Birth Control via App Finds Footing Under Political Radar

There is a problem with birth control that the media doesn't like to talk about. While millions of women take birth control, almost all of them eventually (or immediately) hate the side effects. So most women take these awful drugs only because they are seen as the best way to prevent pregnancy.

Cruising over to reddit's /r/birthcontrol now, this submission was from 16 hours ago:

> So because I was losing hair after I got my Mirena IUD like a labrador in summer, my gyno decided to put me on beyaz (the top anti-androgen) to try and stop that. however, we didn't take out mirena because she "wasn't sure that was what was causing it"... so basically I'm wondering if anyone else is in that situation? [...] > > - https://www.reddit.com/r/birthcontrol/comments/4orqo1/im_on_...

Beyaz is not an anti-androgen, it is a drug that uses the synthetic xeno-estrogen ethinyl estradiol, and the progestin drug Drospirenone. Progestins are forms of 'fake progesterone', and usually cause the body's progesterone production to decrease dramatically. Progesterone is also a brain hormone, so this is why women on birth control frequently get depressed.

My girlfriend was hurt by her doctor with birth control maybe 10 years before I met her. They said the depo-provera induced bleeding would stop, eventually. She let them give her a second 3-month injection, then a third 3-month injection... Then she decided the doctors were stupid, and stopped after the 3rd injection. That would've been about a year of direct iatrogenic injury. Maybe this drug directly contributed to her later mental health struggles.

She's amenorrheic right now... 3 or 4 years ago, in her late 20's, some stupid endocrinologists said that her hot flashes were because she was "going through menopause" (maybe that's not what the doctors actually said, but they didn't do anything to help resolve the complaints, so their medical advice was quite harmful, imho).

I'm well aware the my girlfriend could very well pop an egg out at any time. I expect her periods will restart as soon as the underlying condition is addressed. So I've taken out my sperm production using the old heat methods. It works, I've checked.

I like this site's take on the problem:

> Women’s unique health concerns are seen by Wall Street as opportunities for obscene profit. The development of the ‘hormonal’ birth control (so-called) started with good intentions. Science’s understanding of the steroid system has advanced since the 1950’s, and real Scientists now know that the fake-hormones used as ‘birth control’ cannot improve women’s health. But Wall Street has FDA-approved pills to sell and investors’ dividends to pay. The drugs are reasonably-effective at suppressing women’s fertility, but are defective if women’s complete health profile is taken into consideration too.

> Apologists for the hormonal birth control peddlers acknowledge that these drugs have potent side effects. The thinking seems to be “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”: while women are still maimed and killed by prescription birth control, it’s more important that the women who (probably) won’t be killed right away are able to use these drugs to keep babies away.

> The most blatant of Big Drug’s ‘hormonal’ rip-offs are the so-called “emergency contraceptive” pills, where profiteers sell women 1.5-cents of active ingredients for $50.

> WOMEN’S HEALTH: A Modern Tragedy, http://swindledandpimped.org/womens_health_a_modern_tragedy/

(edits: clarity, typos)

Agreed, though I was under the impression that the reasons birth control still requires a prescription is not entirely based in science.

If you take the politics and religion out of it (aka. you move outside of the USA) then some oral contraceptives require a prescription and some don't. Preventing pregnancy is quite easy -- screw with pretty much anything hormonal and you'll dramatically decrease the odds -- but doing that without causing unpleasant or dangerous side effects is much harder. Some formulations have had enough testing that we can say that they are generally safe; others should only be prescribed after a physician has ruled out certain risk factors.

The dangerous bit in this case is that there are many formulations which fall into the category of "generally safe, but if you experience X, Y, or Z then you should see a doctor" due to rare but dangerous side effects. In such cases there's no need to consult a physician before taking the drugs; but they should not be given to a patient who is "not comfortable visiting a doctor" and would not obtain medical care if such complications arose.

  >So I've taken out my sperm production using the old heat methods. It works, I've checked.

What does this mean? That you raise your .. body .. temperature to the point that potentially some sperm die?

In a consultation for a vasectomy, the urologist strongly wanted that alternative forms of birth control be used for several months as sperm already in the system - unless you're naturally not producing sperm, I doubt the viability of your methods.

Hundreds of millions also take those without negative side-effects.