- Health Canada recently ruled that oral contraceptive Diane-35’s benefit as acne drug outweigh its risks. The European Medicines Agency is investigating the drug, as it is linked to four deaths and suspected in a number of strokes.
- A new article by Holly Grigg-Spall for Dame explains several ways use of the pill may affect relationships: hormonal contraceptives impact testosterone levels, depression, mood, and more.
- Meg Waite Clayton’s op-ed in the L.A. Times this week asks why we have such a double standard about contraception: there’s been a huge uproar about making Plan B available to girls, but no one has raised an eyebrow about availability of condoms to boys.
- At Shakesville, contributor Aphra Benn comments on new endometriosis research that finds higher risk in thin women, asking why research priorities aren’t focused on the most important questions for patients with endometriosis — such as its cause, diagnosis, and treatment.
- Education News China reports that female college students are being advised to use hormonal contraceptives to suppress their periods, so that menstruation doesn’t interfere with their studies.
- Handbag magazine offers advice for syncing your diet with the phases of your menstrual cycle, based on the work of Alisa Vitti. Unfortunately, the article fails to explain how to track and chart your cycle. Maybe the readers of Handbag already have this skill?
- What happens when a lady forgets to insert her tampon? She discovers that being embarrassed is overrated.
On Grigg-Spall’s article, I seem to remember a study a few years back linking hormonal birth control use with women’s ‘willingness’ (for lack of a better word) to stay within unhappy, unhealthy or even abusive relationships. Does anyone have any clue what I’m talking about and where to find more information?
Hi Jay – I’ve read this study below, which basically says women on the pill are less sexually satisfied, but happier overall in their relationship. If you think about how that would be researched it might mean nothing, they might have asked a woman about her sex life and she responded it wasn’t that great, and then asked about other areas of her relationship and she would elevate them to compensate and show why she’s in the relationship…bit complicated I would think. And you could read it as women being more passive and accepting of their circumstances, I suppose. I would think women have some guilt around having a unsatisfactory sex life with their partner and so they might see the rest of the relationship more positively because they’re want to blame themselves. All speculation but it’s clearly not as clear as the way it was reported.
https://www.livescience.com/16501-birth-control-relationship-satisfaction.html