Hormonal birth control is harmful for women, especially being that college-aged women are among the great percentage to use contraceptives.
Synthetic hormones are an unnatural disturbance to the body, in long or short-term use, being that their purpose is to alter your body chemistry in order to stop natural phenomena from taking place.
Manipulating your body with an influx of hormones is indefinitely harmful to a woman’s mental, physical, and emotional health.
There are various forms of birth control available to women, like the pill, the 3 month Depo Provera shot, the arm implant, the patch, and a multitude of intrauterine devices (IUD’s).
Hormonal birth control is prescribed to women for contraceptive use, but it is also regularly distributed for regulating menstrual cycles and controlling acne.
There is only one form of effective, long-term, hormone-free birth control available to women to date, called the Paragard IUD.
According to the Paragard website, the contraceptive is an intrauterine device made of copper, no hormones included, because the presence of copper in the uterus works with your body chemistry to create a toxic barrier against sperm, and it is the only form of birth control of its kind.
There are other hormone-free methods like a diaphragm, sponge, or condoms, but those are meant for short-term use and higher maintenance.
According to the National Cancer Institute, women taking oral contraceptives, or pills, have an increased risk of acquiring breast or cervical cancer, whilst reducing the risk of other forms of cancer, like endometrial, ovarian, and colorectal.
Nonetheless, birth control pills put women at risk of cancer and there is evidence to prove this.
According to Harvard Medical School, a recent study conducted on Denmark women ages 15 to 35, has proven there is an increased risk of depression with the use of all hormonal birth control methods, emphasizing that adolescents using birth control are susceptible enough with puberty and their natural hormones changing.
All of these methods overload the female body with an intense amount of synthetic hormones, in order to reverse fertility, so one does not become pregnant, but with long-term use, this high degree of hormones to the bloodstream and brain can end up taking a toll on a woman with no history of depression.
LBCC showcases health and wellness workshops from time and it would be a great idea for our school to promote birth control awareness, and educate young women about what they put in their bodies, being that this is a shared experience amongst young women.
Mental health services are also covered by a semesterly student health fee, for anyone affected by depression needing to seek help and talk to a Mental Health Clinician on campus.
Birth control prescriptions are also available in the health office, covered by the student health fee.
They should come with a disclaimer, explaining adverse effects like depression, durastic bodily changes like mood swings, and the intensity of the drug as a whole, to spread awareness beforehand, instead of being handed out so freely.
With each woman’s story, a little more light is shed on this issue and by reiterating its importance, more thorough research with each passing day is what we can hope for modern medicine.
Natural hormone imbalances can occur in the human body, as well as these said unnatural imbalances perpetuated by birth control, but the reality is that all imbalances are unhealthy to a person’s health.
The only difference is that one is deliberate, being the use of hormonal birth control, and human beings allow it.