Do we know enough about contraception?

As a sexually active 25 year old who is trying to lead a natural and environmentally friendly lifestyle I can honestly say I have struggled and given a lot of though to contraception. And this less about my opinions and more about facts, because I feel that every woman should make her own choices. But we do need to know what we are choosing and, unfortunately, a lot of times we don't.

We probably all know that majority of birth control is designed for women. But do we know why there is such a lack of make birth control options available? Well, in their episode of Explained, Sex, Netflix goes on to explain this matter in very simple and straightforward terms:

"When approving a drug the FDA weights its risks against the risks of not taking that drug. And men unlike women don't personally face the risks that come with pregnancy and childbirth, like blood clots."

So, the challenge is that men birth control tend to not pass trial phases as taking any hormonal contraception still increases the risk oft blood clots, approximately from 0.05% to 0.10%, which is almost double. Men don't carry the risk of having a pregnancy related or postpartum related blood clot, so their risk without contraception is always at 0.05% (approximately), but taking hormonal contraception can almost double it as well as introducing other side effects that they don't currently face.

Now, as much as logically it is explained and I understand in simple terms why this has been the case, the feminist voice in me just feels like saying "Well that, sucks!". But I guess we are here today - I believe we should strive for a better tomorrow and rather than only considering the medical black and white factors of our race and making an informed decision based on only this data we will find a way to make this better.

So, how many methods of birth control is there? Well, a few.

There is a page on contraceptionchoices.org where each currently available method of contraception is described so you get to make an informed choice. Or do you? From the first look it seems to cover all non permanent methods of contraception, so far so good. It's like going to a supermarket and making a shopping choice - all seem to outweigh the positives greatly to any side effects and, in my humble opinion, the site is rather biased towards less natural choices of contraception.

But lets have a closer look at the pill:

Don't get me wrong, I think the fact that today women do have a right to make a choice to take contraception and practice safe sex is amazing. It has allowed women to achieve so much more since the pill has become available - and this has been proven by studies, showing that the number of women getting a degree since the pill has been introduced, skyrocketed. So much so, that today, the percentage of women graduating is, in fact, higher, than men. So it's amazing, I will agree.

However, what I do find extremely disturbing is how freely the pill is being offered and prescribed to young teenagers every single day, most of the time to help cope with PMS or acne. This is not why the pill has been introduced and it is not why we should pump our bodies with hormones every day and change who we are. I personally have so many friends who have been prescribed the pill since the age of 15 (sometimes, even earlier) to help with PMS symptoms, but the trouble is we still know so little about the pill it is quite scary that, it seems, only the positive sides of it are being considered well.

There is a great and very factual book written about the pill by Dr. Sarah E. Hill, called 'How the pill changes everything' and I would definitely recommend reading it to everyone. What it does go on to tell the reader about is that changing the hormonal levels in your body is bound to affect your brain activity, and she proves it with some of her own research as well as drawing onto multiple different sources available. And I think we can all agree it makes sense, that your brain will start behaving differently if it's biological and chemical ingredients have changed. I mean, make bread for example - same ingredients but different proportions of them will give you completely different results. The fact is, the pill does not even use the same hormones naturally found in a woman's body. So now you're using substitute margarine instead of real butter. You get the gist.

There is one very important factor that I did want to mention about hormonal contraception that my GP has never spoken to me about and majority of (even NHS) officially approved websites do not seem to include this study into consideration:

In 2016 a Danish Study of a huge scale, compared to any other study before has published it's findings, stating that they found a strong positive correlation in between hormonal contraception use and the use of anti-depressants. It goes on to say that they found the correlation has been the highest among users of contraception who started using non-oral hormonal contraception in their adolescent years.

What is also worth noting is that any potential long term changes to your mental stage because of hormonal contraception is probably not going to be noticed straight away. So you may think that's just you changing over time and accept the changes, whatever they are. If they are positive - great. If they are negative, how are you going to monitor that and ensure you are aware of the changes? From my personal experience, I started using the pill at the age of 17 and did not see any negative results immediately. Only a couple of years later I thought that I started being less active and feel tired all of the time. I gained weight and did not make an effort to look attractive anymore. It took me a couple of years of using the pill to begin to think that maybe this is not my normal state and to stop using the pill to realise what a massive difference it made to me.

The most important thing to highlight in all this is that today there is many options for you available - and before making a rash decision you should really consider them all and choose the right one for you when the time is right. I, personally, feel that at this time of my life I do as much as I can to ensure that my hormone levels are affected in as little way as possible and maybe when the time is right, I may change the current birth control method into something else - which is also an option you should consider! Just because you have used one method for a really long time does not mean it is not worth exploring your options.