You may be wondering why you should bother with switching to a natural method of fertility management. If millions of women worldwide are using hormonal birth control, why not just do that too? After all, doctors prescribe it for all sorts of medical reasons, so can it really be harmful?
The short answer to the question of ‘why not just take the pill’ is: because there is another way. And it’s a way that works. In fact, I’d like to turn the question back to the reader and ask, why not just manage fertility the natural way? Why do you NEED to take a pill / insert a device / constantly ingest powerful synthetic hormones for your entire fertile lifetime? Is that really best for your body?
Many women are led to believe that if they don’t take the pill then they will become pregnant. This misconception typically starts sometime around gradeschool. It is usually presented as a black-and-white, either/or, all-or-nothing situation. So the natural conclusion is to “be responsible” and “protect yourself” by using birth control. The problem is, the pill has serious consequences for your body and your overall health, especially for women who start taking it during teenage years when their reproductive systems are still in development. Also troubling is that most women do not fully understand how the pill actually works and are not always provided the full details before they start ingesting the hormones.
I suggest that if women truly want to “be responsible” then we need to find out the truth about what these synthetic hormones are doing in the body and make a fully informed choice about our method of avoiding pregnancy. In this article I will present six reasons to consider natural alternatives to the pill.
Lawsuits:
SO many lawsuits involving birth control use are available for the public to read about online. I encourage you to do your own fact-finding research. Here’s just one example: Per this 2013 Chicago Tribune article, “Yaz and other pills containing the hormone drospirenone have drawn a flood of litigation over reports of deaths, strokes, pulmonary embolisms, gallbladder disease, elevated potassium levels and other problems. Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, the leading manufacturer of the drugs, as of July (2013) had settled the claims of 6,760 U.S. plaintiffs for a total of $1.4 billion.”
You read that right: Bayer paid people $1.4 billion-with-a-b dollars! And that’s already years old data, with one company and one pill. There are many other lawsuit examples out there, involving other hormonal birth control types – not just the pill. Conclusion: this is not an isolated case, not just one woman’s story gone viral, not just a handful of people trying to make money off of the giant pharma companies – rather, it demonstrates there is a systemic problem that is often swept under the rug for women being offered hormonal birth control drugs.
Effectiveness questions:
Many of us know someone who has gotten pregnant while on the pill. It’s easy to dismiss that by saying, ‘well, she must have not taken it that day’. We are often quick to judge that it couldn’t be the pill, it must be the woman. I personally know of at least two cases where that’s not true – the women who have unintendedly gotten pregnant emphatically confirm that they took the pill every single day exactly as directed. According to national health statistics from the CDC, the percentage of US women who get pregnant while on the pill is 8.7%. That’s a bit different from the “98-99% effectiveness” claims you may have heard about the Pill.
But, you may be thinking, ‘those examples are pretty rare, so what’s your point?’ My point is this: by “relying” on the pill you are inherently accepting some level of risk that you could get pregnant. Some women don’t realize that the pill is not completely effective because we are led to believe otherwise and it’s more convenient to believe we are “safe” while using the pill. The only guarantee is complete abstinence, can we agree on that much? So let’s all acknowledge that there is always a risk. Once we can get on the same page about that, now it becomes a question of how much risk you want to accept.
Let me be clear: I’m not advocating that you do nothing, far from it! Natural methods of fertility management are not at all about doing “nothing” and just taking your chances. Instead, natural methods allow you to take an active role in understanding how your cycle actually works and then make conscious choices that reflect your desire to get pregnant or not. NFP allows you to discover the times during your cycle when pregnancy is possible or likely and when it’s not – with no side effects whatsoever.
Speaking of, let’s discuss the common side effects of taking the pill.
Side Effects:
Whole books have been written on this subject.
Birth control pills are powerful prescription drugs containing very high doses of synthetic hormones.
Does anyone else find it odd that despite all the current emphasis on eating healthy, including organic/free range/non-hormone meats, there’s not much questioning about why so many women are voluntarily ingesting a substance many times stronger than anything contained in such meat, and they’re ingesting it every single day, for years at a time – all the while being told that is “healthy” and “normal”?
The side effects of hormonal birth control are real. They are not all in your head as some doctors may have you believe. And these side effects don’t have to be part of your everyday life. When you sign up to taking hormonal birth control the question is not will you experience side effects; rather, the question is which side effects will you experience.
Keep in mind there are many side effects women experience while on birth control drugs, AND there are other side effects many women experience when they later come off the drugs. More troubling, many women report that the side effects experienced while OFF the drugs often extend for a lengthy period of time. It is common for women who come off the pill to have to wait several months (or in some cases, a full year or more!) before their regular cycles return, if they do return at all.
Some of the known side effects include (in alphabetical order):
Acne ● Breakthrough Bleeding ● Breast tenderness ● Depression ● Frequent yeast infections ● Headaches ● Irregular periods ● Lower libido ● Migraines ● Nausea ● Nutrient Depletion ● Oily Skin ● Vaginal discharge ● Vaginal dryness ● Weight Gain
These side effects are often downplayed by prescribing physicians and also by the drug manufacturers, and many women report not fully understanding how the pill works before taking it. Women are told they should just accept these side effects as part of daily life and are usually expected to “just deal with it”.
Other more serious problems have also resulted from taking hormonal birth control, including:
Blood clots ● Increased risks of cancer ● Stroke
Side effects commonly reported after coming off the pill include:
Extremely heavy or painful periods ● Fatigue ● Inability to get pregnant / Infertility ● Irregular or no menses ● Mood swings ● Weight Gain
As mentioned, these symptoms can extend for several months or even years in some cases.
So, is it really worth it to do all of this to your body when there is another drug-free way of fertility management that works? What if you could learn to confidently use the natural family planning method instead, like so many other women? What if you truly didn’t need drugs like the pill or any other devices, for that matter, at all?
Another reason to avoid hormonal birth control methods involves a less tangible but no less important aspect: the emotional toll.
Emotional Damage:
The appeal of convenience associated with “just taking a pill” for birth control can lead women seeking to avoid pregnancy to wonder why the burden rests only on their shoulders. Many women live in constant fear of getting pregnant, falsely believing that pregnancy is possible at ANY time in their cycle. (It’s not.) A lack of understanding about menstrual cycle basics creates unnecessary anxiety and suffering and is all too common.
For some reason, health education classes most of us passed in grade school led us to believe pregnancy was possible with any one act of unprotected sex. Where that idea started I don’t exactly know. But imagine my surprise when, in my mid 20s, I finally learned the truth about menstrual cycles: there are only a handful of days when pregnancy is possible.
How might your own experience have been different if you had known the real facts back then? What, if anything, would you have done differently?
Many women currently on the pill or those contemplating whether to start taking the pill report some inner sense of concern about the concept of taking the drug for such a long time. It’s a gut feeling that some of us can’t fully articulate. But it tugs at the back of our minds suggesting the pill may not be the magical solution it is claimed to be. Doctors will say the pill is safe, even for long term use, and brush aside patient concerns. We are told to quiet that inner voice / gut because it can’t be that bad if everyone is doing it, right? Years later, after experiencing the negative side effects, many women say that they wish they had never taken the pill in the first place. These feelings of guilt can and do take an emotional toll and shouldn’t be easily dismissed.
Women on the pill come to their doctors with complaints of moodiness, depression, anxiety and are then prescribed more drugs for those symptoms, each with additional side effects. Some describe feeling of general “fogginess” and just plain unhappiness. Most women (and their doctors) do not make the connection that their emotional symptoms are directly related to the pill they’ve been instructed to take every day. Yet those who do eventually decide to stop taking birth control pills are often amazed to rediscover their old selves again, with many of these symptoms disappearing completely.
Choosing whether or not to take the pill is a complex decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. And the emotional toll that can result certainly shouldn’t be ignored.
How the pill actually works: suppressing a natural function
Doctors are often prescribing the pill for reasons completely unrelated to managing fertility. Pill manufacturers claim it can clear up undesired acne, make your period “regular”, reduce PMS symptoms and eliminate painful cramps. But the pill doesn’t treat the underlying causes of these symptoms; it simply masks them.
The truth is, the pill works by disrupting the delicate balance of your endocrine system. It is designed to prevent ovulation, and it does this by shutting down the normal function of your ovaries. The pill floods your body with an unnatural amount of synthetic estrogen and progestin which causes the ovaries to stop releasing eggs. These synthetic steroids are not the same substances as the estrogen and progesterone that your body creates on its own. There are two other functions of the pill: it artificially thins the lining of your uterus (the endometrium), which is designed to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, and also changes the consistency of the mucus at your cervix, which is intended to prevent sperm from entering the fallopian tubes.
The pill essentially introduces toxins in your body. It is well documented that the pill is a known carcinogen. As in, it is in the same class as other awful chemicals like tobacco, asbestos, plutonium, and diesel exhaust, and is classified as a group 1 carcinogen according to the World Health Organization. Translation: birth control pills are “a known cancer-causing agent to humans.”
Many women mistakenly believe that the bleeding they experience while on the pill is just like regular menstruation. However, that bleeding is actually withdrawl bleeding. It is not a true menses. If it were then the pill wouldn’t be working because true menstruation is triggered by a drop in progesterone levels and its purpose is to shed a thickened lining of the uterus that is not needed if no egg implants. Women on the pill no longer create their own natural progesterone and hormone levels do not ebb and flow naturally; instead the pill overrides this by delivering one steady stream of synthetic steroids also called “artificial hormones.” Since the pill thins your endometrium in order to prevent implantation, the withdrawl bleeding during the placebo week will therefore be shorter and lighter than a true period.
One of my favorite quotes from Dr Janet Smith is “fertility is not a disease”. So why are women being told to shut down a healthy, natural, bodily function? And why are women being told this can happen with absolutely no consequences to overall health? The reproductive system does not operate in a vacuum; ingesting the powerful synthetic hormones to shut it down affects your entire body as a whole.
In contrast, natural methods of fertility management such as NFP are completely non-invasive and work with your body instead of harshly altering it or forcing it to function as it was not intended.
Religious/moral objections:
Lastly, there are moral reasons to avoid contraceptives. The pill is an abortifacient, meaning it will cause the body to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. Implantation cannot happen when the endometrium (uterine lining) is too thin, as the pill intentionally causes. Many Christian religions teach that life starts at conception of a fertilized egg. Although fertilization of an egg is indeed less likely for women taking birth control pills, in the percentage of cases when it does happen, the body would be forced to flush out any fertilized eggs (human persons) while implantation is prevented. I have included this line of reasoning here in the interest of completeness. This article is not intended to start (continue?) the abortion debate; rather, women should have all of the facts available to them before making a decision about a birth control method.
Conclusion
It can be hard to uncover real truth on the internet. And maybe you still think that the pill can’t be that bad, or maybe you or someone you know hasn’t had an extremely awful experience in using it, perhaps even for years on end. It’s so hard to tell if one person’s story does apply or will apply to you at some future point. All we can do is make the best decision we can with the information we have available.
As discussed, many (most?) of us have been led to believe that there are only two choices for modern women: use birth control or get pregnant. But that’s simply not true. The facts clearly demonstrate otherwise – and natural methods like NFP allow you to honor your body’s design while also allowing you to choose whether or not pregnancy is right for you at this time.
In the end, despite so many reasons to be concerned about the concept of taking a pill every day to “fix” our fertility, for some women it might still seem worth it – if you believed there was no other reliable option. So that’s why I want to make sure you walk away from this page knowing that NFP exists, NFP works, NFP is just as effective, and you truly don’t need a pill. There is another option for fertility management – one that you may not be as familiar with (yet!) – but do realize that thousands of women happily choose modern NFP methods instead of the often harmful alternatives.
I invite you to learn more about NFP and hope that this article was helpful – at the very least, to get the conversation started.
To your health,
~Kristy