The quick answer…

Yes! Your birth control is without a doubt ruining your health. Now let me explain.

When I got Engaged…

The first thing I did was run to the OB/GYN, lay myself flat on an uncomfortable table with my knees bent and feet in stirrups and get my first invasive pap smear, and then walk out of there with a prescription for a little pill that would forever change my life.

Wait what?…

That little pill is supposed to keep things the same right? I mean it prevents pregnancy which is the stable and consistent future I wanted for the time being. That’s what most of us were hoping for when we signed up to take a prescription drug for the rest of our known existence… Oh sure, there are those that take it for acne or hormone problems, but come on ladies! Let’s face it. Oral contraceptives are no more than a band-aid in any and all situations. Not only that, but they steal away our power to be informed about our bodies and to be able to respond to cues that something may be wrong (more on that in an upcoming post).

Before I get ahead of myself….

You’re probably here for one of three reasons:

You didn’t know there were problems with the pill,
You want to know how to escape these problems, or
You just love reading everything I write. So let’s start with the basics, shall we?

How Your Birth Control is Ruining Your Health

We get the great privilege of residing inside of amazing machines that we call bodies. They self regulate, they give us warnings when something isn’t right (ie. pain). Our bodies are very good at checks and balances. For example, when we use a stimulant like caffeine consistently our bodies reduce the amount of wake up juice it produces because we are using an outside source to get that morning stimulus. Guess what happens if you ditch the habit for a while? After the initial headaches and sluggishness you start to be able to wake up without it again.

So, what do you think happens when you deliberately take a hormone? Now yes, some women are already having a balance problem, but a huge majority of women that take birth control are healthy. They just want to “be responsible” and avoid unwanted pregnancy. What they don’t realize is that by altering their hormones they are not regulating their periods but creating false ones all together. The pill suppresses ovulation. Without ovulation you can’t exactly call it menstruation now can you? So basically, you have an all together fake cycle, and your beautiful female body is suppressed from being female.

Many, many women have gone off of their hormonal birth control to find that their body is really messed up, myself included. They have problems with miscarriages, they have irregular cycles, they experience lots of annovulation, they are infertile. For some, these issues don’t last long and for others it is years before they can get their hormones back on track. Thank you pink pill!

Here’s the thing. You can’t take a drug, especially a hormonal drug, and expect for it to not have a detrimental impact on your overall health. Period.

So now what?

So, you ditch the pill and turn to what? As soon as many women turn away from the hormonal options their first thought is the Paraguard IUD. Yeah, I choose that for a while too… But then I realized that it isn’t as safe, or as free from side effects as I would like either. So before you jump back up on that cold table with your feet in the air to get the fix all solution that you don’t have to think about for several years, let me share a few thoughts.

IUD’s regardless of the type can and do penetrate the walls of the uterus and can even implant themselves into other organs. This is not pretty and yes. It could happen to you. IUD’s ALWAYS cause the uterus to be inflamed. Yes, always. When you introduce a foreign object to a place that doesn’t like foreign objects the body will try to protect itself. Other common side effects include heavy bleeding (and when I say heavy, I mean horror show type bleeding), infection, miscarriage, tubal pregnancy, and copper toxicity.

So now that I’ve dashed your hopes of keeping this easy, let me introduce you to the only thing that works and keeps your body healthy.

Fertility Awareness Method

Here’s the thing. You can’t control pregnancy without unwanted intervention, without learning a little, or a lot about the workings of your own body. However, by doing so you can easily prevent pregnancy. The fertility awareness method uses several daily tests to predict and confirm ovulation. Thus giving you the tools to avoid pregnancy, or to more successfully achieve pregnancy when and if you become ready to take on raising a tiny human.

The best places to look to get a thorough understanding of FAM are in the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility, and this epic Fertility Awareness Facebook group.