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.

In March of this year, I posted Laura Wershler’s article Coming off Depo Provera Can Be a Woman’s Worst Nightmare. Once again, truer words were never spoken. More and more women are now posting about their experiences on this drug – and the ensuing hormone imbalance and health issues.

Women are suffering.

This is an insidious ‘War on Women’. On the one hand we have had to fight for our reproductive rights and the availability of birth control – on the other hand it is the same birth control that is slowly killing us.