Thursday, March 08, 2012

How safe are oral contraceptives over the long term?

HRT--hormone replacement therapy--is estrogen and progestin. The published results of two studies on HRT a decade ago raised concerns regarding its safety. Women had a higher risk of breast cancer and heart disease--and about 15 million post-menopausal women stopped taking them immediately, after having been assured for years that they lowered breast cancer risk, osteoporosis and heart disease. My own GP is quite conservative and he believed back then that 10 years were enough for HRT to be messing with a woman's hormones and had already switched me to another medication for osteoporsis protection by the time those studies came out.

The same hormones in HRT are in birth control pills and those are being given to ever younger women, even teenagers whose bodies are still developing, and for more years than my generation. Breast cancer, stroke and heart disease are increasing among younger women. At Planned Parenthood young girls are given oral contraceptives after abortions while also being given antibiotics, which interfers with the effectiveness of the hormones. Thus the girls often return within a year for another abortion. Oral contraceptives increase the risk of breast cancer, but not as much as abortion does.

Progesterone
Ditch the pill
Health warnings on oral contraceptives
Menopause and perimenopause

2 comments:

nancy g said...

Given your theory about birth control pills causing cancer (assume you mean breast cancer, not ovarian) then one would also surmise that only protestant women die of breast cancer, no nuns or any other women who ever used the pill. Got any stats for that?

Norma said...

Nancy, it is not a theory. There is probably more research on this than on other chemicals we stream into our bodies over which people get the vapors. And as you well know, the percentage of Catholic women who use contraception is very high. That they go against the church's teaching doesn't invalidate it, anymore than when you and I sin we invalidate God's law. Nuns don't have the protection that pregnancy (uninterrupted by abortion) offers women. Here in Columbus at Children's Hospital ob/gyn specialists are testing girls as young as 12 with extremely toxic chemicals to determine safety and risk. As a grandmother, would you want your granddaughters in such a study of unproven consequences and health risks?