By Shawn Smith
“Feeling good comes easy now since I’ve got the pill,” Loretta Lynn touted in her controversial 1975 song “The Pill,” but for some women the pill, or birth control, come with less- than-feel-good effects.
On Candace Cameron Bure’s podcast, the actress shared her personal experience with hormonal birth control with OB-GYN Dr. Tabatha Barber.
“I’ve talked openly about dealing with depression in my life, and that first started in my very early 20s, and there were circumstances around that certainly played into it, but that’s also when I went on birth control,” Bure told Barber.
“But I never, ever thought that birth control could have something to do with maybe something that was inherently there, but making it worse or possibly causing it,” Bure went on to say.
“Birth control pills deplete major vitamins and minerals in our body, but no one tells you that when you sign up to go on the pill,” Dr. Barber said. “I didn’t tell my patients that. I didn’t learn that until I went on to the Cleveland Clinic Institute of functional medicine.”
She explained that one of those essential vitamins is vitamin B that help with mood and focus. Dr. Barber also mentioned that magnesium can also be depleted. Low magnesium is believed to linked to depression.
Women’s Health magazine reported on a study of 8,800 participants under 65 that those with low magnesium had a 22 percent higher chance of depression.
“It also changes your gut microbiome, the bacteria that live in your body and make your neurotransmitters like your serotonin and your GABA,” she mentioned.
“GABA is an amazing, calming neurotransmitter…It helps us not feel anxious,” the physician explained. “It helps us calm down and go to sleep and so when we have these disruptions going on, it can manifest as an anxiety disorder.”
“So like my heart breaks for you,” Dr. Barber told Bure. “My heart breaks for me because I’ve lived through all of this myself as well.”
Birth control has been linked to higher risk of certain cancers as well. One study led by Danish neurologist Dr. David Gaist studied a group of 317 women. The study found that women who were on progestogen-only birth control had a 2.4 higher chance of developing brain tumors.
Though the research results have varied on the link between breast cancer and birth control, one study in the UK showed that women who use birth control were at a 45% higher risk of breast cancer reported Live Action.
Reagan Conrad, host of The Comment Section podcast addressed the criticism of the growing concern over hormonal birth control as part of an “alt-right movement,” argued it should be about open discussion and understanding more about the pill’s effects.
“There are women in my own life [who were on birth control] who I know who had a stroke, or who struggled for years afterwards to get their period back, or women whose personalities completely shifted… so can’t we just have conversations about this without making it political for the well being of all women,” Conrad stated.
As Dr. Barber puts it, the discussion is not about judgment but wanting women to know about their bodies and what they put in them.
“I’m not here to judge or tell you should or shouldn’t do anything,” Barber said. “All I know is for me, if I would have had true and informed consent, I would not have been on birth control as long as I was.”
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