The Pill

(There are hundreds of things to say but I'm gonna keep this short and sad.)

I've never taken it. Maybe it's because I was raised by a woman who was the type to have 4 natural births. Maybe it's because I was raised by a woman who was raised Catholic. My Mom and I never talked about the pill, I think I'm just my mother's daughter. When it came time for it to maybe be useful I still didn't take it. At that point I knew enough about myself to know I was way too sensitive to the stuff I consumed, that I would be a mess from all the hormones. That at the time was all I had going for me. Later on I got the drift on how little drug companies and doctors take responsibility for my health. I also figured I probably couldn't rely on common knowledge to tell me every time something wasn't good for me. I just followed the old physics law/adage; every action has a equal and opposite reaction. The pill is one of these actions. If you are someone who at least understands protests against non-organic foods I would assume you can appreciate my problem with the pill. To me it's the same line of logic.

So my hunch on the fact that it's really dangerous comes from what we can deduce from what most people do know. While taken, it confuses ones body enough into thinking it's pregnant. If taken longer than 9 months at a time it's asking to do something unprecedented for the body. And I don't know anyone that takes a break from it every nine months. External estrogen abuse in women is analogous to external testosterone abuse for men, and for some reason this relationship resonates loudly in culture for men, and almost not at all for women.

Now those are just clues, not good reasons to believe that the pill is harmful. In doing some other light online research I've come across research reports from The Journal of Sexual Medicine. In 2006 they did a study on women taking oral contraceptives. What they reported was that women using the pill had 4 times the amount of SHBG, which is the protein that blocks testosterone from being used. The SHBC stayed twice as high in the women even after they discontinued the pill for 6 months, which was a surprise to the researchers who now have to test to see if the change is permanent. While estrogen is more present in the female body there still is a need for testosterone to keep your hormones in balance. The result, they have said to not having enough of this "unbound" testosterone alone with other hormones in the pill causes a myriad of sexual problems for women including decreased desire, arousal, and lubrication and increased sexual pain. These elements of the pill may also lead to metabolic, and mental health problems. YIKES

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/35663.php

I point that study out to show that there are researchers who know this and somehow this isn't passed on knowledge to the pill consumer(for all I know). The other way I look at it is it just makes sense that pumping your body with hormones will not keep things normal, now or in the long run. It just leads me to think about how breast cancer depends on estrogen levels in the body, why wouldn't an estrogen pill influence that or other cancers women seem to "inherit".

It seems a bit ironic that while many pill users take it early in life to enjoy sex without the consequence of children, they could be taking the fun right out of it for themselves in the long run. That seems a little tragic.

PS the statistic is that 100 million women world wide take the pill.