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10 Side Effects of Birth Control Pills that Your Doctor May Not Tell You

Birth control pills might be the most effective contraceptive, but it definitely isn’t the healthiest. In fact, birth control pills have harmful side effects and they also disrupt normal bodily processes. 

Birth control comes in many different shapes and sizes. It is most often referred to as ‘the pill’. Obviously, it comes in pill from, but it also can be injected or implanted. Birth control can have many different negative side effects. It is often praised because it makes your menstrual cramps easier, and slows down the menstrual cycle. Although this may appear to be a good thing, it is actually disrupting your body’s natural processes. Birth control simply isn’t worth it. Mother nature knows what she is doing, and it is not our place to intervene with her processes. Not only that, but after the negative side effects of birth control, who would even want to try? Here are 10 negative side effects of birth control.

Blood Clots – Blood clots are a known side effect of birth control contraceptives. Each year, 7 in 10,000 women experience blood clots. Birth control triples your chances, while pregnancy and childbirth raise your chances five- to ten-fold. As long as you don’t have cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes or a pack of cigs in your purse, the increased risk shouldn’t be too serious,” says Dr. Keder. But if you experience any signs of a blood clot, such as chest pain or a swollen leg, immediately stop the pill and see your doctor for an evaluation.

Breakthrough Bleeding – This is most commonly found to be effective of low doses of birth control. It is believed to be caused by hormones making the endometrial lining thinner and more fragile, and even more susceptible to wear and tear! Studies have shown that the longer you take the pill, the less likely you are to experience breakthrough bleeding, but I wouldn’t want to test that theory out.

Mood Swings – Since birth control medications affect your hormones, they also heavily influence your mood. Pill users are twice as likely to be depressed as nonusers, according to research from the Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre in Australia. “It’s really pretty unusual,” says Dr. Keder. “But any emotional side effects can generally be alleviated by using a different pill formulation.” So don’t suffer — tell your doc if you have any worsening of depression symptoms.

Milk Production – This is extremely important to those who are breastfeeding or considering to breastfeed. Birth control medications can decrease breast milk production by up to 5%! Progestin-only pills like Nor-QD or Ortho Micronor don’t interfere with lactation but have to be taken at the same time every day, since they are slightly less effective than combination pills.

Faux Premenstrual Symptoms – Everyone knows the before feeling – the headaches, water retention, breast tenderness, nausea, and mood swings. While these things usually occur before you start the menstruation cycle, with birth control you might experience these out of random.

Libido – OC’s slash libido-friendly testosterone in two ways: First, they quiet the ovaries, halting their production of testosterone. Second, the liver pumps out a protein called the sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), which gloms onto sex hormones (including testosterone) like bargain shoppers on Black Friday sales. But while OC’s lower testosterone levels in all women, they lower libido only in some, Dr. Keder says. And even if the Pill does affect your mojo, plenty of other factors — like anxiety about getting preggers — affect it, too. If you have serious problems below the belt, ask your doctor about switching to a different med.

Destroys Good Digestive Bacteria – Birth control pills actually destroy the beneficial bacteria in your intestines, making you more susceptible to yeast overgrowth, lower immunity, and infection.

The Body Ecology System of Health and Healing is unique because of our understanding and focus on the inner ecosystem. With a healthy inner ecosystem, good bacteria and yeast (microflora) thrive in your intestines, helping you to digest food, protect you from illness and disease, and absorb and manufacture vital nutrients.

Disrupts Ovulation – The synthetic hormones contained in birth control regulate release and timing of specific hormones in the body to prevent ovulation. This is not how the normal release of hormones plays out in a naturally occurring menstrual cycle. It is necessary, as you know, to ovulate a mature, healthy follicle (egg) in order to achieve a natural pregnancy. The Pill prevents the maturation of a follicle for ovulation, one of the ovaries most important jobs. Over time, the ovaries may “forget” how to do their job on their own because they haven’t been signaled with the right hormones at the correct time in the menstrual cycle.

Cervical Mucus Change – The Pill has been shown to thicken cervical mucus so that sperm cannot reach the egg. Healthy cervical mucus is important for conception because it helps sperm travel through the vagina and the cervix to meet and fertilize an egg.

Damages the Lining of The Uterus – The Pill changes the uterine lining to make it unreceptive to the implantation of a fertilized egg. By controlling the body’s estrogen and progesterone levels with synthetic hormones, the Pill does not allow for the proper levels of progesterone to build a healthy uterine lining for implantation. Many women begin taking the pill at a very young age and don’t stop until they want to begin trying to conceive. The Pill doesn’t cause infertility, but impacts long-term fertility by “silencing a woman’s biological clock for so long that, in some cases, they forget it’s ticking away”. In other cases, women ignore or forget they are dealing with a fertility issue because the symptoms have gone away.