how the medical community responds to scientific studies in my next post, The Spin Doctor’s Prescription for Birth Control.

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This article was published originally on Hormones Matter on August 31, 2016.

Birth Control Pill and Your Fertility

by Sarah Clark

Published on May 10, 2017

2009 views

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 be restored! Almost like magic?

She may receive a very minimal amount of information about the potential risks of the pill and led to believe that the benefits far outweigh the risks.

These risks include blood clots, higher blood pressure, gall bladder disease, infertility, increased risk of cervical and breast cancer.

But, hey this young girl is not worried about all these diseases, let alone her fertility, she simply wants to regulate her cycle and feel and look good!

Fast forward 10-15 years later and she now wants to have a baby.

She decides to come off the pill and while some women are able to have regular menstrual cycles relatively quickly, for others it is simply not the case.

They struggle with the same health issues they had before they went on the pill and in many cases these symptoms are now worse.

Achieving Fertility After Hormonal Birth Control

Birth Control Impacts Nutrient Levels

There are studies that indicate the birth control pill can decrease certain nutrients in the body. The pill is found to lower vitamin B6, B12, B2 levels, including folate, vitamin C, copper, magnesium, selenium and zinc.

Plus due to the depletion of our soil and consumption of the standard western diet (which includes a heavy reliance on processed foods) our nutrient levels can already be low.

All of these nutrients play a vital role in the menstrual cycle and can contribute to irregular periods, no periods (amenorrhea), no ovulation, alternating cycle length or bleeding for long or short length of time. They also play a role in fertility and conception.

How Do We Restore Nutrient Levels?

The best suggestion is to eat a nutrient dense diet with targeted supplementation when needed! I always recommend switching to the fertility diet! It’s low in inflammatory foods and high in nutrient dense foods, which help prepare your body for baby.

It’s best to take a professional grade prenatal that has methylated folate and not folic acid. Research indicates that as much as half the population may have impaired methylation via the MTHFR gene and need a more bioavailable form. Always opt for folate with “5-methyltetrahydrofolate” (5-MTHF)
Add in foods rich in B vitamins such as dark leafy greens, poultry, shellfish and eggs
Consume foods with vitamin C such as dark leafy greens, citrus fruits and berries (plus they are great for your immune system!)
Don’t forget to have foods that are high in magnesium such as brazil nuts, poultry, eggs and grass fed meats
Make the switch to organic produce and grass fed, wild caught, antibiotic free meats and fish. If the cost is prohibitive opt for the dirty dozen or clean fifteen.

The Pill Disrupts Your Gut Flora

We are just beginning to understand the role of the microbiome and our health.

Essentially when we come out of our mother’s womb our microbiome starts to take shape. The first microbes are acquired through the vaginal canal and breast milk contains beneficial bacteria too. So if you were born via C-section or bottle-fed you are slightly behind from the beginning.

The microbiome represents the number of microorganisms and their collective genetic material present in the human body or environment. The Human Microbiome Project is developing research resources to enable study of the microbial communities that live in our body and the role they play in human health.

There are huge benefits to having a healthy microbiome, from improved skin health, joint health, mood issues, digestive health and autoimmune disease.

However, stress, antibiotics, poor diet and chronic medications like the pill can negatively alter the microbiome, which can potentially impact your fertility.

How Do I Restore My Microbiome?

Consume a good quality probiotic.
Consume more probiotic rich foods such as probiotic drinks, bone broth, kombucha, sauerkraut and kimchi which can all help to restore the beneficial gut bacteria
Add more living plants into your diet, such as cilantro, parsley, basil and lemon balm

What to Do Next?

It may take some time to restore your cycle after taking oral contraceptives, or your cycles may be restored right after stopping the pill.

Since I deal exclusively with women trying to conceive I typically find that symptoms such as irregular periods, no periods, heavy periods and painful periods are quite common. And yes, many of these women have recently come off the birth control pill.

It’s the classic chicken or the egg. For many women they were prescribed the birth control pill because of symptoms with their menstrual cycle. When they come off the pill these issues are typically still present. Others find that they now have other health issues and their menstrual cycle is disrupted after coming off the pill.

Preconception health is so important, but many women rush right into trying to have baby without fully preparing their body for pregnancy.

Remember it only takes 90 days for the egg to renew itself and the life cycle of the sperm is 70-80 days, so in a very short period of time you can dramatically improve your health and impact the health of your future child. If you have been on the pill for any substantial amount of time, it may take longer to restore your health. Do not worry, however, it can be done.

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Do We Really Understand Oral Contraceptives?

by Kim Elizabeth Strifert, MA

Published on April 26, 2017

3807 views

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 critical information about the pill, but the support systems women depend on for advice and help with decision-making also seem to lack information about the pill.

All health choices are complex and influenced by multiple variables that all interact. There are multiple levels, underlying determinants of health behaviors, which are relevant for understanding why oral contraceptives are still the primary method of choice in the United States. The following influencing factors are not exhaustive, but do shed light on why pill use is so prevalent in the U.S. Simply put, we don’t know better.

Personal Factors Influencing Decision-Making about Oral Contraceptives

Limited options for family planning. Effective contraception is thought to have a positive effect on subsequent outcomes related to income, family stability, mental health, happiness, and the well-being of the children. Contemporary women want to be in control of their reproductive lives but unfortunately, there are few options available to them. Eighty two percent of sexually active women in the U.S. plan their families by using oral contraceptives.

Lack of knowledge about oral contraceptives safety and efficacy. U.S. women use oral contraceptives primarily because they are marketed as effective in preventing pregnancy and relatively safe for them to take. However, according to a 2013 survey conducted by the American College of Nurse Midwives (ACDM), the majority of U.S. women are misinformed about birth control’s effectiveness. Just one in five women were able to correctly identify the most effective form of contraception that is currently available. Most said they didn’t feel well-informed about contraception in general or about different birth control options. Seventy percent said they were very knowledgeable about abstinence, while less than 50% said the same for oral contraceptives. Only 21% said they knew a lot about the IUD. Interestingly, the contraceptive methods that the participants ranked lower, the IUD and the implant, are much more effective because they are less prone to user error such as forgotten pills. This study also found that women who use an IUD are 20 times less likely to accidentally get pregnant than the women who use the pill. And yet, less than 6% of women in the U.S. use the IUD.

If we, as women are misinformed or lack knowledge of the efficacy of the pill, do we understand the risks involved with taking the pill? Can we understand the adverse effect of endocrine disrupting compounds, the long term consequences? I doubt it. It seems that the safety of the pill has entered into the realm of conventional wisdom and that the status quo goes unchallenged.

Presumed ease and self-efficacy. In addition to safety and efficacy, the pill is said to be easy to use and convenient leading women to believe that they will be able to follow the pill regimen. In reality, some women fall short of their perceived ability to follow the pill regimen. Even though birth control pills are 99 percent effective when taken correctly, many women don’t always take them exactly as directed. The CDC estimates that about 9% of the women who use the pill end up accidentally getting pregnant. Women may over estimate their ability to follow through with the attentiveness required. And, those that have low confidence in their ability to use the method are more likely to misuse or discontinue use. So, not only are there demonstrated knowledge gaps about efficacy, there may also be problems with self-efficacy and proper adherence to taking the pill regularly.

At the intrapersonal level, U.S. women are influenced by the desire to prevent pregnancy in an easy, safe, effective manner. However, we may elect to use oral contraceptives even though we do not adequately understand how they work or understand the importance of adherence to a strict daily dosing regimen. We may also select oral contraceptives even though they are not the most effective choice of birth control available for us. And, there are knowledge gaps which may lead us to overestimate the effectiveness and safety of oral contraceptives.

Contraception Choices Influenced by Family and Friends

Parents, peers and partners rely on personal beliefs and inadequate knowledge. Parents are encouraged to be the primary sex educators of their children, but once again, scientists have discovered that significant numbers of parents have misunderstandings about all forms of contraception. It is no surprise that scientists conclude that parents should be provided with medically accurate information rather than relying upon their partial knowledge and beliefs about contraception. Women of all ages may at times rely on parental knowledge that is incomplete or inaccurate.

Research confirms that peers exert a significant influence on both sexual activity and contraceptive use. Women of all ages may turn to the advice and counsel of their friends. They may be persuaded to choose the same option as recommended by their friends, whether or not the friend is knowledgeable about contraception.

Studies support the notion that a woman’s partner may have major influence on use or non-use of a contraceptive method. However, couples may often disagree on different aspects of contraceptive choice and practice due to differences in fertility values, or misconceptions about attitudes, and intentions of the other spouse. Furthermore, the nature and the quality of the relationship between the partners is a major factor in contraceptive choice and use. Research suggests that contraceptive use is influenced by peers, and that a desire to please one’s sexual partner appears to outweigh advice provided by a close friend.

Healthcare providers bias toward oral contraceptives. The prevailing widespread acceptance and promotion of oral contraceptives shows that U.S. physicians believe that the pill is safe, effective, and that it is good for women. However, doctors and nurses may not always be the most reliable sources of information. According to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, physicians bias their responses in favor of methods doctors most frequently prescribe. And, they tend to provide lower-than-best failure rates for oral contraceptives and IUDs, higher-than-typical failure rates for condoms, and standard rates for foam and diaphragms. Despite their safety, methods like condoms, spermicides, and the withdrawal method, earn disproportionately low ratings by doctor’s offices and clinics.

Some argue that natural family planning is the least expensive and safest of all contraceptive methods. However, it is often omitted as an effective and valid method for preventing pregnancy. Planned Parenthood reports providing fertility awareness-based methods to 0.2% of clients seeking contraceptives, whereas hormonal methods were provided to 64%.

It turns out that health care providers may also have some knowledge gaps. In 2010, a study was conducted to assess provider knowledge about contraception. Data collected from health care providers, physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants showed a lack of consistent and accurate knowledge about contraception among providers. This lack of knowledge about contraception among providers has the potential to significantly affect providers’ ability to offer quality contraceptive care.

It isn’t surprising then that medical students may also need to improve their knowledge of contraception. Studies suggest that sexual beliefs and mores of students in medical professions might influence their ability to care for patients’ contraception concerns. A 2010 study examined contraceptive usage patterns in North American medical students. The study showed substantial differences in contraceptive use based on demographics, even at the highest education levels. And, that students who responded that they were comfortable discussing sexual issues with patients were more likely to use highly effective contraceptive methods, like the pill, themselves. In conclusion, scientists found that the personal contraception choices of medical students might influence their ability to correctly express contraception information to their patients. In addition, they reported that medical students might personally benefit from improved knowledge of effective contraceptive practices.

A recent study of internal medicine resident and faculty providers examined the occurrence of contraceptive counseling provided to women of reproductive-age during a prevention-focused visit. Even though 95% of the medicine faculty and residents agreed that contraceptive counseling is essential, only 25% of them reported providing contraceptive counseling routinely or more than 80% of the time to reproductive-age women during a prevention-focused visit. The reason for this? Inadequate knowledge of contraceptive methods was an obstacle to providing contraceptive counseling. This was reported by more than 70% of providers.

At the interpersonal level, parents, peers, partners, and healthcare providers may or may not provide accurate information to women who seek their counsel in choosing a contraceptive. Knowledge gaps are prevalent throughout the interpersonal level of influence.

Organizational and Institutional Biases that Influence Contraceptive Choices

Lack of comprehensive sex education contributes to misunderstanding contraception. Lack of contraceptive knowledge is due in part to the absence of providing comprehensive reproductive health and sexuality courses in U.S. schools. Since the 1980’s federal funding has focused on abstinence-only programs and consequently, the vast majority of children, young and middle-aged adults have not received comprehensive sex education. Evidence-based educational materials, programs, and policies are not commonly available. Although there is lack of evidence that abstinence-only education reduces the risks for pregnancy, these are the programs that continue to receive government funding and continue to be taught in the U.S. Therefore, people in the U.S. rely on family, friends, and healthcare providers for information about contraception. As pointed out, the people on whom they rely may lack medically accurate information regarding contraception.

Religious and cultural factors influence contraception. Religious and cultural influences may influence acceptance and choice of contraception. Different religions may interpret religious teachings on this subject in disparate ways, and people may choose to accept or ignore various religious teachings.

Invested advocates push oral contraceptive use. Planned Parenthood has positioned itself as the go-to organization for women’s sexual and reproductive health nationwide. Planned Parenthood has an international presence and a user-friendly, comprehensive web-site. Any mid-sized city will have a well-publicized Planned Parenthood clinic that carries national credibility. It has a research affiliate, the Guttmacher Institute, which also has a significant web presence. The mainstream credibility of Planned Parenthood is enhanced by the organization’s government support. And, their services are offered free or at a low price. Whether or not a woman has had a personal experience with Planned Parenthood, the existence and persistence of this organization has influenced the health behavior choices of most women in the U.S. And, Planned Parenthood has been heavily invested in the pill since its founding mothers first encouraged the development of oral contraceptives.

Pharmaceuticals companies promote oral contraceptives as lifestyle drugs. Women may not know that most of today’s methods of contraception, including hormonal methods, depend on mechanisms of action discovered before 1960 and on delivery methods developed during the 1960’s and early 1970’s. The latest methods have for the most part been adaptations of existing technologies that offer variations on hormone dosages and delivery methods, rather than true technological breakthroughs. It should be pointed out that these advances have largely usurped efforts to discover new contraceptive approaches.

In general, new birth control drug discovery and development is currently led by the private and not-for-profit sectors, but big pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, for the most part, have deserted the field of contraceptive research and development. Instead of developing new technologies, pharmaceutical companies are marketing existing oral contraceptives in new and creative ways. Currently, they are pushing the pill as a lifestyle drug through media campaigns.

The trend among brands of the pill is marketing them as lifestyle drugs. Catchy phrases are used to convey the idea of female empowerment and to convince women to choose one oral contraceptive over another. Slogans range from taking control over one’s period, to “we’re not gonna take it,” which suggests to women that they no longer need to deal with PMS and period related symptoms. Minimizing discomfort is a product highlight. The notion is, “Why accept an uncomfortable situation when this new pill can fix it.” Some slogans suggest that the pill allows a woman to express herself and her individuality. The commercials steer clear of the true function of birth control pills and instead try to control thoughts, behaviors, and, of course, spending habits. Once again, misinformation about the pill is being conveyed and might influence women to choose the pill.

At the organizational level, women of all ages are at risk for receiving incomplete or misinformation about oral contraceptives. We do not receive comprehensive sex education in U.S. schools and so, we do not receive adequate, medically reliable information about contraception. We may have to rely on biased information from organizations who are heavily invested in the use of the pill. Certainly, the lack of new methods provided by pharmaceutical companies limit our choices in birth control. In addition, pharmaceutical companies manipulate us to use the pill through calculated marketing schemes, which misrepresent the pill and mislead us.

Societal Bias Towards Oral Contraceptive Use

Long term consequences of oral contraceptive use have not been adequately studied. As pointed out earlier, most of the research done on the pill was done before 1988, almost thirty years ago, when contraceptive research fell from the list of the top 35 medical research interests. Biomedical science moved on to more pressing research topics leaving women with limited contraceptive options.

I am astonished at the lack of research on the neurodevelopmental effects of the pill on offspring. When I began my research I couldn’t find anything on Pubmed and my search of the Annual Reviews journal database of over 30,000 biomedical papers revealed nothing. I could not find research investigating a link between oral contraceptive use and the increase in prevalence of autism spectrum disorders. I could find extensive research about the efficacy of oral contraceptives and about the effects of use on women, but almost nil on the neurodevelopmental effects of use on the offspring of those that use it.

The question about the effects of maternal use of oral contraceptives on progeny was first raised in the appendix of the 1966 FDA report on oral contraceptives. Dr. Roy Hertz, a widely acclaimed physician scientist, outlined the potential effects of oral contraceptives on germ cells. In striking terms he wrote,

“An unequivocal abnormality produced by estrogen-progestogen is the suppression of ovulation itself. It is only reasonable to consider the ultimate fate of the ovum that would have been normally released from the ovary. We do not know whether the ovum dies or survives. If it survives, is it altered in any way?”

Hertz suggested that statistical and clinical considerations indicated that for an adequate analysis of this problem a population of 100,000 children would be required. Still he warned that, “The suppression of ovulation for a four year period may be reflected in the quality of the ova subsequently released even from an ovary in which the histological findings appear to be normal”. The studies that Hertz recommended have not been done.

ACOG endorses oral contraceptives based on conventional wisdom. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) is a nonprofit organization of women’s health care physicians advocating highest standards of practice, continuing member education and public awareness of women’s health issues. ACOG maintains that oral contraceptives are a safe method to avoid an unwanted pregnancy and that the overall risks of taking oral contraceptives are much less than the risks of pregnancy.

ACOG also advises that oral contraceptives are safe for teenagers and that the benefits associated with the use of oral contraceptives outweigh the risks, particularly those of pregnancy. It seems unconscionable to introduce an endocrine disrupting agent to a developing teenager. While teen safety is of the utmost importance, concern for their own reproductive health and for their future children should be taken into consideration. If taking the pill begins in the teen years, ovum could be exposed to the endocrine disrupting compounds found in the pill for decades. The possible epigenetic repercussions are striking.

ACOG doctors believe that oral contraceptives are safe enough that women should be able to buy birth control pills over-the-counter (OTC) at pharmacies without a prescription. ACOG recognizes that selling OTC birth control pills comes with risks, but it reasons that like any drug, the pill has potential side effects, and might be misused or used by women who should not take the drug. However, ACOG concludes that these concerns are outweighed by the benefits. ACOG reports that increasing women’s access to birth control in this way could reduce the rate of unplanned pregnancies in the United States even though the rate has not changed in the last 20 years. How can ACOG conclude that after 20 years of available birth control, continued oral contraceptive use will change the rate of unplanned pregnancies?

ACOG contends that women could use OTC oral contraceptives safely because of the rarity of venous thromboembolism (VTE) and because their data support women’s ability to self-screen for possible contraindications. This is problematic based on findings that show so many existing knowledge gaps about contraception in general and the pill in particular. Are women qualified to ascertain contraindications? And, with the recent information that only 30% of ACOG guidelines are based on research, are women to accept a recommendation that is based on personal bias, opinion and conventional wisdom? At present it is hard to argue who is better qualified to ascertain risk and contraindications, physicians or women. It appears that there is a systemic lack of accurate knowledge and the knowledge that is available may be biased and/or unreliable.

If given the opportunity to purchase oral contraceptives over-the-counter, would women be more or less likely to investigate the risks? In some countries where medications are available without prescriptions, the medication use tends to go down. This may be due to consumers evaluating the risks more deeply.

Drug labels lack important information about side-effects of oral contraceptives. Americans may assume that the text in a drug’s packaging represents the collective scientific knowledge about that medication, allowing doctors and patients to make informed health care decisions. In fact, negotiations between pharmaceutical companies and the FDA over warning labels are common during the drug approval process, with drug makers endeavoring to cherry-pick what is included in order to present their products in the best possible light. The FDA relies on the manufacturers to provide clinical trial results and other data the agency uses to evaluate their drugs and devices, and 70 % of the funds for FDA reviews comes directly from the industry through user fees. So, do the labels for oral contraceptives identify risk to the offspring? No, risk to offspring is not on the labels. Nor are many other side-effect listed.

FDA continues to turn a blind eye regarding long term consequences. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or USFDA) is a federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. It is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the regulation and supervision.

Of importance, is that the pill was approved before the FDA had rigorous requirements and prior to the passage of the 1962 Drug Amendments that ensured a far more regulatory environment for any drug that could be used by women of childbearing years. In addition, the main concern was for the efficacy of the drug in light of the risk of pregnancy for women. The safety requirement was met because the pill was very effective in preventing pregnancy. At the time of approval, there was no consideration at all for the possible adverse effects that might develop in the offspring of women who used the pill.

When the pill was approved, the FDA did not anticipate the danger of thromboembolism. It took a decade after the approval of the pill to establish a link between the two. Recall that the FDA approved the Yasmin line in 2006 and as of January 2012 there were 10,000 lawsuits against Bayer by women who suffered blood clots. Sadly, independent investigation revealed that three of the advisors on the FDA panel had research or financial ties to Bayer and a fourth was connected to marketing the generic version. After investigation (2012), the FDA concluded that Yasmin, YAZ, Safyral, and Beyaz, as well as the other generic birth control pills containing drospirenone (DRSP), may be associated with a higher risk for blood clots than those pills with other progestins, such as levonorgestrel.

And, who can forget the adverse effects of another endocrine disruptor called Diethylstilbestrol (DES)? It was prescribed to pregnant women between 1940 and 1971 to prevent miscarriage, premature labor, and related complications of pregnancy. DES use declined after studies in the 1950’s showed that it was not effective in preventing these prenatal problems. In 1971, researchers linked prenatal DES exposure to a type of cancer of the cervix and vagina called clear cell adenocarcinoma and then the FDA notified physicians that DES should not be prescribed to pregnant women. This was thirty years after it had been prescribed by physicians. And, DES use does have adverse transgenerational effects.

How are we to trust the FDA to protect us from the adverse effects of drugs like the pill when history shows that the FDA is unable or unwilling to do just that? The buck does stop with the FDA. They should be held accountable.

Similar to the observations in the other circles of influence, societal influences about the pill may be biased and knowledge gaps exist. Information regarding the pill may be based on conventional wisdom. It may be based on limited truth. It most certainly is based on the women using it and not on the safety of the children of those women who use it.

The Bottom Line on the Ubiquitous Use of Oral Contraceptives in the U.S.

The bottom line is that women take the pill because it is status quo. We do not know better or feel that we have any better options. The health system on all levels has failed us. It has failed to provide us with the accurate medical information that would steer us clearly away from taking endocrine disrupting compounds that have not been adequately studied for long term health consequences. It has failed to provide us with adequate analysis of the effects of these compounds on our children. It has failed to provide new technologies and new options. Instead it has repackaged and resold women an old fix to an age old dilemma that should be shared by both men and women.

I often wonder what would have happened if women and midwives had continued to develop their own solutions, yes, they had them, before the late nineteenth century policies were implemented to limit their access to birth control and abortion. Contraception was deemed immoral, a vice, and the distribution of the contraceptive devices that women had been using effectively was forbidden. These are the same policies that were promoted by the emerging medical profession of obstetricians, who sought to take control of the process of pregnancy and child birth, which previously had been the responsibility of mid-wives and lay healers. What would have happened if women had remained in control of developing contraceptives? Would we have done a better job of providing safer contraception? We will never know. Instead we have been subjected to uncontrolled human clinical experimentation on an unprecedented scale.

We Need Your Help

Hormones Matter needs funding now. Our research funding was cut recently and because of our commitment to independent health research and journalism unbiased by commercial interests we allow minimal advertising on the site. That means all funding must come from you, our readers. Don’t let Hormones Matter die.

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Photo by Sharon Waldron on Unsplash.

This article was published originally on Hormones Matter on May 14, 2015.

References

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Dempsey AR, Johnson SS, Westhoff CL. (2011) Predicting oral contraceptive continuation using the transtheoretical model of health behavior change. Perspect Sex Reprod Health. 2011 Mar;43(1):23-9. doi: 10.1363/4302311. Epub 2010 Dec 22.
Rocca C, Harper C. Do racial and ethnic differences in contraceptive attitudes and knowledge explain disparities in method use? Persect Sex Reprod Health. 2012;44930:150-158
Shih G, Vittinghoff E, Steinauer J, and Dehlendorf C. Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Contraceptive Method Choice in California DOI:10.1363/4317311
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Dehlendorf C, et.al. 2013 Racial/ethnic disparities in contraceptive use: variation by age and women’s reproductive experiences. Presented in poster format at the annual North American Forum on Family Planning of the Society of Family Planning, Seattle, WA, Oct. 6-7, 2013.
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Frost JJ, Darroch JE. (2008) Factors associated with contraceptive choice and inconsistent method use, United States, 2004. Perspect Sex Reprod Health. 2008 Jun;40(2):94-104. doi: 10.1363/4009408.
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Severy LJ, Silver SE. Two reasonable people: Joint decision-making in contraceptive choice and use. In Advances in Population Psychosocial Perspectives. Vol. 1. Severy LJ, ed. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers; 1993.
Whitley B Jr, Hern AL. (1991) Perceptions of vulnerability to pregnancy and the use of effective contraception. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 1991;17:104–110.
T J Trussell, R Faden, and R A Hatcher. Efficacy information in contraceptive counseling: those little white lies. American Journal of Public Health August 1976: Vol. 66, No. 8, pp. 761-767.
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Dehlendorf C, Levy K, Ruskin R, Steinauer J. (2010) Health care providers’ knowledge about contraceptive evidence: a barrier to quality family planning care? Contraception. 2010 Apr;81(4):292-8. doi: 10.1016/j.contraception.2009.11.006. Epub 2009 Dec 11.
Rowen TS, et.al. (2010) Contraceptive usage patterns in North American medical students Published Online: November 15, 2010 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.contraception.2010.09.011
Dirksen RR, Shulman B, Teal SB, Huebschmann AG. (2014) Contraceptive counseling by general internal medicine faculty and residents. J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2014 Aug;23(8):707-13. doi: 10.1089/jwh.2013.4567. Epub 2014 Apr 25
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Marks, Lara (2001). Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08943-0.]

A Joint Problem: Rheumatoid Arthritis and Hormonal Birth Control

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on November 17, 2016

23860 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

7869 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.

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References

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Rheumatoid Arthritis on the Rise

Is Rheumatoid Arthritis Connected to Hormonal Contraceptives or Not?

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

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Dry Eye

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