Tag: Hormonal Birth Control

  • Is Fertility Awareness a Teched-up Disguise of the Rhythm Method? #Periodically 16

    Is Fertility Awareness a Teched-up Disguise of the Rhythm Method? #Periodically 16

    I first heard the phrase “Rhythm Method” in a Religious Education class at my all-girls catholic high school. It was discussed alongside actual birth control methods like the pill and condoms, and I detected a tone of skepticism in the voice of my teacher. I have a vague memory of dropping the phrase at home one day and my dad going on a “it doesn’t work” rant, which ended, as I recall, with him threatening to demonstrate something involving a banana and a condom…

    So off I pottered on with my life, knowing that the Rhythm Method, which involves using the dates of your previous cycle to forecast the fertile and infertile days of the next, was an unreliable load of rubbish.

    Then something happened. I read an article by Holly Grigg-Spall that talked of Daysy and the Fertility Awareness Method. A year or so later the Natural Cycles phenomenon began. When I first heard about it my family and I agreed that it was the Rhythm Method in disguise, teched-up and glorified anew – it was a dangerous response to the sudden rejection of hormonal contraception that was going to end in a lot of unwanted pregnancies.

    That is until I learnt how the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) was different from the Rhythm Method. While the Rhythm Method looks retrospectively at past cycle dates, FAM looks for markers of fertility within your current cycle. Tracking Basal Body Temperature (BBT) can flag up the temperature increase that occurs around ovulation. There are other markers too. Getting very familiar with your cervical fluid can be a huge indicator of fertility, testing your urine for luteinizing hormone (LH) even more so.

    I remain very nervous about how FAM is being depicted as this completed project. “Here it is, go forth and only multiply if you want to,” has been the attitude. I think it is still early days and that FAM should be treated as a step in the right direction, not a finite solution to a huge problem. So far in my own experience with FAM I’ve found that I’m less likely to take my BBT reading at the correct time than I was to take the pill on time. It is still super at risk of human error. This is before you consider the fact it can take around six years for a menstrual cycle to get, well, cyclical after menarche and without considering health conditions that can morph FAM data.

    Now a leaked memo from the White House suggests that as effective teen-pregnancy prevention programs (contraception) are being subsidised, abstinence based, sex risk and Fertility Awareness methods are being suggested as alternatives. I think that a big part of what the White House, and supporters of FAM within the Catholic Church, have got wrong, is that the sudden focus on FAM and the recent turn away from hormonal contraceptives is not because we are worried about our consciouses, souls or honour – it’s about wanting more. We want to choose when and if we do or do not have children and we want that choice to be free from the life-changing side-affects that often come with mainstream methods of hormonal birth control. FAM is still birth control. Those using it to avoid pregnancy are still looking for a contraceptive, they are simply asking for more. Having observed the changes in my own body when I was on and off of the pill(s), I am now acutely aware of how my body changes throughout my cycle. If that can stop me getting pregnant (if I could have sex, that is LOL) then of course I’m going to exploit that.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: knowledge of self is powerful.

    This week I attended the opening of Period Piece at the Science Gallery in London. It’s on over the weekend too if you want to check it out, but it was a excellent platform for talking about why Femtech is changing things by using old ideas in new ways. Period Piece is a multi-media art piece that incorporates biometric data, like BBT, while touching upon political and religious events, like the papal ban on the pill in 1968.

  • What I learnt at Clue last week #Periodically 14

    What I learnt at Clue last week #Periodically 14

    Nearly everyday I learn something new from the cycle tracking app Clue. Usually it’s about my own body, a new trend the app has noticed, a connection I thought was a coincidence that actually might be cycle related, or a fact that the app provides in its educational features. Last week however, I was lucky enough to make it to two of Clue’s events, as the blossoming company organised a week of talks in London.

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    Tuesday at Facebook London

    On Tuesday evening I went to Facebook’s London HQ for a talk entitled ‘Hormones and the Cycle’ and on Wednesday I went to a ‘Lunch and Learn’ session on ‘Sex and the Cycle’. The events were brilliant and provided an opportunity to meet people from all walks of life, with one common interest – a desire to learn more about the menstrual cycle. The events were hosted by Clue’s Ambassador Program Manager, Maddie Sheesley, and its Researcher and Science & Education Manager, Anna Druet. This pair of brilliant FemTech advocates both fought the corner for how powerful education about reproductive health can be – teach a girl about her body and you can change the world.

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    Runway East for Lunch on Wednesday

    So without further ado, here are a few things I learnt at Clue this week, that I didn’t know before.

    • PMS as a concept that was coined before we even knew about hormonal fluctuations in the menstrual cycle, and yet we still use the same information to talk about and categorise it. Clue have written about the rarely discussed positive effects of PMS. 
    • I knew that the cervix moved throughout the cycle (as I terrifyingly discovered when I was learning how to use the menstrual cup). What I didn’t know was that it moves up and down throughout your cycle, an occurrence that can improve, or at least change, how sex can feel. What’s more, the combined pill (that’s the standard birth control pill) stops the cervix from moving up and down, it potentially lowers slightly during a placebo week. There are also reports of cervical orgasms – who knew?!
    • Perhaps most interesting for me and my own health was learning that research strongly suggests that chronic pain is worse towards the end of the luteinising phase of one’s cycle – the run up to a period. I clarified at the event, was this reproductive chronic pains or all chronic pain? It is all chronic pain. So when I wrote a few weeks ago that ‘whatever the problem is, it is either worsening or being worsened by my menstrual cycle’ I was right on the money. Even if it’s my kidneys, my bladder, my bowels or elsewhere, it was always going to get worse around my period because pain tolerance goes down. Imagine how useful that knowledge would have over the last year if I’d had it. Knowledge of self is POWERFUL. 
    • Some research has suggested that a low risk of pregnancy can cause people to enjoy sex more – explaining potential peaks of sex drive near menstruation. I certainly know a lot of people that can attest that low risk of pregnancy is sexy.
    • Very early research suggests that the clitoris grows 1/5 of its size during ovulation. That is bonkers!
    • The level of Oestrogen in combined pills has been dropping over the years. Now they start low and build up if necessary.
    • Each time you’re late taking the combined pill the follicle grows slightly. So if you consistently, occasionally forget to take the pill on time, it can eventually lead to ovulation. That is terrifying (but also kind of cool). 
    • The Progesterone Only Pill (POP/Mini-Pill) stops pregnancy by changing the consistency of your cervical fluid to block sperm. I was on the mini-pill for two years and only now do I know how it works.
    • Emergency contraceptives aren’t all equally effective at every point in your cycle – also terrifying and not common knowledge.
    • Most methods (or all, I’m unsure) of tracking ovulation are retrospective –  we can’t yet predict when that moment is going to happen.

    Interestingly, many of the questions from the audience started with ‘I recently came off the pill…’ or similar. So it’s not just something I’m imagining, there is the demand for a contraceptive shake-up. The events did remind me how valuable and life-changing hormonal contraception can be, but if you ask me, there has to be a better way. One of my favourite things about Clue is that the data you input is used in research into the menstrual cycle, so while there’s so much more to learn, at least my data is helping the cause (I hope!)

    To keep up with what I’m doing, follow me on Twitter or Instagram for beautiful photos of my lunch with a side of condoms. Thanks, Clue! 

     

     

  • Does being ‘anti-pill’ make me a bad feminist? #Periodically 13

    Does being ‘anti-pill’ make me a bad feminist? #Periodically 13

    As discussed at great length (sorry) in A Tale of Two Pills I consider my relationship with hormonal contraceptives to be over. It is an unpopular opinion, one I’ve struggled to conclude myself for a long time.

    In my world, the pill has always been seen as this great feminist tool. It sat on its pedestal throughout my childhood promising independence, reproductive freedom, sexual liberation and professional advancement. All my feminist icons raved about it, my sisters took it, my friends’ acne had been cleared, boobs had flourished, pain had lessened and my school despised it – by the time I was a teenager it was the most attractive piece of candy I had ever laid my eyes on. It symbolised maturity and being a strong, no nonsense woman. Until of course, I started taking it.

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    Last week I read Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control by Holly Grigg-Spall. I’ve been following Holly’s stuff for a couple of years or so now, but it took my longer than I care to admit to get to the book itself. While I can’t say I agree with everything suggested in Sweetening the Pill there were dozens and dozens of moments where I found myself saying ‘so it’s not just me!’

    “The pill is a rejection of femaleness. In swallowing the tablets women are swallowing the negative connotations that are attached to female biology,” Page 34. 

    When you strip the pill back of all the obvious benefits our doctors, and in America, the pharmaceutical companies rave about, you begin to realise that what the pill actually offers is a cure to femaleness. Hormonal acne? Take the pill. Horrible PMS? Take the pill. Heavy bleeds? Pill. Time of work due to menstruation? Pill! Period pain? Pill. And that’s before they start saying ‘hey you don’t need a period at all’ (to which the answer is the mini pill, implant or injection).

    “In lowering the hormonal levels and flattening out the fluctuations the pill takes away the natural peak of libido women experience in connection with ovulation and sometimes pre-menstruation,” page 50.

    I think the most poignant moment of Sweetening the Pill for me was the idea that when you try to suppress the natural lows of a menstrual cycle, you also inadvertently begin to suppress the natural highs. Menstrual cycles are (duh!) cyclical – that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Good skin and hair days are often just as common as bad ones, randy days can be just as common as days when you don’t want anyone to come near you. In fact, your cycle can work for you, it’s not always a question of fighting it. Problem is, we don’t get to know how our cycle works. It can take up to six years for a menstrual cycle to mature, I was on the pill just over two years after I started my period and it took a year to become regular after I came off the pill. For many women, life on the pill is all we really know and the withdrawal from it can be so scary that it frightens us back onto the pill.

    It’s scary because when you start to think about it, you can’t not think about it. Why are we taking a pill every day when we’re only actually fertile for a few days every cycle – ought we not limit our scope a bit?

    As the book discusses at the length, the ‘anti-pill’ rhetoric has always been dominated by the Religious Right. It’s what put me off. I always assumed being opposed to the pill meant be anti-feminist, sexist and backwards. Thinking that people who spoke against the pill must be religious nuts was an opinion I held for a long time. It remains an unpopular opinion. When I talk to others about my experience with the pill I’m always sure to add the disclaimer ‘not that I’m at all suggesting you stop taking the pill,’ when actually I think that might be exactly what I’m suggesting.

    “FAM is absolutely not the same thing as the ineffective Rhythm Method, which tries to predict fertility based on the length of past cycles. Don’t believe those who tell you that FAM doesn’t work; women using it can achieve effectiveness rates as high as the pill – 99.4 percent.” Toni Weshler quoted in Sweetening the Pill, page 157. 

    What women, like myself, who have had issues with hormonal contraceptives need to do is demand more options, non-hormonal ones. Being done with hormonal birth control is not the same thing as being done with birth control. The book talks a lot about the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM). I had always associated it with the Rhythm Method, unsurprisingly preached about at my catholic school, that has been proven time and time again, not to work as a contraceptive method. Learning how FAM is different was really interesting, and it’s definitely something I’ll be looking into in the future. It’s fascinating to see how FAM and Femtech are beginning to offer an alternative.

    When the pill was released women had to stand up to their doctors to get the pill, today they must fight to get off it,” page 61. #RELATABLE 

    I want more options for female reproductive rights and I think we have the technology to find them – the research just isn’t happening as much as it should be, YET. Rejecting the pill from my own life hasn’t been an anti-feminist act but rather, it has been a feminist act of defiance for the benefit of my own quality of life, and the quality of life of other people in similar situations. In Sweetening the Pill Holly makes reference to hoards of other articles, journals and books, many of which I have now added to my reading list. Sadly, a lot of the evidence for hormonal birth control making women depressed, feel different (worse) and less libidinous is anecdotal and is rarely taken seriously. I’m hopeful that the more anecdotal evidence we report to our doctors, the more likely it will be that quantifiable research projects will take place.