Is the Pill shutting down your body’s ‘fifth vital sign’?

Lizzie Catt meets the experts who believe that the ‘chemical menopause’ – brought on by oral contraception – robs women of the benefits their natural cycle has on everything from our bones to our brains

The contraceptive pill is credited with revolutionising women’s lives, a game-changing medical innovation that helped kickstart the Swinging Sixties. But while opportunities for women in 2021 would seem almost unthinkable to their early 1960s counterparts, contraceptive methods remain stuck in the mid-20th century.

Despite side effects such as weight gain and depression, the Pill is still prescribed by doctors as a contraceptive and cure-all for menstrual maladies. However, there is a growing “period health” movement pointing out the pitfalls of hormonal birth control – the most notable of which is the suppression of women’s beneficial natural cycles – and calling for women to ditch the Pill in favour of gentler, more natural treatments.

A force for good

Lara Briden, a naturopathic doctor with a focus on menstrual health, believes we should be working with our natural cycles to understand and treat what’s going on in our bodies.

She describes female hormones as a “force for good”, helping with mood, metabolism, bone health and physiology, and is just one of a growing number of experts who consider periods to be the body’s “fifth vital sign”, after temperature, pulse rate, breathing rate and blood pressure.

Briden describes periods as “the body’s monthly report card”, an expression of underlying health that reveals conditions including polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis and thyroid disease. Periods, she says, should arrive smoothly, regularly and without symptoms. If not, something is amiss.

Progesterone and oestrogen work together and, according to Briden, are an important part of women’s ongoing health. The hormone estradiol, one of four ‘dominant’ oestrogen hormones, benefits bones, muscles, brain, heart, sleep, skin and metabolism. Calming progesterone, which Briden describes as a “startlingly beneficial hormone”, is key for period health, thinning the uterus lining, reducing breast cancer risk, boosting thyroid function,

‘‘ If periods don’t arrive smoothly and regularly something is amiss

reducing inflammation, building muscle, promoting sleep, protecting against heart disease and calming the nervous system.

Chemical menopause

It is therefore unsurprising that voices calling out the pitfalls of hormonal birth control have been growing louder in recent years, with Briden describing it as “a relic from the 1950s that shuts down a woman’s entire hormonal system just to prevent pregnancy”.

Side effects include a small increased risk of clotting and breast cancer, with other more widely experienced issues including depression, thinning hair, loss of libido, weight gain due to the disruption to insulin, lower muscle gain, fat deposits in the hips and upper thighs, worse cellulite, high blood pressure, yeast infections and more.

However, these are often seen as “preferable to the alternative”, be it unplanned pregnancy or painful

periodds. “Contraceptive drugs basically induce a temporary chemical menopause,” says Briden, author of the Period Repair Manual and the Hormone Repair Manual (both Greenpeak Publishing). “Then on top of that comes a drug-induced bleed that means nothing terms of health. As a contraceptive, there should be things that are more targeted, not hormonal. It’s a very blunt instrument. “Dr Jerilynn Prior, Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism who contributed to my books, makes the case that 35 to 40 years of ovulatory cycles – real menstrual cycles – helps to prevent osteoporosis, dementia, heart disease and breast cancer. “That’s primarily based on the benefits of progesterone, the hormone we make after ovulation, which is entirely different from progestins that are in the Pill. So if we ask, ‘What are women risking by taking contraceptive drugs?’ the answer is they’re robbed of the benefits of their own hormones for the decades that they were supposed to have them.”

Be Appier

For women who’ve grown up and grown older using the Pill, it’s challenging to hear. But Briden, who works mostly in New Zealand and Australia, has noticed an increasing use in period tracker apps among younger women, and recommends them for all ages.

Along with innovations, such as menstrual cups and period underwear that are kinder to the body and planet, body awareness and a more natural approach is growing in popularity with older women too.

In cases where hormonal birth control is needed to ease symptoms, Briden prefers the hormonal IUD, which allows women to ‘cycle’. “My position is just there’s so many other better ways to treat period problems than with contraceptive drugs,” she says.

“I’m pretty confident future generations will look back and think, ‘why were we doing that?’”

The hormonal journey

TEENAGERS Teenage girls can suffer as their hormone receptors are exposed to oestrogen for the first time, resulting in heavy periods, pain and acne.

Progesterone can be lower while cycles get established, so oestrogen is felt more keenly – something that also happens in perimenopause.

Briden’s colleague Dr Jerilynn Prior believes it can take 12 years to establish a mature cycle, but many girls don’t get that far. Put on the Pill to “regulate” their periods, their body’s hormonal journey stops before it has started, potentially creating issues to overcome if they come off the Pill to try for a baby.

TWENTIES AND THIRTIES

Some women barely notice their periods. Others experience problems related to polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis (where cells similar to those inside the womb grow outside it), hypothalamic amenorrhea (where periods stop, often due to a deficit of calories) and PMS symptoms such as acne, migraines, depression and anxiety, and painful and heavy periods.

It’s hardly surprising that many doctors suggest hormonal birth control.

But, says Briden, switching off the body’s hormones won’t cure the underlying nutritional deficiencies, hormonal imbalances or food sensitivities that could be causing or exacerbating the issues. Sometimes supplements and dietary changes alone can help, other times they can work in tandem with medically prescribed treatments.

FORTIES AND FIFTIES

Perimenopause can start in a woman’s mid-thirties but most go through it in their forties. It starts with very early perimenopause, with regular periods and often shorter cycles, followed by irregular periods, cycles of more than 60 days, late perimenopause (12 months without a period), then the start of menopause.

It is, according to Briden, an “oestrogen roller coaster,” heralding a “second adolescence” where mood, sleep and skin are disrupted, cycles shorten, oestrogen increases and there are lower levels of calming progesterone. For women who’ve finished having children or are sure they don’t want any, it can be a tempting time to go on the Pill.

But Briden says: “Each and every menstrual cycle is like a deposit into the bank of long-term health, building metabolic reserve and resiliency that lasts even after menopause.”

She explains: “If the period is like a monthly report card, the process of perimenopause is like a final exam. It’s potentially manifesting underlying issues that need to be addressed anyway, in terms of physiology.”

Women in perimenopause still benefit from ovulatory cycles but, with progesterone levels falling and the increase of anovulatory cycles (where no egg is released, so no progesterone is made), they should take extra care to help their bodies metabolise oestrogen as it can sometimes stimulate breast cancer cells and cause them to grow.

Eating a balanced diet with increased protein and avoiding sugar and alcohol help with this, as can taking “body identical” HRT.

‘‘ Switching off the body’s hormones won’t cure underlying deficiences