Myths about Contraceptives

Last Thursday I had some time to spare before this talk about contraceptives so I was trying on a dress in the changeroom. I looked up and noticed that my glasses were crooked. This always drives me nuts, so I went to try to adjust them and SNAP. Fuck. I think I might have said that out loud. The glasses, which are the rimless kind, had snapped right through the lens, hanging on by a plastic thread. I didn't buy the dress.

The point is, that this lecture was so well presented and interesting that I forgot all about this momentous event that had happened only moments before and even stayed around for a few minutes afterward to talk to the speaker.

Wikipedia

Amy Sedgwick will tell you that it is from her own bad experience with popular birth control that lead her to where she is today, as one of the sisters of the Red Tent Sisters (see them here). Named after the book the Red Tent by Anita Diamant (an excellent read, I recommend it), this is one of the few, if not only, places that offer non-religious affiliated support in Fertility Awareness in Toronto as an alternative to hormonal birth control, more on that later.

In a small, warm room in the Women's Healthy Environments Network's floor of the Centre for Social Innovation, about two dozen women filed in, sneaking through the café as the doors had been locked out front by mistake.

Myth #1: There are no serious health risks
Birth control places you at higher risk for migraines and, likely related, stroke. Add to that if you are a smoker or have a family history of stroke and the risks are quite significant. For cancer risk, it varies in protecting or contributing depending on the study and the combination of hormones. Sedgwick recommended to consider your family risk and then look up one that is most suited to that risk. Birth control is also known to cause an increase in mood disorders, particularly depression and hindered libido.

(a) Normal, (b) With birth control
Green (LH), Yellow (LH),
Blue (Estrogen), Red (progesterone)

Myth #2: It helps regulate cycles
Technically, a birth control cycle is not really a cycle at all. It keeps your body stagnating at one level of hormone for 3 weeks and then allows for a withdrawal bleed for the 4th week (more on how contraceptives work here). The withdrawal bleed is hardly even necessary, but when marketing the product, it was found that women responded better to this false bleed as confirmation that they were not pregnant and also mistook this for a sign of their continued fertility.

Sedgwick also cautions on the use to regulate cycle because it is often the rationale for putting very young women on birth control before their bodies have even begun to regulate their own cycle. It also, of course, ignores the underlying problem and it is likely that, when taken off the birth control, the problem will persist, causing undue distress.

Myth #3: It has no environmental impact
In order to reach the peak amounts of birth control in the blood stream to prevent ovulation, more than normal amounts of the medication must be taken, particularly because the oral route is not entirely efficient at absorbing the medication. So where does the excess go? You either excrete it through your feces or pee it all out. As one of the most widely prescribed medications, it flows in tremendous quantities back out into our water supply, into our ecosystems. The feminization of fish populations is only the beginning of this slippery slope of environmental pollution.

Sedgwick also points us toward thinking about the ethics of pharmaceutical companies, at their abuses of the environment but also in the ways they tailor their ads to feed misconceptions to the public about the positive aspects of pharmaceuticals and birth control.

Myth #4 and #5: Only form of reversible birth control and has no effect on future fertility

Sedgwick reminds us that it takes on average 9 months to regain fertility after cessation of the birth control pill, heavily based on length of time of use and time of initiation (e.g. how young). The intrauterine device (IUD) is one method, which can be found both with or without hormones. She does warn though, that it places the uterus in a permanent state of inflammation and has the risk of puncturing the uterus wall, and considers that this may cause some issues. Her personal favourite, and a big reason she got into this business, is Fertility Awareness. This is basically getting to know your own body's day to day signs of fertility (mucous consistency, body temperature). Essentially, an egg is only fertile for 15 to 24 hours and add to that, the lifespan of a sperm, 3 to 5 days, you're only able to get pregnant in a period less than a week. It starts to seem absurd then, to be taking hormones daily for something that is so contained to a certain time. And let's not forget that birth control does not protect against everything.

I think that birth control has transformed the lives of women but, and this seems to be what Sedgwick was getting at as well, we need to move on to better things now. Young girls need to be encouraged to get to know their own bodies, whether or not they are having sex. The information that they get out of Fertility Awareness also serves as an indicator of general health, such as nutrition or pinning down food allergies and intolerances.