Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

Yaz and Yasmin Back in the Spotlight

May 9th, 2013 by Elizabeth Kissling

Guest Post by Holly Grigg-Spall, Sweetening the Pill

Last year the FDA made the decision to keep the birth control pills Yaz, Yasmin, and Beyaz on the market despite controversy over corporate corruption of the review process.These drugs are back in the spotlight.

The French health minister has called for doctors to stop writing prescriptions, 2,000 lawsuits against Bayer launched in Canada last month, and Marie Claire Australia dedicated five pages to an in-depth feature about the side effects, instigating an investigation by the country’s top current affairs show Today Tonight.

Bayer has gone about settling the 13,000 lawsuits in the US out of court, likely with the hope of keeping the details of confidential files regarding marketing techniques and research out of the public eye. Unperturbed by mounting reports from women of the myriad health issues caused by their products, the company launched Yaz Flex in Australia at the end of 2012. The first oral contraceptive on the Australian market presented as being for the purpose of preventing periods, Yaz Flex comes in a digital dispenser that records how many pills have been taken and alerts the user when she’s missed a dose. There are enough tablets to allow for just three breaks a year. In the US in April the FDA, equally unperturbed, ruled that pharmaceutical company Activis can start selling generic versions of Yaz, providing a low-cost version of what has been the most expensive oral contraceptive of recent years.

The feature in Marie Claire Australia generated 300+ comments on the magazine and television show’s Facebook pages. Many of the commenters were women who had developed blood clots when taking these brands. Some had made the connection at the time and others made the link only as a result of the coverage after months or years of not knowing why they had endured the injuries. Some of the women were presently experiencing the symptoms of a blood clot mentioned in the show and made the decision to stop taking the pill as they typed.

The piece was written by a long-time member of the Yaz and Yasmin Survivors forum and balances interviews with women who suffered the serious physical side effects with those who have been victim to the serious psychological side effects. I’m among those who experienced a long list of negative physical and psychological effects when taking Yasmin for more than two years and it was this forum that prompted me to stop taking it.

Monash University in Australia is one of the few facilities to have undertaken research into the correlation between birth control pills and depression. Professor Jayashri Kulkarni found that women on the pill were twice as likely to experience depression, anxiety, and mental numbness (known as anhedonia). The Yale Daily News reports that in the wake of her research receiving a little media attention Dr Kulkarni received more than 300 emails from women “clearly describing when they went off the pill that they felt subjectively more happy. The anhedonia, for example, disappeared, the irritability disappeared, the sense of poor self esteem disappeared”.

She is now focusing her attention on researching what she believes to be the particular psychological impact of the Yaz brands, those pills containing the synthetic progesterone drospirenone and low-dose synthetic estrogen.  Continue reading...

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Posted in Birth Control, coming off the pill, Pharmaceutical | 1 Comment »

Stopping Depo-Provera: Why and what to do about adverse experiences

April 11th, 2013 by Laura Wershler

Laura Wershler interviews Ask Jerilynn, clinician-scientist and endocrinologist

A screen shot of comments to Laura Wershler’s blog post of April 4, 2012: “Coming off Depo-Provera can be a woman’s worst nightmare.”

With 250 comments – and counting – to my year-old post Coming off Depo-Provera is a women’s worst nightmare (April 4, 2012) I thought it was time to revisit this topic.

That blog post has become a forum for women to share their negative experiences with stopping Depo-Provera (also called “the shot,” or Depo), the four-times-a-year contraceptive injection. (Commenters reporting positive experiences have been extremely rare.) Many women have experienced distressing effects either while taking Depo and/or after stopping it. They report that health-care professionals seem unable to explain their problems or to offer effective solutions. What is puzzling for many is why they are experiencing symptoms like sore breasts, heavy and ongoing bleeding (or not getting flow back at all), digestive problems, weight gain and mood issues when they stop Depo.

This post aims to briefly explain how Depo works to prevent pregnancy, its common side effects and, most importantly, why and what to do about adverse experiences when stopping it.

What follows is my interview with Dr. Jerilynn C. Prior, Society for Menstrual Cycle Research board member, professor of endocrinology at the University of British Columbia, and scientific director of the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research (CeMCOR) Section 1 explains how Depo-Provera works and what causes its side effects. Section 2  explains the symptoms women are experiencing after stopping the drug.

1) Taking Depo-Provera: How it works and established side effects

Laura Wershler (LW): Dr. Prior, what is Depo-Provera® and how does it prevent pregnancy?

Ask Jerilynn: The term, “depo” means a deposit or injection and Provera is a common brand name of the most frequently used synthetic progestin in North America, medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA). Depo is a shot of MPA given every three months in the large dose of 150 mg. Depo prevents pregnancy by “drying up” the cervical mucus so sperm have trouble swimming, by thinning the endometrium (uterine lining) so a fertilized egg can’t implant and primarily by suppressing the hypothalamic and pituitary signals that coordinate the menstrual cycle. That means a woman’s own hormone levels become almost as low as in menopause, with very low progesterone and lowered estrogen levels.

LW: Could you explain the hormonal changes behind the several established side effects of Depo? Let’s start with bleeding issues including spotting, unpredictable or non-stop bleeding that can last for several months before, in most women, leading to amenorrhea (no menstrual period).

Ask Jerilynn: It is not entirely clear, but probably the initial unpredictable bleeding relates to how long it takes for this big hormone injection to suppress women’s own estrogen levels. The other reason is that where the endometrium has gotten thin it is more likely to break down and bleed. These unpredictable flow side-effects of Depo are something that women should expect and plan for since they occur in the early days of use for every woman. After the first year of Depo (depending on the age and weight of the woman) about a third of women will have no more bleeding.

LW: What about headaches and depression?

Ask Jerilynn: It is not clear why headaches increase on Depo—they tend not to be serious migraine headaches but are more stress type. Perhaps they are related to the higher stress hormones the body makes whenever estrogen levels drop. Unfortunately, headaches tend to increase over time, rather than getting better as the not-so-funny bleeding does.  Continue reading...

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Posted in Amenorrhea, Birth Control, coming off the pill, Dysmenorrhea, Health Care, Hormones, Menorrhagia, Menstruation, Ovulation, Perimenopause | 21 Comments »

Does Depo-Provera work like a charm or a curse?

February 6th, 2013 by Laura Wershler
Author’s Update, February 14, 2013: As clarified by Bedsider.org in the comments section below, the Works Like A Charm Contest mentioned in this post is not current but ended in 2011. The contest website pages are now inactive.

If Bedsider.org sponsored a contest called Why I Hate My LARC, there would be no shortage of contest entrants. But I expect it will be a long time before the nay-sayers get as much attention as the yeah-sayers.

Composite illustration by Laura Wershler

Bedsider has jumped on the LARC bandwagon. The online birth control support network for women 18-29 has launched the Works Like a Charm contest encouraging “the awesome women and couples” who use long-acting reversible contraception to share why they love their LARCs for the chance to win up to $2000. This is a variation of the Why I Love my LARC video campaign sponsored by the California Family Health Council last November, only with prizes!

To quote my blog post about the earlier campaign: “Throughout the contraceptive realm, LARCs are being heralded as the best thing since Cinderella’s glass slipper with little acknowledgement that for many women LARCs are more like Snow White’s poisoned apple.”

One long-acting, not-so-reversible contraceptive in particular – Depo-Provera – is causing grief for many women. Yet “the shot” is front and center in the graphic on the contest website.

Considering the rah-rah tone of the Works-Like-a-Charm campaign messages, it seems that bedsider.org, a project of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, is oblivious to the misery caused by this contraceptive. Often, Depo works like a curse.

I acknowledge that Bedsider is doing good work: The website provides youth-friendly, accessible information about the full range of birth control methods. But, in my opinion, any organization that promotes Depo-Provera as a contraceptive method should be totally transparent about the ill effects many women experience both while taking and after stopping the drug.

Depo-Provera, to put it bluntly, fucks with a woman’s endocrine system.

The long list of ill effects while on or after stopping this drug includes: continual bleeding (from spotting to heavy), mood disorders, severe anxiety, depression, digestive issues, loss of sex drive, extreme weight gain (often without change to exercise or eating habits), lingering post-shot amenorrhea, intensely sore breasts, nausea, and ongoing fear of pregnancy leading to repeated pregnancy tests. (Not to mention its documented negative effect on bone density.)

These effects are why the continuation rate of Depo-Provera is only 40-60% after one year of use, and why women are filling online comment pages with stories of their struggles coming off this drug.

At Our Bodies, Ourselves, the blog post Questions About Side Effects of Stopping Contraceptive Injections has been attracting comments since November 3, 2009, with no end in sight.

On my April 4, 2012 re:Cycling post – Coming off Depo-Provera can be a woman’s worst nightmare - there are over 130 comments. All but six were posted since mid-November when the post caught fire. Not more than a day or two goes by before another women shares her story of distress, confusion or frustration. I read each one and respond occasionally. Rarely, a positive experience appears; one criticized other commenters for complaining.

It’s one thing to read or hear about potential ill effects while trying to decide whether or not to use Depo-Provera. It’s quite another to experience some or many of them for months on end without acknowledgement or health-care support from those who promote or provide this drug.

The Works Like a Charm contest website says about LARCS:

Reversible = not permanent. If and when you’re ready to get pregnant, simply part ways with your LARC and off you go.

“Off you go?” Tell that to the thousands of women who are waiting, months post-Depo, to get their bodies and their menstrual cycles back to normal. Most of them still aren’t ready to get pregnant.

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Posted in Activism, Amenorrhea, Birth Control, coming off the pill, Health Care, Hormones, Menstruation, Pharmaceutical | 10 Comments »

Do you love your LARC?

December 12th, 2012 by Laura Wershler

Throughout the contraceptive realm, LARCs are being heralded as the best thing since Cinderella’s glass slipper with little acknowledgement that for many women LARCs are more like Snow White’s poisoned apple.

Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, 2012, was LARC Awareness Week, billed by the California Family Health Council as “a chance to increase awareness about LARCs as a safe, effective, and long-acting birth control method.” Women were invited to contribute video messages on the theme Why I Love My LARC.

This catchy acronym stands for long-acting reversible contraceptive, and the push is on for many more women to choose this form of birth control. Make no mistake, it’s all about control: What the doctor puts in, only the doctor can take out. Ergo, it’s 99% effective. You can quit taking your pills, rip off your patch, or NOT show up for your next Depo-Provera shot. But if you hate the side effects caused by your IUD or implant, you’ve gotta go see a health-care provider to have it removed.

I’ve challenged the Contraceptive Choice Project study that praised the effectiveness of LARCs over the pill, patch and ring. I took issue with the ACOG recommendation that LARCs are the best methods for teenagers. Now there’s more hype with LARC Awareness Week.

According to the awareness campaign, LARCs include the ParaGard (copper) IUD, Mirena (progestin) IUD and Implanon, a non-biodegradable flexible rod, also containing progestin, that is inserted under the skin and left for up to three years. (Here’s a story about the rods going missing in women’s bodies.) Read the patient information about Implanon. Would you agree to have it inserted into your body?

Women who hate Implanon are speaking out. So are women who don’t love their ParaGard or Mirena IUDs. On YouTube, a video by a women with Mirena issues has over 6000 views;  Why I Love My LARC, posted 8 days earlier, has about 100.

The old-school LARC – Depo-Provera – is not on the campaign’s list of LARCs, though it is heavily used in the United States. Holly Grigg-Spall recently reported that “one in five African American teens are on the Depo shot, far more than white teens.” Hmm. Will they all be switched to other LARCs when, or if, they come back for their next shot? Perhaps Depo is not on the list because women can discontinue this contraceptive without clinician intervention. But it’s probably because Depo causes bone density loss – and because this LARC is not a lark. Women are sharing their Depo stories on another re:Cycling post:  Coming off Depo-Provera can be a women’s worst nightmare. You can find more bad news about this LARC than any other.

What about getting your LARC removed if you hate it instead of love it? One re:Cycling blogger shared what happened when she wanted her ParaGard IUD removed:

I HATED the thing but the nurse who was supposed to take it out tried to talk me out of it for a good 20 minutes. Finally I was like ‘”Why do you want me to keep this item in my uterus so badly?” And she said, “I just don’t want to see you get rid of your very effective birth control.”

This is not the only reason why women who end up hating their LARCs will be discouraged from rejecting them. The Affordable Care Act requires all health plans issued on or after August 1, 2012 to provide no-charge access to FDA-approved LARCs. What’s it going to take to convince health-care providers to remove an expensive contraceptive – provided for free – that was supposed to last for three to 10 years?

Maybe a YouTube video about Why I Hate My LARC will help make it as easy to get rid of one as it now is to get one.

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Posted in Activism, Birth Control, coming off the pill, Girls, Health Care, Hormones, politics | 6 Comments »

I’m fed up with birth control propaganda

October 17th, 2012 by Laura Wershler

Birth control in the U.S. has become synonymous with drugs and devices. The pill, patch, or ring; Depo-Provera or hormonal implant; copper IUD or Mirena IUD; traditional hormonal birth control or long-acting reversible contraceptives. All impact the function of the menstrual cycle; some suppress it completely. As a pro-choice menstrual cycle advocate I take issue with the fact that keeping your cycle and contracepting effectively are now considered mutually exclusive.

A widely published Associated Press story tells us that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists now recommends hormonal implants and IUDs as the best birth control methods for teenagers. The research this recommendation is based on did not even study pregnancy outcomes for women using condoms, barriers, or fertility awareness methods. These methods were not among the free contraceptives offered to study participants. Another story reported that ”the new guidelines say that physicians should talk about (implants and IUDs) with sexually active teens at every doctor visit.” This sounds like a hardcore sales pitch to me. I expressed my concerns about pushing LARCs on teenagers in a previous re:Cycling post.

Drugs and devices also figure prominently in Switching Contraceptives Effectively. New York Times health writer Jane E. Brody writes about the mistakes women make when switching between birth control methods that can result in unintended pregnancies. The reasons women switch are explored and a link to a resource on how to switch methods successfully is provided.

The Reproductive Health Access Project developed the pamphlet to help women prevent gaps in contraception when they change methods. The premise is a good one:

What’s the best way to switch from one birth control method to another? To lower the chance of getting pregnant, avoid a gap between methods. Go straight from one method to the next, with no gaps between methods.

But the pamphlet developers made the huge false assumption that all women just need or want to try another drug or devise. It focuses ONLY on these method — how to switch from the pill to Depe-Provera or the copper IUD, or how to switch from the Mirena IUD to the progestin implant. Condoms and barrier methods are considered useful ONLY for the transition period between drugs and devices. Fertility Awareness Methods are ignored completely. The resource comes across as propaganda for drug- and device-based birth control methods.

Neither Brody nor those behind the Reproductive Health Access Project seem to understand that this approach contributes to the unplanned pregnancy rate by failing to acknowledge that many women are fed up with contraceptive drugs and devices. These women want support and information to switch away from these methods. They are falling though the contraceptive gap created by this failure.

Is it any wonder that some women stop using their contraceptives without talking to their physicians? Maybe they are fed up with doctors like Ruth Lesnewski, education director of the Reproductive Health Access Project, who offers trite admonishment that side effects ”will go away with time” and insists that caution about using long-acting methods like the IUD or hormonal implant is “outdated.” Real health issues are associated with all these methods. I guess Dr. Lesnewski doesn’t read health blogs where women document their frustration about side effects and dismissive health-care providers.

This article places blame for contraceptive failure on women not knowing how birth control works, instead of where the blame really belongs — on the blind spot that keeps sexual and reproductive health-care providers from seeing, and serving, women who are sick and tired of drugs and devices.

As for the ACOG recommendation on the best birth control methods for teens? It’s just a step away from coercive, patriarchal decision-making by doctors for teenage girls, and a threat to the sexual agency of many young women.

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Posted in Activism, Birth Control, coming off the pill, Health Care, Menstruation, Pharmaceutical | 25 Comments »

Could use of the pill be linked to insulin resistance?

October 3rd, 2012 by Elizabeth Kissling

Adapted from a photo by anna marie-grace // CC 2.0

The pill is one of the most intensely studied drugs in history, and believed to be among the safest – safer than aspirin, as an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health noted twenty years ago. Yet young women seem to be quitting in droves, for a variety of reasons: to restore feelings of psychological and emotional health, regain lost libido, relieve cardiovascular symptoms and disorders, or ease anxiety about these or other health issues.

When women report these side effects of birth control pills, physicians often recommend they try another brand, but many of these side effects are common to hormonal birth control, especially oral contraceptives. A new study published this month in Human Reproduction suggests there may be yet another common side effect: Researchers in Finland found that oral contraceptives may worsen insulin sensitivity and are associated with increased levels of circulating inflammatory markers.

The study was very small and ran only for a short time, so drawing conclusions is premature, but since the beginning of the year, I’ve been following several online discussions of young women quitting the pill. Although I have yet to see development of Type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance cited as a reason to quit the pill, I have seen such a variety of health issues and medical problems described that this study caught my eye immediately. Current estimates indicate that 12.6 million, or 10.8 percent, of all U.S. women ages 20 years or older have diabetes (diagnosed and undiagnosed). Could it be related to their birth control? Perhaps in those already genetically predisposed.

Research from the Guttmacher Institute indicates nearly 60% of pill users take it for non-contraceptive reasons, such as for cramps or other menstrual pain, menstrual regulation, acne, endometriosis, as well as for prevention of unintended pregnancy. Fourteen per cent of US pill users (more than 1.5 million women) take birth control pills solely for non-contraceptive reasons. If the Finland study proves to hold true for larger groups over extended periods, there’s another reason to be more cautious prescribing the pill.

 

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Posted in Birth Control, coming off the pill, Health Care, New Research | 10 Comments »

Hormone Imbalance: Breaking the Silence

September 5th, 2012 by Elizabeth Kissling

Guest Post by Leslie Carol Botha Women’s Health Freedom Coalition Coordinator, Natural Solutions Foundation

I still remember the first Society for Menstrual Cycle Research Conference I attended in Tucson, AZ in June, 1999. The statement that made the most impact was the collective concern that in ten years there might no longer be a menstrual cycle. It turns out the truer words were never spoken.

In the past 40 years, the pharmaceutical industry has spewed out and packaged and repackaged so many synthetic hormone contraceptives – pills, injections, and implants that virtually eliminate the menstrual cycle.  It also amazes me that in the 30 years I have been involved with the women’s health movement condoms and spermicide are still the safest and most effective contraceptive on the market.

However, a new trend is emerging as condoms and birth control pills are being pushed on the back burner because of ‘human error’. Women and men are not always diligent or careful about condom use, and many girls and women forget to take their pills.  What is now being prescribed to adolescent girls – whether or not they are sexually active — are implants and injections. Health considerations are not taken into consideration, nor are hormone levels. Somehow the pharmaceutical industry still views this as a one-size-fits-all prescription for all women, no matter their age of their state of health.

Menstrual cycle advocates are most aware that birth ‘control’ is about control…controlling the woman’s body with potentially harmful synthetic hormones. What has been overlooked are education and natural methods of fertility awareness.

While our focus recently has been on the politics of birth control, another ugly monster has reared its head and that is the silent epidemic of hormone imbalance. Not only is this the result of taking synthetic hormones for birth control but our environment, our foods, and water supplies are filled with estrogen mimickers upsetting the delicate orchestration of hormones in our bodies.

Another concern is the excess estrogen stored in women’s bodies and passed on genetically to their offspring.  It is possible that their children are hormonally imbalanced at birth.

Either way, the damage has been done. I believe we are at the tip of the iceberg in this silent epidemic and that hundreds of thousands of women are being misdiagnosed and over-prescribed. In most cases, thyroid imbalance is not considered as a cause of depression, and the prescribed fix is generally Prozac or a higher dose of synthetic hormones.

In 2009, I posted an article to my blog, from eHow editor, Shelly Macrea titled: What is Hormone Imbalance?, a very informative article and probably one of the first pieces for a general audience on the myriad of conditions that hormone imbalance can cause.

At the time I had three responses (with an average of 30,000 unique visitors a month.) In June of this year, another post on the article (which by this time was buried in my archives) appeared from a woman suffering anxiety due to hormone imbalance. And then another post appeared and I decided to bring the article out of the archives and re-post it. What ensued was a steady stream of women commenting on almost a daily basis on their extreme anxiety and depression and the myriad of misdiagnosis and drugs they were prescribed. I am posting the link here so that others can read what I believe should be of concern to all of us: Hormone Imbalance Anxiety, A Precursor to Other Health Issues.  Continue reading...

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Posted in Birth Control, coming off the pill, Hormones, Pharmaceutical | 1 Comment »

Coming Off The Pill: Considering “forget-about-it” birth control?

May 30th, 2012 by Laura Wershler

If you quit the pill would you replace it with forget-about-it or mindful birth control?

How you feel about your body, your menstrual cycle and your sexual relationship(s) will influence your choice. Another consideration might be your attitude towards an unintended pregnancy.

Photo: Public Domain // LARC birth control methods are highly effective, in part, because women can "forget about them."

On the Coming off the Pill (COTP) MIND MAP GUIDE I proposed in an earlier post in this Coming Off The Pill series, mindful methods dominate the Birth Control branch: condom, spermicide, diaphragm, fertility awareness and copper IUD. Only the latter could be considered forget-about-it birth control.     Have it put in, then forget about it.

What got me thinking about this dichotomy is the Contraceptive CHOICE Project, a new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. More than 7500 participants were free to choose, with all costs covered, from a range of contraceptives. (Diaphragms and fertility awareness training were not included.) Contraceptive failure rates over the course of the study were compared for the methods offered. The key result?

“Women who used birth-control pills, the patch or vaginal ring were 20 times more likely to have an unintended pregnancy than those who used longer-acting forms such as an intrauterine device (IUD) or implant.”

The difference in effectiveness was even more profound for women under 21 who used the pill, patch or ring. Their risk for unintended pregnancy with these methods, versus long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), was almost twice as high as for older women.

The reason for the higher failure rates is human error. Women, and especially women under 21 it seems, don’t always remember to take their pills, change their patches, or check to ensure their rings haven’t fallen out. These methods require a certain degree of mindfulness. The reason that LARCs are more effective, according to senior author Dr. Jeffrey Peipert, is “because women can forget about them after clinicians put the devices in place.”

There are several things I find troubling about the researchers’ contention that forget-about-it birth control is better just because it’s more effective, and that these methods should be among the first offered to women by clinicians.

Firstly, they fail to acknowledge that many women do not tolerate these “forget-about-them” methods. Among the choices made available to study participants were the contraceptive shot, which I presume was Depo-Provera, and an unspecified hormonal implant. (Implants are slow-release hormonal devices inserted under the skin of a woman’s arm.) Side effects and ongoing problems with such methods abound, and are anything but forgettable. IUDs, both copper and the hormonal Mirena, have fewer drawbacks but they aren’t problem free either. Women experience a range of side effects with the copper IUD. As for the Mirena, some women love it, others hate it.

Secondly, the implication that women under 21 especially should be encouraged (perhaps coerced?) by clinicians to use forget-about-it LARC birth control methods just makes me sad. I get that preventing teen pregnancy is an important public health goal, but the potential for harm to young women’s overall health and psycho-sexual development by the use of such methods, Depo-Provera and contraceptive implants in particular, should be cause for caution and concern.

Maybe it’s time to research mindful birth control methods. Might more women choose barrier and fertility awareness based methods if expert training and support to ensure confident, effective use of these methods were provided free of charge, as were the expensive LARC methods in this study? I guarantee researchers would have no trouble finding women to participate.  Continue reading...

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Posted in Birth Control, coming off the pill, Health Care, Hormones, New Research, Pharmaceutical | 10 Comments »

Coming off Depo-Provera can be a woman’s worst nightmare

April 4th, 2012 by Laura Wershler

Need proof that women are sometimes desperate for information and support when it comes to quitting hormonal contraception? You need look no further than the 100 plus comments in reply to an old blog posting at Our Bodies Ourselves: Questions About Side Effects of Stopping Contraceptive Injections.  The comment stream – a litany of woes concerning women’s discontinuation of Depo-Provera – has been active since Nov. 2, 2009.

On March 29, 2012, Rachel, author of the post, wrote a follow-up piece in which she laments: “Although a quick internet search finds many women complaining of or asking about post-Depo symptoms, there isn’t much published scientific evidence on the topic.” Beyond research about bone density and length of time to return to fertility, little is known about the withdrawal symptoms women have been commenting about.

Depo-Provera is the 4-times-a-year birth control injection that carries an FDA “black box” warning that long-term use is associated with significant bone mineral density loss.  Never a fan, I made a case against this contraceptive in a paper for Canadian Woman Studies, published in 2005. The comments on the OBOS post indicate that many women took Depo-Provera without full knowledge of the potential for serious side effects while taking it, or of what to expect while coming off the drug.

Considering that Depo-Provera completely suppresses normal reproductive endocrine function, it is not surprising that many women experience extreme or confusing symptoms once stopping it. Take Lissa’s comment for example, posted on February 21, 2011:

Omg I thought I was tripping. I have been on depo for a year and stopped in jan. My breasts constantly hurt, I put on weight, have hot flashes, and sleeping problems. I pray everyday my cycle returns and stops playing with me. I only spot lightly.

Two and a half years after publication, the original article continues to garner monthly comments. I’ve read most of them and have yet to see one that offers concrete advice or a referral to resources that provide information and support to women looking for both. One such resource is Coming Off The Pill, the Patch, the Shot and Other Hormonal Contraceptives, a comprehensive, clinical-based guide to assist women transition back to menstruation and fertility, written by Megan Lalonde and Geraldine Matus.

Lalonde, a Holistic Reproductive Health Practitioner, and Certified Professional Midwife, helps women establish healthy, ovulatory cycles after using hormonal contraception. She says that women who’ve used Depo-Provera generally experience the most obvious symptoms and have the hardest time returning to fertility.  She finds that every client’s experience is different and will be affected by the status of their cycles before taking the drug, and their overall health. “It can take time to regain normal menstrual cycles, from a few months to 18 months, in my experience,” says Lalonde. “Some women have minimal symptoms while their own cycles resume, while others might have significant symptoms, including mood changes, unusual spotting and breast tenderness.”

The comments to the Our Bodies Ourselves blog post demonstrate that many women are not finding the acknowledgement and support they need to understand and manage the post-Depo transition. Some are disheartening to read, like this comment by Judy from April 12, 2011, and this recent one posted by Melani on March 21, 2012.

In my last re: Cycling post, I asked for input on the Coming Off the Pill Mind Map I created. I’ll be making a few revisions thanks to the thoughtful feedback readers have provided. I had assumed that this guide would be applicable to all methods of hormonal birth control but, after reading these women’s comments about their Depo-Provera experiences, it appears this contraceptive may require its own branch on the mind map.  Continue reading...

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Posted in Birth Control, coming off the pill, Health Care, Hormones, Menstruation | 283 Comments »

Coming Off The Pill: A Mind Map Guide

March 7th, 2012 by Laura Wershler

Everybody can use a good map to help them get to where they’re going. Why not women heading to the land of non-hormonal contraception?

In my post on January 11, 2012 I asked if coming off the pill was a growing trend. I proposed to write a series of posts about the issues associated with the decision to stop using hormonal birth control.  For the purposes of this discussion assume that “coming off the pill” refers to quitting any method of hormonal contraception including the pill, patch, ring, shot, implant or Mirena intrauterine system.

As I was preparing a list of possible topics, I realized that one way to represent the complexity of issues involved in this decision is with a mind map: “a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea.” It also occurred to me that readers could then add to this schematic, filling in important points based on personal or professional experience. So I got out my colored markers, did a little brainstorming and came up with Coming Off the Pill: Mind Map 1.0. I invite readers to comment, offering additions under the key headings I’ve noted and suggesting other categories that should be included.  Could this become a talking, planning or process guide for women considering the transition to non-hormonal birth control methods?

If you’ve thought about or been through the experience of quitting hormonal contraception, or if you’ve helped others through the experience, please contribute to the development of Coming Off The Pill: Mind Map 2.0 by posting your comments and suggestions. (I’ve already thought about other headings I could have included.) Besides providing me with a guide for writing future posts, what other ways can you imagine this mind map might be used?

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Posted in Activism, Amenorrhea, Birth Control, coming off the pill, Communication, Dysmenorrhea, Health Care, Hormones, Menorrhagia, Menstruation, Ovulation, Pharmaceutical, PMS, Reproduction | 10 Comments »

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