March 4th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Here’s a hint: the title of the new study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy is How Misperceptions, Magical Thinking, and Ambivalence Put Young Adults at Risk for Unplanned Pregnancy.
The study [PDF] surveyed American singles ages 18–29 about their perceptions about and use of contraception. Twenty-eight percent of young men think that wearing two condoms at a time is more effective than just one. Twenty-five percent think that women can prevent pregnancy by douching after sex. Eighteen percent believe that they can reduce the chance of pregnancy by doing it standing up.
A staggering 42% of men and 40% of women believe that the chance of getting pregnant within a year while using the birth control pill is 50% or greater (despite research suggesting that the pill is typically 92% effective).
And many unmarried young adults believe they are infertile. Although available data suggest that about 8.4% of women 15–29 have impaired fecundity (measured as an inability to conceive or carry a baby to term): 59% of women and 47% of men say it is at least slightly likely they are infertile (19% of women and 14% of men describe it as quite or extremely likely.
In a very good short essay about the study at The Sexist, Amanda Hess links men’s lack of knowledge about contraception to their lack of knowledge about menstruation and physiology more generally, and illustrates with some telling anecdotes. There are a few more examples in the video at right, in which Amanda corners several men and asks them to explain how hormonal birth control works.
It all seems quite shocking, until one remembers that abstinence-only sex education that includes lessons about the ineffectiveness of condoms and other contraceptives has been standard in the U.S. since 1996. (See here for U.S. Government definitional criteria for abstinence-only sex education. At present, 22 states have opted out of receiving federal funding, so that they may provide accurate and comprehensive sex education.)
Tags: Birth Control, birth control patch, birth control pill, birth control ring, boys/men, Men
Posted in Birth Control, Men, Menstruation, New Research, Sex | 3 Comments »
January 29th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Tags: anatomy, birth control pill, Health Care, menstrual suppression, Menstruation, music, oral contraceptive pills, PMS
Posted in Birth Control, Health Care, Menopause, Menstruation, Music, PMS | 4 Comments »
January 25th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Tags: advertising, big pharma, birth control pill, FemCare advertising, Humor, internet, period control, viral video
Posted in Birth Control, FemCare, Humor, Internet, Media, Menstruation | 2 Comments »
January 14th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
There are a number of web sites and mobile applications for tracking one’s cycle (such as MyMonthlyCycles.com) and for tracking PMS – either one’s own or someone else’s, as frequent guest contributor David Linton pointed out a few months ago. Is anyone surprised that there is also an app to remind you to take your birth control pill every day?
Of course, if you’re going to take oral contraceptives, taking it consistently is important. With a short half-life and low dosage in many of today’s pills, ideally they should be taken at the same time each day for maximum effectiveness. (This also may reduce breakthrough bleeding.) Research indicates that the average birth control pill user misses three pills each month, which changes the failure rate from 0.3% to 8%.
The commonly used Dialpak® dispenser, introduced in 1965, was designed to make it easy to remember to take the pill every day, long before iPhones or internet access. Legend has it that it was invented by a fellow who frequently argued with his wife over whether or not she had taken her pill. The Dialpak® is iconic in American culture; it has made the birth control pill the only prescription drug identifiable at a distance simply by its container. It is even evoked in the perfectly circular swimming pool and costumed synchronized swimmers of the NuvaRing® advertisement frequently seen on American television. Continue reading...
Tags: birth control pill, internet, oral contraceptive pills
Posted in Birth Control, Internet | 4 Comments »
December 24th, 2009 by Chris Hitchcock
A recent press release from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists announces that Hormonal Contraceptives Offer Benefits Beyond Pregnancy Prevention. This is in the same vein as similar articles published over the years about “non-contraceptive benefits of the pill” – a laundry list of the many benefits women may obtain by using hormonal contraception. It’s not clear how they should be used by practicing obgyn’s. One use is certainly as additional talking points to convince women who are cautious or reluctant to replace their body’s own menstrual physiology with a pharmaceutical product.
I haven’t been able to read the full document (for some reason my university access seems to only find the first page of the full document), but it appears that, like previous reviews I have read, it is a biased list, including benefits but not risks. Perhaps what is most in common is the sense that a spontaneous menstrual cycle is somehow suspect, that fluctuations over time are unnatural, and that pharmaceutical control is a good solution. Continue reading...
Tags: ACOG, adolescents, birth control pill, Dysmenorrhea, heavy bleeding, menstrual cramps, Menstruation, NSAIDs, off-label use, oral contraceptives, pain, PMS
Posted in Birth Control, Dysmenorrhea, Health Care, Menorrhagia, Menstruation, PMS, Pharmaceutical | 2 Comments »
December 23rd, 2009 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Holly Grigg-Spall, freelance writer (”Sweetening the Pill“)
In the summer of this year, I was researching for a feature for Easy Living magazine on the potential side effects of the birth control pill and when searching for a news hook for the piece, I found out about the preparation of a NHS scheme which would allow oral contraceptives to be distributed from pharmacies without a prescription. At that time, all of the doctors I interviewed expressed concerns about this development, even the most conservative GPs who stubbornly dismissed my concerns about side effects.
Then last week it hit British newspapers that this scheme had recently launched in the areas of London that have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy. Bold, bright posters in the style of laundry soap adverts exclaiming that the Pill is now available without prescription are up in pharmacy windows of Lambeth and Southwark. According to the news reports the pharmacists involved were given three weeks of training in order to provide consultations for young women looking to start taking oral contraceptives or wanting to move from the Pill to long acting methods like the injection, the implant or the hormonal IUS. The implication was also there that if young women came to the pharmacy for the emergency contraceptive pill then their consultation would involve the suggestion that they start on the Pill or a long-acting method. Continue reading...
Tags: advertising, birth control pill, England, Girls, government agencies, guest post
Posted in Birth Control, Girls, Health Care, Pharmaceutical | 2 Comments »
December 22nd, 2009 by Laura Wershler
In a December 21, 2009 news release the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) proclaimed that “hormonal contraceptives offer benefits beyond pregnancy prevention“.
You’d have to be an ostrich with her head in the sand not to have heard this message before. Just open any woman’s magazine to any ad for the pill, or any of the myriad varieties of drug-based birth control, and you’ll find the litany (a prolonged and tedious account) of non-contraceptive benefits used as marketing messages to “sell” birth control to girls and women. So the news release begs the question: why now?
Maybe the pharmaceutical companies are putting pressure on the gynies to protect their funding and the drug companies profits. Maybe this news release is damage control. A recent article in Maclean’s magazine proclaimed a trend towards ”ditching the pill for good“.
[O]ral contraceptive prescriptions in Canada levelled off in 2008, reports pharmaceutical industry analyst IMS Health Canada. Health care workers are seeing a growing demand for non-hormonal methods. Spurred by concerns about their health, the environment, or even frustration with family doctors, who sometimes seem to push the pill as a modern-day cure-all, Canadian women are looking for other options.
Are declining prescriptions for hormonal contraceptives a growing trend in North America? Is there a backlash brewing against the pill, the patch and the ring? One can only hope that the days when your gynecologist could convince you that taking the pill is a panacea for everything that, supposedly, is “wrong” with women’s bodies are coming to an end.
Hormonal contraceptives are drugs that disrupt a woman’s normally functioning endocrine system with synthetic versions of estrogen (ethinyl estradiol) and progesterone (progestin) to induce infertility. [Do not be fooled by the language used in the press release.] These drugs have a time and place. But precribing the pill must never become the “standard of care” for being a girl. Mothers everywhere, take note.
Tags: ACOG, birth control pill, Health Care, oral contraceptive pills
Posted in Activism, Advertising, Birth Control, Girls, Health Care, Language, Menstruation, Pharmaceutical, magazines | 2 Comments »
December 10th, 2009 by Laura Wershler
Mammograms showing healthy (left) and (right) cancerous breast. Courtesy of the National Cancer Institute.
Can having too many menstrual cycles give you breast cancer? That’s what one might conclude from two unrelated articles that appeared in national newspapers this week.
First was Nicholas D. Kristof’s Op-Ed in the New York Times. Kristof had recently attended a symposium exploring whether certain common chemicals are linked to breast cancer and other ailments. The role of estrogen – both the real thing our bodies produce and the pseudo-estrogens – in breast cancer was his major example.
The real thing:
One theory starts with the well-known fact that women with more lifetime menstrual cycles are at greater risk for breast cancer, because they’re exposed to more estrogen. For example, a woman who began menstruating before 12 has a 30 percent greater risk of breast cancer than one who began at 15 or later.
The pseudo-estrogens:
One class of chemicals that creates concern — although the evidence is not definitive — is endocrine disruptors, which are often similar to estrogen and may fool the body into setting off hormonal changes. This used to be a fringe theory, but it is now being treated with great seriousness by the Endocrine Society the professional association of hormone specialists in the United States. …These endocrine disruptors are found in everything from certain plastics to various cosmetics.
Continue reading...
Tags: birth control pill, breast cancer, drugs, estrogen, hormones, Menarche, Menopause
Posted in Birth Control, Health Care, Media, Menarche, Menopause, Menstruation, Newspapers, ovulation | Comments Off
November 25th, 2009 by Elizabeth Kissling
re:Cycling readers may be interested in this story in the current issue of Macleans about the declining interest in oral contraceptives among Canadian women, particularly among women in their 20s who’ve been using The Pill for a decade.
[O]ral contraceptive prescriptions in Canada levelled off in 2008, reports pharmaceutical industry analyst IMS Health Canada. Health care workers are seeing a growing demand for non-hormonal methods. Spurred by concerns about their health, the environment, or even frustration with family doctors, who sometimes seem to push the pill as a modern-day cure-all, Canadian women are looking for other options.
The report echoes a couple of recent discussions here at re:Cycling, such as our guest post from Holly Grigg-Spall and Laura Wershler’s response, guest post from Moira Howe about the quiescent uterus, and discussion of risks of YAZ.
And Dr. Jerilynn Prior, scientific director of the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research (and past president of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research) is quoted in the article: “There’s an emotional identity attached to achieving your own menstrual cycle, and being able to read your body,” she says. “When you’re on the pill, it’s the doctor who’s controlling your cycle. You don’t own it.”
It’s good to see this issue getting some attention in mainstream media.
[via Sexual Health Access Alberta]
Tags: big pharma, birth control pill, hormones
Posted in Birth Control, Menstruation, Pharmaceutical, magazines, ovulation | 2 Comments »
November 9th, 2009 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Holly Grigg-Spall, freelance writer (”Sweetening the Pill“)
The popularity of the birth control pill is an essential element of our cultural attitude towards menstruation, and women’s bodies as a whole. After taking the pill for ten years I recently decided to stop, for good. I have this month had my first real period in a decade. I didn’t decide to come off the pill because I want a baby, it’s because I want to blog, and have been blogging about the pill for several months. My blog ranges from my own personal ramblings about taking the pill, to adventures in the world of women’s studies. I am not religious, pro-abstinence or anything like a hippy, I just came to realise that I was taking a very powerful medication every day and I wasn’t sure exactly why. Continue reading...
Tags: big pharma, birth control pill, guest post, health, withdrawal symptoms
Posted in Birth Control, Pharmaceutical | 19 Comments »
November 7th, 2009 by Chris Bobel
Guest Post by Moira Howes, Trent University
Uterus Vase by The Plug and Stephanie Rollin
Over thirty years ago, Roger V. Short argued that regular menstrual cycling is probably a health hazard and thus, we should try to “keep the ovaries and the female reproductive tract in a state of quiescence when reproduction is not desired” [1]
More recently, Timothy Rowe, Head of Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility, University of British Columbia, claims that “the pill keeps a woman’s reproductive organs quiet and healthy”[2]
As a philosopher of science, I find the concept of a “quiescent” bodily organ fascinating, troubling and great fodder: there is nothing so tempting to a philosopher of science as a vague, unscientific and value-laden concept.
Short and Rowe use the concept of “quiescence” to describe a presumably defined state of the uterus, but the concept is vague. It’s also unscientific—it calls to mind the promises made for “stimulated” immune systems and “cleansed” livers at my local health food store. And, the quiescent uterus raises old value-laden associations between women and passivity. If the dormant, quiet, and weak uterus is healthy, is the active, energetic, and strong uterus unhealthy? Continue reading...
Tags: birth control pill, guest post, ovulation, philosophy of science, Reproduction, reproductive immunology, uterus
Posted in Birth Control, Language, New Research, Reproduction, ovulation | 3 Comments »
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
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