by Dr. Lara Briden
on July 28, 2015
Doctors, please stop prescribing the birth control Pill willy-nilly to teenage girls. It is only a band-aid solution for symptoms like acne and PCOS, and as I have written here many times, it does nothing to correct underlying hormone balance.
Never mind the hair loss, depression, and weight gain that hormonal birth control causes. There is something else of great importance for young women: The Pill drastically reduces sex drive, possibly forever.
This ‘forever’ part is very worrying, especially when we are talking about teenage girls. Researcher Dr Irwin Goldstein puts it this way:
“When [women] stopped taking the pill, we fully expected their sexual function to recover. But we weren’t seeing that.” [1]
Via: areeya_ann | Shutterstock
Dr Goldstein’s research showed that even brief Pill use (few months) can cause a permanent abnormal elevation of a protein called SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin), which affects testosterone levels.
If a girl starts the Pill at 15, will she never — in her lifetime? — know what it is like to have a normal libido? Should we not care about the lost libido of young women?
A quick internet search brings up a few expert quotes reassuring us that this ‘Pill-libido-effect’ is a myth. I would love to believe that, and yet, I see the problem again and again in clinic. I speak with young women who suffer their low libido quietly. They have been told that it ‘could not be the Pill,’ so they silently blame themselves instead. It makes me sad. Women should not have to put up with it. I believe that all women — even young women — have the right to a libido.
I hope that there are some of you Pill-takers out there who have not had your libido squashed. If so, then I look forward to hearing from you in the comments section. I WANT to be convinced that the problem is not as bad as I think it is.
Via: Samuel Borges Photography | Shutterstock
Here are a few Non-Pill solutions below. I will go into more detail about treatment in coming posts.
Non-Hormonal Help For Period Problems
Heavy Periods: Anti-inflammatories like turmeric and Ibuprofen can reduce menstrual flow by half. Please see my Very Heavy Periods post.
Period Pain: Stop eating inflammatory foods like sugar and milk products, and take the natural muscle relaxant magnesium.
Acne: Again, stop eating sugar and milk. Talk to a doctor about a zinc supplement. Please read my acne post.
PMS: See my PMS post.
Non-Hormonal Birth Control
As I explained in my last Pill rant, the best contraceptive methods are condoms, fertility awareness and non-hormonal IUDs.
Condoms are fantastic birth control, and they also protect against disease. For added security, please learn to recognize your ‘egg-white fertile vaginal mucus.’ Fertile mucus occurs for just a few days per month, and when you see it, that is just the time when you don’t want a broken condom. You should abstain completely for those few days.
Yours in Health,
Natural health evangelist, hormone expert, and author of Period Repair Manual, Lara Briden first worked as an evolutionary biologist at the University of Calgary. She went on to graduate as a naturopathic doctor from the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine (CCNM) in Toronto. Her love of science and the natural world has informed the way she practices medicine. During her nearly twenty years of practice, thousands of patients have entrusted her with their hormone stories. She shares what she’s learned at larabriden.com.