Estrogen Drama - Part 2

The RN in me smells a rat. As I was thinking and writing about estrogens, the NY Times published an Op-Ed piece on the same topic: Final Periods by Karen Houppert.

Then yesterday, I saw an ad on TV: Beautiful, hip, intelligent-looking women, bouncing around to deceptively intelligent, reasonable, upbeat talk… “No need for periods. They are unnecessary.” I heard it, and I couldn’t believe my ears.

With Seasonale, a woman only has to have a period once every three months. Now the FDA has approved Lybrel, and she doesn’t have to have a period at all!

How convenient. How out of touch with nature and who we are.

Can this actually be legal? Who approved this?

This is big bucks talking. This is not sanity.

Okay, for the almost 10% of women who really do suffer each month and have tried countless other options, maybe this is the solution. But that’s medication, not birth control!

The justification (from WebMD):

Mitchell Creinin, MD, is a researcher studying the one-year pill, and he agrees. “The idea that a woman ‘needs’ to have a period is folklore. The blood doesn’t build up inside, and it has nothing to do with cleaning out your system or proving that you’re normal,” says Creinin, director of family planning in the obstetrics and gynecology department of the University of Pittsburgh’s Magee-Women’s Hospital. “There’s no biological plausibility that a one-week break confers any protection against anything. At the turn of the century, the average number of menses per year was one or two, because women were breastfeeding or pregnant more often.”

Women at the turn of the century didn’t live as long as we do. They didn’t have additional estrogen and estrogen mimics in their meat, plastics, and spermicides. And there wasn’t estrogen in the water supply (where it fails to break down).

The caution (also from WebMD):

Other doctors…say continuous birth control may increase the amount of estrogen and progesterone that some women take in their lifetimes. The health effects of this experiment in convenience may not be known for years. After all, millions of menopausal women took hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for decades before the risks became evident.

And…

Christine Hitchcock, PhD, researches menstrual cycles and ovulation. She worries that we also don’t know if continuous birth control could affect fertility. “The use of extended birth control pills is suppressing a complex, intricate hormonal system,” she says. “There are no long-term data to show whether changing the schedule of birth control affects how fast your periods come back when you go off, whether they come back, and your level of fertility.”

I’m 55, and finally past the whole menstrual mess. Yes, I’m hot flashing as I type this entry, but I’m no longer nesting. Nurturing and feeding everyone who walks into my house is no longer my focus. I do things for others. I care for my husband, but I don’t feel the need to take care of him.

Now, from my new perspective, I watch frantic, nervous, stressed young women, who do too much for everyone, care for everything, and nest at work and at home, and I wonder about their estrogen levels.

My daughter recently discovered that six months of emotional problems and extreme stress symptoms were almost completely estrogen-related. If she hadn’t discovered it for herself and stopped taking her birth control, she would have been a prime candidate for mood-altering medication and treatment for extreme weight loss. After listening to her weep and worry over the phone for several months — all very out of character — it’s a relief to have my daughter back.

Do we have entire generations of American women who don’t even know who they really are? And what about breast cancer? If it can increase with hormone replacement, what’s to say the same won’t hold true with such rampant, long-term, daily estrogen intake?!

How do the side-effects of all this chemical manipulation change a woman’s basic sense of attraction? What happens when a woman marries a man she’s only known while on the pill, then when she goes off the pill to get pregnant, suddenly finds that she doesn’t feel the same attraction to him anymore? Could it be because, for the years she’s known him, her chemistry was wacky? Maybe the physiological factors of divorce aren’t fully understood.

So what’s a self-sufficient, liberated woman to do? Here’s advice that seems obvious to me:

• Get to know yourself, the real you. Be aware of your emotions and how your physiological needs affect you.
• Stop and get curious. If you ask, “What’s going on?” you’ll gain some perspective. Is this you, or is it the pills you’re taking and/or the food you are (or are not) eating?
• Consider the real need for the pill. Compare the real and potential long-term risks and where you are with your relationship with men or your man.
• Read up.
• Know that you’re not alone. If you can’t get it together yourself, get professional help. Talk to your doctor, and if that doctor doesn’t talk it out with you, find another doctor.

Bottom line? Find the best way to make today’s modern chemistry work for YOU.

Want to learn more? Check out this article on environmental estrogens.

Photo by eva_n on Flikr.