Vulpix
08-23-2009, 10:24 PM
Is it time to stop taking the pill? A new book asks whether the tide of risks has gone too far (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1208519/Is-time-stop-taking-pill-A-new-book-asks-tide-risks-gone-far.html)
By Sophie Morris
I was born in 1980, a couple of decades after the contraceptive pill gave women a longed-for control over their own sex lives and fertility.
By the mid-Nineties, however, fears about HIV and other sexually transmitted infections were in full flow.
At school we were advised to use condoms in all circumstances. I don't remember a single discussion about the contraceptive pill. I suppose it was assumed that, as teenagers, we were too young to consider using it.
So why is it that around 3.7 million women in the UK are currently taking 'the Pill', and around 100 million worldwide? The keenest uptake is among the young. An incredible 64 per cent of women aged between 20 and 24 are on the Pill, more than in any other age group.
The reason is the readiness with which it is prescribed by GPs, who often fail to offer alternatives. The Pill is widely accepted as the most effective form of contraceptive but it is also prescribed for a number of other complaints such as acne, irregular or heavy periods, period pain and polycystic ovarian syndrome.
In short the benefit of having sex without the fear of pregnancy (or the hassle of romance-killing condoms) is sold as a fair trade off to any of the many side-effects shared by various brands of Pill - weight gain, irritability-depression, anxiety, anger, loss of sex drive, migraines not to mention rumoured links to breast cancer and fatal blood clots.
But is it a fair trade off? The Pill: Are You Sure It's For You?, a new book out next month, queries why the Pill is so readily prescribed across the developed world when its negative side- effects are so frequent and sometimes fatal, and its effectiveness in preventing pregnancy less than perfect.
The authors, Jane Bennett and Alexandra Pope, interviewed thousands of women to illustrate the Pill's many downsides, showing that most women take the Pill unquestioningly because we believe that suppressing our bodies' natural hormones - our fertility - with synthetic hormones, is actually the natural thing to do.
'For young women exploring their contraceptive choices today, the Pill is often presented as the only responsible way to manage their fertility,' they write. 'The Pill, by its hormonal action, impacts profoundly on all our organs and bodily systems in order to have its effect on our fertility.'
Certainly had I known that taking the Pill for four to five years would result in a five-year wait to get my menstrual cycle back to normal, I never would have taken it in the first place.
At 17 my skin broke out in some very ugly acne. Having been spared this curse during puberty, I optimistically expected a future of unblemished skin. Instead, I suddenly found myself with sore, inflamed patches across my cheeks, chin and jawline.
I was embarrassed and it felt uncomfortable. Make-up clogged around the spots. Even the Max Factor Pan Sticks we were so fond of back then didn't provide enough coverage. Topical creams simply dried out the skin around the blemishes, surrounding the red bumps with flaky, scaly skin.
I went to ask the advice of my GP, probably my first visit since childhood inoculations. He was in his mid-30s, and I couldn't help noticing he had a few pimples straining through his ginger beard himself.
Would I be cursed with acne all my adult life? Thankfully not: in a few minutes he had written out a prescription for a contraceptive pill called Dianette.
Dianette appeared on the UK market in 1987. By 1990 its acne-clearing qualities had received the thumbs up from the medical profession and the media.
By February 1997, around the same time it was first prescribed for me, a 17-year-old girl from Great Yarmouth died of a blood clot on the lung six weeks into a course of Dianette.
Christina Robinson's death was the fifth case in ten years in which Dianette had been linked to a blood clot. Like me, Robinson was prescribed Dianette to treat her acne.
'We searched in vain for a Pill that didn't completely kill all sexual desire'
Last week, a study in the British Medical Journal of 26 different oral contraceptives linked the Pill with an increased risk of developing deep vein thrombosis (DVT), supporting a number of previous studies.
With Dianette, the risk increases by a staggering seven times.
My mother had heard about the dangers of Dianette early on and began to complain about my using it.
I smoked and was to take several long distance flights during my gap year, both of which contribute to the risk of a DVT, and she was worried.
Who was she to brief against my body when a GP had prescribed this medication? That's my mother the paediatrician, by the way, who ran family planning clinics for many years while I was growing up.
I certainly got my comeuppance for rebelling against her wisdom and experience in this instance. But at the time, as far as I was concerned, taking the Pill had nothing but up sides - an additional benefit for me was that it suppressed my unruly cycle.
My periods had always been long, heavy and unspeakably painful. I would wake up at around 4am on the first morning with an ache in my lower back that felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it while I was sleeping. I would double up, hugging my swollen tummy, for a few hours.
As soon as daylight came I would go in search of some Ibuprofen and take far more than the recommended dosage for the next eight or ten days.
The Pill regulated the length and flow of my periods to manageable levels, though it never helped much with the pain. I could also take it back to back to avoid periods altogether, which I did for eight months during my gap year.
I spent the next three years with clear skin and practically period free.
What wasn't to like? The weight-gain, for starters. I wasn't skinny in the first place, so the additional half stone was not welcome. On the upside, my boobs were bigger and if I ever needed to drop some weight quickly to squeeze into a certain outfit, I could just come off the Pill for a week or two.
Nearly all of my friends spent some time in their late teens and early 20s on the Pill. Ten years on, every one of us has a story to tell about our experience with the most popular contraception in the world.
Some hated it immediately, when they realised their sudden weeps and rages were Pill-induced. Others had difficulty conceiving when they came off it. Of those who realised the Pill had wiped out their sex drive, one friend moved from Microgynon to Dianette to Ovranette in search of her lost libido, only finally recovering it when she stopped taking the Pill altogether.
Another tried various brands including Ovranette and Triordinal, both of which, she remembers, 'killed' her sexual desire.
Several raced through three or four different brands of Pill, certain they would eventually find one which didn't wipe out their sex drive.
A friend who took Microgynon for three years from the age of 18 remembers that it sent her 'mental' each month. At the time she blamed it on the unsettled nature of university life.
Another started on Ovranette while at sixth-form college and noticed her usual pre-menstrual low-level moodswings escalate into angry, tearful tantrums.
Looking back, my first two years at university were far from calm. I attributed-this to the combined stresses of study, late nights out and far too many takeaways and alcopops. Bennett and Pope might well suggest that my irritable and dramatic behaviour at university was down to the Dianette.
Ultimately, I decided to come off it simply because I reasoned that it couldn't be good for you to pump fake hormones into your body every single day for the foreseeable future. I tried to stop twice. The first time was when I was 21 and moving to Spain, but my skin flared up almost immediately and I returned to the Dianette.
At 23 I managed a year off it, but then I moved to London and, once again, my skin became spotty, and vanity overruled my good intentions.
In the end I stopped taking Dianette for good in the summer of 2004. Five whole years later, I have just had three manageable, regular periods in a row for the first time since starting the Pill.
The first couple of years of infrequent periods passed without my noticing. I then started to wonder if I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which affects one in ten women and can, but doesn't necessarily, impact upon fertility.
A blood test ruled this out. It was then suggested to me I might suffer from hypothyroidism, a symptom of which is irregular periods. It turned out that this was the case, but whether the sluggish thyroid or the lack of periods came first, no one has been able to confirm.
Missing periods seemed like a small sacrifice for those years of smooth, clear skin. But now when I read about women being advised to take fertility 'MoTs' at 30, an age I am fast approaching, I worry that maybe I made the wrong choice after all. What if taking the Pill does affect your ability to conceive?
Bennett and Pope's analysis of the fallout of our addiction to the Pill is bleak. Probably most worrying are the various ways it can impact upon fertility. According to the book: ' Contraception methods based on the idea that your cycles and fertility are a problem, except when you want to conceive, are by definition not going to be fertility friendly.'
They also link the contraceptive to thrombosis, depression, liver function, weight gain, a loss of libido, migraines, DVT, brittle bones, pulmonary embolism and even compromising the health of your unborn baby, should you conceive shortly after stopping.
At present, the British Government is exploring alternatives to the Pill, including the jab and the implant, both of which use synthetic hormones to suppress fertility, just as the Pill does.
However, as they are introduced into your system semi-permanently, they are a more effective contraceptive than the Pill.
The jab is usually injected into a muscle in the bottom and lasts for 12 weeks. The implant is a small tube which is implanted into the upper arm and lasts for up to three years. The Pill is described as being 99 per cent effective, but only if taken correctly - missed Pills or illness can mean you aren't protected.
More than six women in 100 conceive in this way each year.
Although the jab and implant undoubtedly offer effective contraception, is there still a high price to pay for the women who take it?
One of the methods being trialled, which may be available on the NHS by next summer, is a self-injection called Depo-Provera, even though a significant risk of irreversible loss of bone density comes with its use.
So what are the alternatives? There are condoms and diaphragms, and a lower dose hormone treatment called the Nuva Ring, which many women prefer to the Pill.
Bennett and Pope encourage a return to natural methods - monitoring our cycles to find out when we're at our most fertile. That remains a risky business, though, if you can't deal with an unplanned pregnancy.
There is no perfect solution. But the Pill has been around for half a century: it's time we stopped thinking of it as the default contraceptive.
By Sophie Morris
I was born in 1980, a couple of decades after the contraceptive pill gave women a longed-for control over their own sex lives and fertility.
By the mid-Nineties, however, fears about HIV and other sexually transmitted infections were in full flow.
At school we were advised to use condoms in all circumstances. I don't remember a single discussion about the contraceptive pill. I suppose it was assumed that, as teenagers, we were too young to consider using it.
So why is it that around 3.7 million women in the UK are currently taking 'the Pill', and around 100 million worldwide? The keenest uptake is among the young. An incredible 64 per cent of women aged between 20 and 24 are on the Pill, more than in any other age group.
The reason is the readiness with which it is prescribed by GPs, who often fail to offer alternatives. The Pill is widely accepted as the most effective form of contraceptive but it is also prescribed for a number of other complaints such as acne, irregular or heavy periods, period pain and polycystic ovarian syndrome.
In short the benefit of having sex without the fear of pregnancy (or the hassle of romance-killing condoms) is sold as a fair trade off to any of the many side-effects shared by various brands of Pill - weight gain, irritability-depression, anxiety, anger, loss of sex drive, migraines not to mention rumoured links to breast cancer and fatal blood clots.
But is it a fair trade off? The Pill: Are You Sure It's For You?, a new book out next month, queries why the Pill is so readily prescribed across the developed world when its negative side- effects are so frequent and sometimes fatal, and its effectiveness in preventing pregnancy less than perfect.
The authors, Jane Bennett and Alexandra Pope, interviewed thousands of women to illustrate the Pill's many downsides, showing that most women take the Pill unquestioningly because we believe that suppressing our bodies' natural hormones - our fertility - with synthetic hormones, is actually the natural thing to do.
'For young women exploring their contraceptive choices today, the Pill is often presented as the only responsible way to manage their fertility,' they write. 'The Pill, by its hormonal action, impacts profoundly on all our organs and bodily systems in order to have its effect on our fertility.'
Certainly had I known that taking the Pill for four to five years would result in a five-year wait to get my menstrual cycle back to normal, I never would have taken it in the first place.
At 17 my skin broke out in some very ugly acne. Having been spared this curse during puberty, I optimistically expected a future of unblemished skin. Instead, I suddenly found myself with sore, inflamed patches across my cheeks, chin and jawline.
I was embarrassed and it felt uncomfortable. Make-up clogged around the spots. Even the Max Factor Pan Sticks we were so fond of back then didn't provide enough coverage. Topical creams simply dried out the skin around the blemishes, surrounding the red bumps with flaky, scaly skin.
I went to ask the advice of my GP, probably my first visit since childhood inoculations. He was in his mid-30s, and I couldn't help noticing he had a few pimples straining through his ginger beard himself.
Would I be cursed with acne all my adult life? Thankfully not: in a few minutes he had written out a prescription for a contraceptive pill called Dianette.
Dianette appeared on the UK market in 1987. By 1990 its acne-clearing qualities had received the thumbs up from the medical profession and the media.
By February 1997, around the same time it was first prescribed for me, a 17-year-old girl from Great Yarmouth died of a blood clot on the lung six weeks into a course of Dianette.
Christina Robinson's death was the fifth case in ten years in which Dianette had been linked to a blood clot. Like me, Robinson was prescribed Dianette to treat her acne.
'We searched in vain for a Pill that didn't completely kill all sexual desire'
Last week, a study in the British Medical Journal of 26 different oral contraceptives linked the Pill with an increased risk of developing deep vein thrombosis (DVT), supporting a number of previous studies.
With Dianette, the risk increases by a staggering seven times.
My mother had heard about the dangers of Dianette early on and began to complain about my using it.
I smoked and was to take several long distance flights during my gap year, both of which contribute to the risk of a DVT, and she was worried.
Who was she to brief against my body when a GP had prescribed this medication? That's my mother the paediatrician, by the way, who ran family planning clinics for many years while I was growing up.
I certainly got my comeuppance for rebelling against her wisdom and experience in this instance. But at the time, as far as I was concerned, taking the Pill had nothing but up sides - an additional benefit for me was that it suppressed my unruly cycle.
My periods had always been long, heavy and unspeakably painful. I would wake up at around 4am on the first morning with an ache in my lower back that felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it while I was sleeping. I would double up, hugging my swollen tummy, for a few hours.
As soon as daylight came I would go in search of some Ibuprofen and take far more than the recommended dosage for the next eight or ten days.
The Pill regulated the length and flow of my periods to manageable levels, though it never helped much with the pain. I could also take it back to back to avoid periods altogether, which I did for eight months during my gap year.
I spent the next three years with clear skin and practically period free.
What wasn't to like? The weight-gain, for starters. I wasn't skinny in the first place, so the additional half stone was not welcome. On the upside, my boobs were bigger and if I ever needed to drop some weight quickly to squeeze into a certain outfit, I could just come off the Pill for a week or two.
Nearly all of my friends spent some time in their late teens and early 20s on the Pill. Ten years on, every one of us has a story to tell about our experience with the most popular contraception in the world.
Some hated it immediately, when they realised their sudden weeps and rages were Pill-induced. Others had difficulty conceiving when they came off it. Of those who realised the Pill had wiped out their sex drive, one friend moved from Microgynon to Dianette to Ovranette in search of her lost libido, only finally recovering it when she stopped taking the Pill altogether.
Another tried various brands including Ovranette and Triordinal, both of which, she remembers, 'killed' her sexual desire.
Several raced through three or four different brands of Pill, certain they would eventually find one which didn't wipe out their sex drive.
A friend who took Microgynon for three years from the age of 18 remembers that it sent her 'mental' each month. At the time she blamed it on the unsettled nature of university life.
Another started on Ovranette while at sixth-form college and noticed her usual pre-menstrual low-level moodswings escalate into angry, tearful tantrums.
Looking back, my first two years at university were far from calm. I attributed-this to the combined stresses of study, late nights out and far too many takeaways and alcopops. Bennett and Pope might well suggest that my irritable and dramatic behaviour at university was down to the Dianette.
Ultimately, I decided to come off it simply because I reasoned that it couldn't be good for you to pump fake hormones into your body every single day for the foreseeable future. I tried to stop twice. The first time was when I was 21 and moving to Spain, but my skin flared up almost immediately and I returned to the Dianette.
At 23 I managed a year off it, but then I moved to London and, once again, my skin became spotty, and vanity overruled my good intentions.
In the end I stopped taking Dianette for good in the summer of 2004. Five whole years later, I have just had three manageable, regular periods in a row for the first time since starting the Pill.
The first couple of years of infrequent periods passed without my noticing. I then started to wonder if I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which affects one in ten women and can, but doesn't necessarily, impact upon fertility.
A blood test ruled this out. It was then suggested to me I might suffer from hypothyroidism, a symptom of which is irregular periods. It turned out that this was the case, but whether the sluggish thyroid or the lack of periods came first, no one has been able to confirm.
Missing periods seemed like a small sacrifice for those years of smooth, clear skin. But now when I read about women being advised to take fertility 'MoTs' at 30, an age I am fast approaching, I worry that maybe I made the wrong choice after all. What if taking the Pill does affect your ability to conceive?
Bennett and Pope's analysis of the fallout of our addiction to the Pill is bleak. Probably most worrying are the various ways it can impact upon fertility. According to the book: ' Contraception methods based on the idea that your cycles and fertility are a problem, except when you want to conceive, are by definition not going to be fertility friendly.'
They also link the contraceptive to thrombosis, depression, liver function, weight gain, a loss of libido, migraines, DVT, brittle bones, pulmonary embolism and even compromising the health of your unborn baby, should you conceive shortly after stopping.
At present, the British Government is exploring alternatives to the Pill, including the jab and the implant, both of which use synthetic hormones to suppress fertility, just as the Pill does.
However, as they are introduced into your system semi-permanently, they are a more effective contraceptive than the Pill.
The jab is usually injected into a muscle in the bottom and lasts for 12 weeks. The implant is a small tube which is implanted into the upper arm and lasts for up to three years. The Pill is described as being 99 per cent effective, but only if taken correctly - missed Pills or illness can mean you aren't protected.
More than six women in 100 conceive in this way each year.
Although the jab and implant undoubtedly offer effective contraception, is there still a high price to pay for the women who take it?
One of the methods being trialled, which may be available on the NHS by next summer, is a self-injection called Depo-Provera, even though a significant risk of irreversible loss of bone density comes with its use.
So what are the alternatives? There are condoms and diaphragms, and a lower dose hormone treatment called the Nuva Ring, which many women prefer to the Pill.
Bennett and Pope encourage a return to natural methods - monitoring our cycles to find out when we're at our most fertile. That remains a risky business, though, if you can't deal with an unplanned pregnancy.
There is no perfect solution. But the Pill has been around for half a century: it's time we stopped thinking of it as the default contraceptive.