Side effects of birth control pills
Birth control pills have almost become a normal thing, a universal thing for girls to be on today to such an extent that you almost don't question them. At least I didn't when I got a prescription for them myself. I was 17 years old and had had my first boyfriend, so my doctor saw it almost as the next natural step in the process of becoming a woman, that I should then take birth control pills to protect against pregnancy.
Birth control pills are almost seen by many doctors as a natural, universal part of becoming women. So it was almost completely natural just to have to take birth control pills, and I almost also think that there was something mature about taking them. I was almost proud that I took them.
So I didn't really give much thought to the fact that birth control pills are actually artificial hormones steroids for women. Birth control pills are artificial hormones – we must not forget that! The pills make the body's own natural hormone production go dormant in favor of an artificial one of its kind. They remove our connection to our menstrual cycle and our own body's hormone production.
That is why I think it is so important to talk about the side effects of birth control pills. In this blog post, I want to question the birth control pill.
Birth control pills and its ingrained part of a teenage girl's life
When we as a young teenage girl come on the pill, we have not yet gained an understanding and certainty about our own menstrual cycle, wisdom about sex and eroticism and our own connection to our female body. Everything is new and exciting. But what the pill does is take that wisdom, that connection, that natural connection away and replace it with a chemical one of its kind.
Birth control pills are so ingrained in our culture today that girls in high school or even elementary school start on them and stay on them for four, five or ten years or even 15 and 20 years to come. It is not very unusual for a woman to be on birth control pills from the age of 18 to 35, and it is therefore during the period when a woman is at her peak in terms of fertility that she should become pregnant and carry a child.
Birth control pill suppression of natural menstruation
Birth control pills are almost taken as another selling vitamin pill. Actually, there are many girls who see the birth control pill as something good, a universal thing that helps to make the cycle easier, removes skin problems, reduces menstrual pain and simply gives greater control over menstruation. After all, you can completely suppress your period with birth control pills if you want to, and many girls don't question it, because menstruation has long been taboo and seen as something disgusting, as "shit" and as something, that just have to be overcome or completely removed because it can cause so much discomfort. I've talked about menstruation in other videos, so I won't do that right here.
But you really need to know that although you can suppress your period with birth control pills, birth control pills actually suppress menstruation no matter what. For the period that you have when you are on the pill, it is a false period. It is not a natural bleeding, but it is a bleeding that occurs when you stop taking the pill for the mandatory seven days during your pill cycle. It is a bleeding that occurs through a chemical withdrawal. When you stop during that period of putting chemistry into your body, then the bleeding comes.
Birth control pills and artificial cycle
The artificial hormones in birth control pills and also in other hormonal forms of contraception actually trick the body into thinking it is pregnant all the time. The medicine takes control of the reproductive process by thickening the cervical fluid so that sperm cannot enter and ovulation does not occur at all.
When you are on the pill, your cycle is exactly 28 days, even if it is rarely like that in nature. Naturally, a woman's cycle will fluctuate from cycle to cycle. It can be between 26 and 32 days, but some also have a cycle of up to 40 and 50 days. While it may feel convenient and easy to have a cycle that is exactly 28 days, it is definitely not natural. And there is a huge loss that many women realize today, namely that birth control pills over time transform the body into an efficient little infertile machine .
The pill deprives a woman of her connection to her body and biology
The fact is that birth control pills give women control over their bodies for the first time ever in history. You can see it as part of the liberation of women, that we have gained more control over our bodies and that we can be like the men; we don't need to get pregnant. Of course, birth control pills mean that you can have sex all the time, without having to think about pregnancy, which of course can be a big advantage, but what are we really giving up by doing so?
What many women are realizing today is that birth control pills actually make us forget our biology: being a woman, being a fertile woman who naturally ovulates, bleeds and goes through different phases of her cycle. And when you have been on birth control pills since you were a teenager and find out that you want to be pregnant, e.g. after you have completed your education, got a good job, earn enough to support a family and be a good mother and of course have found a husband. It might happen in the 30s, and then you go off the pill. This is where the dilemma arises! Namely that you find it difficult to get pregnant!
Suddenly the anxiety from the teenage years about pregnancy has changed from getting pregnant, "oh no am I pregnant?" to actually the fear of whether you can get pregnant at all! And then there is the fact that many women have to go through fertility treatment, as we see today.
So the indirect side effect of the pill is that it turns fertile healthy living women into infertile machines. But even more, it has created a huge industry, the pharmaceutical industry, that makes money off of women's reproductive systems. And is it true women's liberation?
You have a choice!
As a girl, you have a choice. You don't have to fear pregnancy - all the time, because you really can't get pregnant all the time during your cycle. There is a period in your cycle from during your period to 4-6 days before ovulation when the likelihood of getting pregnant is very very low. So there are some days in your cycle where the likelihood of getting pregnant is almost non-existent, so why the hell haven't we been told by our doctor?
The wisdom of your beautiful magical feminine cycle takes the pill away from you – at a very young age. And I think that's a shame.
Birth control pills also push our understanding of being fertile biological feminine beings
Birth control pills have created a generation of girls who are out of touch with their biological bodies and thereby also our connection to our nature. It is natural for a woman to be able to create, to be able to create with her womb, to be fertilized and create a child. It is very natural and we must realize that it is possible to get pregnant when we have sex with a male person. It is a woman's nature to get pregnant.
Society today almost dictates that we all have to educate ourselves, go to school, work, earn money... It doesn't matter if we are women or men, we all have to work. But in older times, the woman's role was not to provide and be active all the time, but her role was to take care of the home, take care of the children, cook and simply be in her body, be in nature, breastfeed her child, be with other women and take care of the family. And it does not mean that the woman is oppressed in that way. But that she is in deep connection with her own cycle and the wisdom of her body instead of constantly having to push her body to be a man when we are not. We go through ebbs and flows every cycle, up and down, in and out, we contract and expand, we are very extroverted during ovulation and then introverted during menstruation. We simply flow with the energies that are within our own universe within our womb.
What happens with birth control pills and other hormonal forms of birth control is that it has taken away our connection to our body. This means that we have almost become more masculine creatures who can be active all the time. We can have sex all the time without getting pregnant. We can work all the time. A girl on the pill does not go through the 4 phases of her cycle in the same way, where you are at your highest energy during ovulation and very low in your energy during menstruation. When you are on birth control pills, you are not in the same way with your body's internal rhythm - and just that in itself can give you a feeling of depression.
Birth control pills and reduced sex drive and sensitivity
A side effect of birth control pills and other hormonal forms of contraception is actually depression and also reduced sex drive and reduced sensitivity. It may be because of the artificial hormones, but also because birth control pills increase copper in the body and create mineral and hormone imbalance.
Birth control pills also affect the connection a woman can have with her partner. Birth control pills are said to change a woman's attractiveness. The artificial hormones actually make you change what you are attracted to. That means if you're on the pill right now and meet a guy you're attracted to. Then it could actually just be the birth control pills that make you attracted to that exact type of guy. Birth control pills change attraction so much that you can actually stop being attracted to your partner when you finally stop using birth control pills. Which is not good for you or the men at all.
The effects of birth control pills on boys and men
Psychologically, boys and men can also be affected by the fact that women take birth control pills all the time and therefore cannot get pregnant. It trains men to be able to ejaculate when they want to. It therefore deprives them of the art of learning to control their own ejaculation, which in the long run means that they actually have poorer stamina during sex. Taking birth control pills also removes the vulnerability during sex, which you want to be there to really have an intimate, fantastic orgasmic experience with your partner. Birth control pills have made it so that you can just have sex right and left, both because you are protected against pregnancy, of course not against venereal diseases, but you are also not in contact with your body in the same way as if you did not take birth control pills, and it can actually make you make some choices, go to bed with someone you wouldn't have gone to bed with if you were in better contact with yourself and your body and uterus.
I kind of see taking birth control pills and hormonal forms of contraception as a way to remove the woman from her reproductive system and confuse her and make her sort of conform to what society wants her to do, namely to get an education and work in a indifferent job. Many young people, incl. myself, can walk around maybe a little confused about what to do with your life, can't really find your place. There is so much to achieve, go to school and educate yourself, that actually what really matters gets pushed into the background. There is a lot of focus on drinking and partying, for which there must of course also be room. But I just mean that I think we've gotten pretty far away from our nature and biology to such an extent that it can take away our real purpose in life, and that must be to form healthy loving relationships with each other and create a family. And the way I see it, I think there is so much drama among us girls. When there is the slightest discord or discussion, it's so easy to say that you never want to see each other again, and I almost think that the drama that can unfold between girls comes from us being influenced by these steroids, birth control pills and hormone-based contraceptives, and it also comes from the fact that we have copper coils, because copper coils are also hormone-based and screw up our hormones and bodies big time. And it may well be that you have heard that copper coils are natural and hormone-free, but in fact they are not at all, and I have also talked about the 'why' of that in other blog posts , so I will not elaborate on that here.
Let me know what you think? Which form of contraception do you use or are you considering using? You can read much more about my experience with different forms of contraception in the links below.
I especially like the cycle computer Daysy .
I'm sending you so much erotic love your way!
<3
Helen L.