{"id":9004,"date":"2020-02-17T11:52:50","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T16:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/?p=9004"},"modified":"2020-02-17T11:52:53","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T16:52:53","slug":"your-brain-on-birth-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/your-brain-on-birth-control","title":{"rendered":"Your Brain on Birth Control"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[This article originally appeared in SALVO (www.salvomag.com<\/a>) on Feburary 14, 2020; it is reproduced here with permission. \u2013 Ed.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two recent studies should make women on hormonal contraception sit up and take note.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first, published<\/a> in the journal Hormones and Behavior<\/em>, was conducted by a group of Texas Christian University researchers who sought to better understand the impact of hormonal birth control on perseverance, which they believe play an important role in women\u2019s performance on both simple and complex cognitive tasks.1<\/sup>  To complete the study, the researchers assigned their group of college-aged women three tasks to complete. The first was a \u201cfind the differences\u201d test, comparing two side-by-side scenes from the movie Frozen<\/em>. The second was a set of math problems from the GRE. And the third was unscrambling a series of anagrams, three of which were solvable, and three of which were not. The unsolvable anagrams were in particular meant to test women\u2019s perseverance\u2014how long they would continue at a difficult task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the researchers hypothesized, the women not on hormonal birth control (the article calls them \u201cnaturally-cycling\u201d) performed better on all three tests, and also spent more time on all three. Perseverance was found to be a mediating factor\u2014that is, those women who persevered longer did better, and some simple tests demonstrated that perseverance itself was largely to account for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lead researcher Hannah Bradshaw explains<\/a> how the experiment came to be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy colleagues and I first became interested in this topic after learning that women taking hormonal contraceptives don\u2019t experience a spike in cortisol that is typically found after one encounters a stressor. While people usually talk about cortisol as a bad thing, this cortisol spike allows people to adequately meet challenges in their environment. . . . After we started looking through the literature, we also found that, compared to non-users, women taking hormonal contraceptives exhibit decrements in brain areas that play an important role in learning, attention, and memory.\u201d2<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This research is of particularly import on a college campus, where, the researchers point out, most women who take standardized tests such as the SAT, GRE, and LSAT are also at the age when they would be more likely to take hormonal contraceptives, and thus \u201cHCs [hormonal contraceptives] could possibly make it more challenging for women to meet their higher education goals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another recent study<\/a> finds that women on hormonal birth control had \u201csignificantly smaller hypothalamus volume, compared to women not taking the pill.\u201d3<\/sup> (The hypothalamus is located at the base of the brain, and \u201chelps regulate essential bodily functions including body temperature, mood, appetite, sex drive, sleep cycles and heart rate,\u201d according to a press release on the study.) This study is the first of its kind, and the lead researcher reports that \u201csmaller hypothalamic volume was also associated with greater anger and showed a strong correlation with depressive symptoms.\u201d The latter shouldn\u2019t be surprising, given a huge Danish study<\/a> of a few years back finding a significantly higher incidence of depression in women taking hormonal contraception than in those not taking it, particularly in adolescent girls.4<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The side effects of \u201cThe Pill\u201d have long been known\u2014at least partially. Side effects are a large part of the reason that the pioneers of hormonal contraception\u2014Gregory Pincus, Margaret Sanger, Katharine McCormick, and Dr. John Rock\u2014had to conduct their clinical trials on poor women in Puerto Rico, and on women in an asylum. (For more on this, see Jonathan Eig\u2019s history of birth control, The Birth of the Pill<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>)5<\/sup> Most American women simply wouldn\u2019t put up with the side effects. Planned Parenthood lists a few of these<\/a>,6<\/sup> though certainly not all: decreased libido, spotting or bleeding between periods, headaches, nausea, and sore breasts. The same site also warns of \u201cmore serious\u201d complications, then links to another page<\/a>7<\/sup>\u2014that completely fails to detail what these serious complications are. Instead, this page details a list of symptoms but warns that \u201cIn fact, pregnancy is more likely to cause serious health problems than the pill.\u201d (Some serious side effects<\/a>, by the way, are stroke, heart attack, and breast cancer.8<\/sup>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, in almost every research article that demonstrates some negative side effect of hormonal contraception, the researchers also feel compelled to issue a warning similar to that of Planned Parenthood\u2014something along the lines of, \u201cThese possible side effects should of course be weighed against the implications of an unplanned pregnancy.\u201d Yes, it may cause headaches, or nausea, or mood swings, or decreased cognitive activity\u2014but it works at preventing babies! Isn\u2019t that worth it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The message to women is that fertility is a disease, something to be turned off until needed. Their hormones are these messy, complicated things that need extra help to behave properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hormones are indeed powerful things\u2014kind of like the body\u2019s messengers, traveling from their origin to produce a range of necessary-to-life activities. When we interfere in that hormonal system to, say, stop a woman from ovulating, we are causing a ripple effect in a very complex system. One of these articles notes<\/a> that hormonal contraceptives \u201care also used to treat a host of conditions, including irregular menstruation, cramps, acne, endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome.\u201d9<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should we really be handing out such powerful, brain-altering drugs to teenage girls to treat acne, or irregularity? Should we really be telling girls that they need drugs to function properly? Shouldn\u2019t we instead recognize and appreciate the female body a bit more?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

NOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Hannah K. Bradshaw, Summer Mengelkoch, and Sarah E. Hill, \u201cHormonal contraceptive use predicts decreased perseverance and therefore performance on some simple and challenging cognitive tasks,\u201d Hormones and Behavior, March 2020.
2. Eric W. Dolan, “Women taking hormonal contraceptives have reduced perseverance on cognitive tasks, study finds,\u201d PsyPost, January 23, 2020, available at https:\/\/psypost.org\/2020\/01\/women-taking-hormonal-contraceptives-have-reduced-perseverance-on-cognitive-tasks-study-finds-55347.
3. Radiological Society of North America, Press Release, \u201cStudy finds key brain region smaller in birth control pill users,\u201d December 4, 2019, available at https:\/\/sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2019\/12\/191204090819.htm.
4. Charlotte Wessel Skovlund et al., \u201cAssociation of Hormonal Contraception With Depression,\u201d JAMA Psychiatry 73.11 (2016): 1154-1162, available at https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jamapsychiatry\/fullarticle\/2552796.
5. Jonathan Eig, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution (New York: Norton, 2014).
6. Planned Parenthood, \u201cWhat Are the Disadvantages of the Pill?\u201d available at https:\/\/plannedparenthood.org\/learn\/birth-control\/birth-control-pill\/what-are-the-disadvantages-of-the-pill, accessed February 13, 2020.
7. Planned Parenthood, \u201cHow Safe Is The Birth Control Pill?\u201d available at https:\/\/plannedparenthood.org\/learn\/birth-control\/birth-control-pill\/how-safe-is-the-birth-control-pill, accessed February 13, 2020.
8. Bradshaw et al., \u201cHormonal Contraceptive Use Predicts Decreased Perseverance.\u201d
9. Radiological Society of North America, \u201cStudy finds key brain region smaller in birth control pill users.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women on Hormonal Contraception Should Pause and Think About Its Effects on Their Thinking<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":9007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"Women on Hormonal Contraception Should Pause and Think About Its Effects on Their Thinking","format":"standard","video":"","gallery":"","source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override":[{"single_blog_custom":"","sidebar":"","second_sidebar":"","share_position":"","share_float_style":"","post_date_format":"","post_date_format_custom":"","post_reading_time_wpm":"","zoom_button_out_step":"1","zoom_button_in_step":"1","number_popup_post":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"","single_post_gallery_size":""}],"trending_post_position":"","trending_post_label":""},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"514"},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[805,514],"tags":[1389,895],"class_list":["post-9004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreground","category-science","tag-birth-control","tag-contraception"],"yoast_head":"\nYour Brain on Birth Control - 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