Should Women Be On The Pill?

The pill is the preferred contraception method of American women. Almost 80 percent of women have used birth control pills or oral contraceptives at some point in their lives since the FDA approved the pill for use in 1960. According to the CDC, 11.6 million women were on the pill by 2002.

Most birth control pills contain the hormones estrogen and progesterone and work by inhibiting ovulation and thickening the mucus around the cervix to make it difficult for the sperm to enter the uterus.

Oral contraceptives, if taken correctly, have a very high success rate. Many doctors recommend the pill because studies show that it may ease PMS symptoms and decrease the risk of ovarian and uterine cancers. However, it does have negative side effects. Many women have complained of breast tenderness, irregular bleeding or spotting, migraines and nausea, mood swings, weight gain and yeast overgrowth. And these are just the immediate and milder reactions. The serious adverse effects include:

• An increase in the risk of breast, cervical and liver cancers
• Fatal blood clots and subsequent stroke
• Heart disease from plaque artery buildups
• Impaired muscle gains in young women
• Long-term Sexual Dysfunction
• Thinner Bones

Smokers, especially those over the age of 35, are particularly at risk from blood clot and stroke.

The risks of using a birth control pill are clearly greater than the benefits it provides.

Dr. Mercola believes that the pill is rarely necessary or beneficial because there are other safer options.

If you’re using birth control pills for reasons other than birth control, such as to regulate your menstrual cycles or treat irregular bleeding, you’re simply getting a quick fix from a potentially dangerous drug and are not actually treating your underlying dysfunction.

What you should do is to balance your adrenal glands because cortisol levels modulate and control the female hormones, especially progesterone. The pill only acts as a synthetic hormone and causes its own side effects as your body continues to remain in an unhealthy state.

And for those of you using the pill to prevent pregnancy, there are several effective natural birth control options available for you.

Natural Birth Control: Barrier Method Vs Natural Family Planning

Natural birth control can be achieved in two ways: barrier methods and natural family planning methods.

The barrier method involves the use of condoms (both male and female), cervical cap and diaphragm. Unlike the pill, barrier methods protect you against STDs (sexually transmitted diseases).

Many people are familiar with barrier methods but know little or nothing about natural family planning. Natural family planning can be very effective but it is not foolproof, especially when you’re still learning how to track and notice the subtle signs of fertility and ovulation.

Here are some of the most popular natural family planning methods:

Calendar Method – Abstaining from sex during the week when you’re ovulating. This works best if you have a very regular menstrual cycle. However, the calendar method doesn’t work very well for couples who use it by itself (about 75 percent), but it can be effective when combined with the two other methods mentioned below.
Temperature Method – Used to determine the day of ovulation so that sexual intercourse can be avoided before and after. It involves taking your basal body temperature (your temperature upon waking up) each morning with an accurate “basal” thermometer, and noting the rise in temperature that occurs after you ovulate. The temperature method is unreliable by itself because your body temperature changes if you get sick or lack sleep, but when combined with the mucus method, it can be an accurate way of assessing fertility (up to 98 percent)
Mucus Method – Involves tracking changes in your vaginal discharge, particularly the amount and texture, which reflect the rising levels of estrogen in your body. For the first few days after your period, there is often no discharge as estrogen starts to rise, there will be a cloudy, tacky mucus. When the discharge starts to increase in volume and becomes clearer and stringy, that means that ovulation is near.  A return to the tacky, cloudy mucus or no discharge means that your ovulation period has passed.

Practicing natural family planning will help you avoid the adverse side effects of hormonal manipulation caused by the pill, as well as make you feel more empowered and more in touch with your body.

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Tags: birth control pills, condoms, natural birth control, natural family planning, oral contraceptives, the pill