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 28th, 2010 by Chris Bobel
Tags: blogs, oral contraceptive pills
Posted in Reproduction | 1 Comment »
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 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 »
October 8th, 2009 by Chris Hitchcock
In a review article in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, University of Sheffield researchers Alexandra Alvergne and Virpi Lummaa [1] present a range of evidence that using oral contraceptives influences women’s preferences for mates, and men’s sexual interest. Some of the research shows that women’s preference for human odors while taking the pill are for odors from men who are more likely to be close relatives, with similar variants of the majorhistocompatibility locus (MHC), but that women who are ovulating prefer odors from men who are less similar. There is speculation that the degree of similarity in the MHC locus may affect fertility.
Further evidence comes from a study by Geoffrey Miller and colleagues, looking at men’s willingness to pay professional lap-dancers for sexual access over the menstrual cycle. This was a difficult study to do, and assumed that ovulation occurred on a standard day during the menstrual cycle, which we know is not valid, because women vary in ovulatory timing and may not ovulate in otherwise normal menstrual cycles. Nonetheless, the average curves for women selling sexual access through lap-dancing show a menstrual pattern in profits that is strikingly similar to the pattern of estrogen over the menstrual cycle. Women taking oral contraceptives both made less money, and did not show the same pattern as those who were naturally cycling. Continue reading...
Tags: mate choice, mate preference, MHC locus, oral contraceptive pills, sexuality
Posted in Birth Control, New Research, Pharmaceutical | 1 Comment »
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.
That’s the report from this arts blogger at the New York Times. Yesterday, doctors from the Methodist Center for Performing Arts Medicine of the Methodist Hospital in Houston held a daylong symposium on the management of medical problems among musicians specifically and performing artists more generally. Performing-arts medicine is a relatively new specialty, and frankly, I’m not surprised by the need for it. (I know a drummer who has ongoing neck and back problems caused – or at least aggravated – by his art.)
As of Feb 8th, freelance writer, re:Cycling guest blogger, and oral contraception watchdog Holly Grigg-Spall (check out her blog 
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