While birth control pills are effective at preventing unwanted pregnancies, the risks far outweigh the benefits when it comes to your health. If you’re currently using any form of birth control (the pill, shots, patch, etc.), I can’t urge you enough to stop using them immediately. There are many other safer ways to prevent pregnancy.
Many women may also be taking birth control pills to ease painful cramps or irregular periods. The pill, however, does nothing to address the cause of the problem and instead may even aggravate the problem.
Dr. Carolyn Dean, MD, ND explains that “cramps or painful, irregular periods are often due to a deficiency of progesterone and excess estrogen. Therefore, estrogen-only birth control pills are prescription pills with more frequently on the market now, often aggravate the problem.This is why some women have intolerable estrogen-induced side effects when taking birth control pills such as:
– Weight gain
– humor changes
– Breast tenderness
What’s wrong with the pill?
Birth control pills, patches, and injections promote continuously high levels of estrogen in a woman’s body, which is neither natural nor safe. “A woman’s natural cycle is made up of rising and falling levels of estrogen and
progesterone. Birth control pills work by keeping estrogen at a level high enough to trick the body into thinking you are pregnant, therefore another pregnancy cannot occur,” Dr. Dane reminds us. The effects of estrogen levels continually raised in the body include:
Increased risk of breast cancer
Increased risk of blood clotting, heart attack, and stroke
migraines
gallbladder disease
Increased blood pressure
weight gain
Humor changes
Nausea, irregular bleeding, or spotting
benign liver tumors
breast tenderness
Most people don’t know that in order for the body to metabolize the pill, the liver requires additional amounts of B vitamins, vitamin C, magnesium, and zinc. This means that if a woman has been on the pill for years (like most American women), she is creating a nutrient deficiency in her body, one of two causes of all disease (the other being toxicity). .
The pill and yeast overgrowth
While yeast (candida albicans) generally makes its home in the digestive tract, common lifestyle choices such as the use of birth control pills, antibiotics, a diet of refined grains and sugar, and high levels of stress often lead to an overgrowth of candida.
Toxins from yeast overgrowth can lead to a host of other problems in the body, presenting themselves in a variety of ways far beyond the common vaginal infection. Symptoms such as migraines, infertility, fibromyalgia, endometriosis, psoriasis, PMS, depression, and digestive disorders have been linked to yeast overgrowth. The evidence clearly shows that when yeast overgrowth is addressed, symptoms improve or disappear. Yeast overgrowth has been closely linked to the dominance of estrogen in a woman’s body caused by the pill.
Increased risk of cancer
The National Cancer Institute tells us that the risk of developing breast cancer is 1 in 8 for the general public.
But studies by Chris Kahlenborn, MD, of Altoona Hospital in Altoona Pennsylvania, indicate that “women who took oral contraceptives before having their first child have a 44 percent increased risk of developing breast cancer.”
That would raise her risk of developing breast cancer to an astonishingly high 1 in 5. “There’s tremendous vested interest: drug companies with a lot of money, government agencies that give a lot of money for contraception. It doesn’t make people look good when a study like this comes out,” Dr. Kahlenborn said.
Alternatives
There are many safe and effective contraceptives to consider:
Male condoms: With an effectiveness rate of 98%, they are almost as effective as the pill.
Female condoms: Although not as familiar to most people, female condoms are 95% effective and less likely to break than male condoms. It consists of a small bag that is placed inside the vagina before sex.
Diaphragms: These must be placed by a doctor and are 92-98% effective in preventing pregnancy. They are thin, soft rubber bands mounted on a ring that are inserted into the upper part of the vagina to cover the cervix and act as a barrier to sperm.
Cervical cap: This is a heavy rubber cap that fits tightly over the cervix. It must be placed by a doctor and can be left in place for 48 hours. These are 91% effective.
Natural Family Planning/Fertility Awareness: A great method for women to follow their natural cycle, identify fertile times, treat premenstrual symptoms and assess the effects of stress.
Calendar Method: Abstain from sexual intercourse during the week that the woman is ovulating. This technique works best when a woman’s menstrual cycle is very regular. The calendar method doesn’t work very well for couples using it alone (about 75 percent success), but it can be effective when combined with the temperature and mucus methods described below.
Temperature method: This is a way to determine the day of ovulation so that sex can be avoided for a few days before and after. It involves taking your basal body temperature (your temperature when you first wake up) each morning with an accurate “basal” thermometer and noting the rise in temperature that occurs after ovulation. Illness or lack of sleep can change body temperature and make this method unreliable on its own, but when combined with the mucus method, it can be an accurate way to assess fertility. The two methods combined can have a success rate of up to 98 percent.
Mucus method: This involves monitoring changes in the amount and texture of vaginal discharge, which reflect increased levels of estrogen in the body. For the first few days after your period, there is often no discharge, but there will be a cloudy, sticky mucus as estrogen begins to rise. When the discharge begins to swell and becomes clear and stringy, ovulation is near. A return to cloudy, sticky mucus or no discharge means ovulation has passed.
The bottom line
The risks associated with unnaturally altering a woman’s estrogen levels are too great to ignore. The estrogen dominance and nutrient deficiencies created by the pill cause a host of health problems that could be easily prevented by using safer, more natural forms of birth control, or by addressing the cause of irregular periods and cramps.