51. The Hidden Health Effects of Hormonal Birth Control with Nicole Jardim, Fix Your Period (The Hormone Disconnect Series Episode 2)

So this brings up a really good question then, because women have heard their doctor say that the pill is going to regulate their cycle.

So can we talk about how this is actually a myth and what is actually happening to a woman's normal hormonal rhythm when they're on hormonal birth control? Yes, the regulation myth.

Okay.

it is one of the things that we come up most against isn't it i'd say when doctors say that the pill will regulate your cycle what they really mean is that it's going to create predictable bleeding ultimately is what they're saying to you that is very different from actually restoring your natural menstrual cycle which is what i think most women are after when they're exploring that option and a healthy cycle depends on constant communication between the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the ovaries.

This is known as the HPO axis, the hypothalamic pituitary ovarian axis.

And so you just think of it as a bit of a superhighway between your brain and your ovaries, and there's constant communication.

So your brain releases these signals through FSH and LH to stimulate your ovaries, to mature a follicle, to ovulate, to produce estradiol, progesterone, testosterone.

But the pill interrupts this conversation because it is suppressing ovulation.

It's shutting down those hormonal signals that tell the ovary to release the egg.

It's doing that because it contains a synthetic estrogen, a synthetic progesterone.

And so what it is basically doing is overriding those signals from the brain because your brain's like, oh, wait a second, we already have some estrogen in our body.

So maybe we don't need to send those signals to the ovaries to make any more of it.

And so without ovulation, there is no corpus luteum, which is basically where the follicle comes from.

It starts producing progesterone after ovulation.

So there's no corpus luteum.

There's no meaningful progesterone production.

Ultimately, there's really no estradiol production, at least not to any major degree.

And then that bleed that occurs during the placebo week, where you would take your sugar pills or whatever you're taking is not a true menstrual period.

And this is across the board because people ask me this all the time, too.

Is that across the board for all of these types of birth control methods? And I would say, yes, it is, minus the copper IUD.

And in some cases, a hormonal IUD.

Some women on the lower dose hormonal IUDs may still ovulate.

But generally speaking, across the board, and if you have an implant or you're using a patch or something like that, that is the same too.

Your ovulation is being suppressed.

And so you're just having this withdrawal bleed or you're not even having a bleed at all.