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BIRTHFIT Podcast Episode 86: What do you know about The Pill?

BIRTHFIT Podcast Episode 86: What do you know about The Pill?

What do you know about The Pill?

[0:00:00]


Lindsey: Hello, BIRTHFIT. This is Dr. Lindsey Mathews, your BIRTHFIT founder. Today, we have a live episode. That means the conversation was recorded live. And I am talking to the lovely Dr. Irene Tobias. Dr. Irene Tobias works with Dr. Andy Galpin down at Cal State Fullerton. If you don’t follow either of them on Instagram, go do that now. They are doing tons of research in muscle physiology. That’s probably way over my head. But they’re definitely leading the charge as far as research goes.


    Dr. Irene Tobias is a PhD biochemist and an MIT alumnae, I think that’s what you say for a female, who is a part of Dr. Andy Galpin’s team, like I just mentioned. She is studying a molecule called AMPK. That’s all I really know about that, but we dived into it on this episode. We also get into a little bit of training as it relates to the female cycle. We get into muscle repair, ligament repair, all things like that. To probably nobody’s surprised, there is limited, limited amount of information out there as it pertains to a young adult female, let’s say, between the ages of 16 through about 45. It’s really interesting, and I just can’t wait for you to listen to this. You’ll enjoy this. Let’s talk afterwards.


    Your question is: What do you know about the pill? Embo is like, “I’m ready.”


Embo: I know nothing about the pill. But there’s a little bit of truth to that, in all seriousness, as being a non-doctor medical student regular woman in society. You just know that there’s birth control and it’s awesome and you learn about it as a teenager or maybe in college and it’s like this, thank the Lord, there’s something. And it’s cool because it’s something that you’re in control of. That’s all I knew, literally all I knew until doing more research on my own, hearing stories from other women good and bad, and doctors–


    I just never really asked a lot of information because you’re just like, “Here you go, here’s the pill.” We can all relate to that, right? And I have my own opinions about it and I really do think having the freedom to control your birth control, control your cycle in a weird way is cool. We like that feminist freedom to be able to control when we’re going to have a baby.


    But, on the other hand, there’s a humongous disconnect with your cycle and your body that I didn’t even know nor did I understand until going off birth control, which is super awesome. That disconnect from the body far outweighs any pluses of being on birth control than I could have ever imagined until getting off of the pill. That’s what I know about the pill. Jump in.


Female: Mine is very similar to that because I think from the 70s and when the pill came out it was women’s empowerment. It was like women had the ability to control getting pregnant and that is a big thing. I think that we shouldn’t necessarily forget that. But what was forgotten was that it’s also really empowering to know your cycle and to know your body and to get in touch with that.


[0:05:06]


    So, I think there’s some instances where the pill is a good thing. If you really, really cannot get pregnant and for some reason, just like any medication, that it’s really necessary, okay. But there are other ways to get in touch with your body and to pretty easily track your cycle so that you don’t have to get pregnant if you don’t want to and that can really empower you to have that mind-body connection.


    I think that a lot of women now are just given this. It’s just like this bill of rights into her womanhood without this option or education around how to actually go about tracking your cycle, that you can even track your cycle, that there’s differences in your cycle. That, I think, like Embo said, it’s just empowering yourself to learn more about it. I’m sure we’ll get into all the side effects of it and that’s not really what I’m talking about. It’s just there are other ways around using the pill that are actually a lot more empowering.


Female: I’m going to jump in. I’ve two opposing views. One is that I am on board with — Yes, I can see especially historically how it was really the first thing that gave women any kind of option. If you didn’t want seven or eight kids back to back and back and to suddenly be able to only have the two or three you actually wanted, that’s a really big deal. [0:06:46] [Indiscernible] Yes.


    But, no. I mean, there’s a lot of people who didn’t want more and they are not happy with more. It makes them unhappy. I’m going to set myself off there. But you know what I mean. It led to unhappiness not fulfillment. So, that part of it, I think, is important and, I think, it’s still important to have as an option for people to say, “Here’s more of the things you can use blah, blah, blah.”


    The huge missing piece about education is not just for the person who is given the option of the pill but from the medical side as well and there is a huge, huge valley of physicians and medical professionals that do not understand the pill either, which is really unfortunate. So, we have a lot of people from a young age being put on the pill, they’re put on it at 12 because their period hurt or it was irregular for two days because you’re 12.


    And then you take this thing for 37 years then you want to have kids but you’re not really sure what to do. And I see that a lot. I see those women in their 20s and 30s trying to come off the pill or not even sure what it’s there for. And they don’t know anything about their body, they don’t know their cycle. Their doctors have told them for years that it doesn’t give any side effects but they’ve had migraines for 20 years.


    It’s a hormone and sure it’s super tiny but hormones are so sensitive that it doesn’t have to be big. And even the tiny pill that you take, there’s like four little dots in there that are actually active and the rest is filler. But if you open the package and just whiffed in nothing and then didn’t get a cycle that would freak you out, so they have to make it something tangible to swallow so you visually took something. It’s really, really strong.


    I think it’s a huge issue with just the miseducation. I think even if we gave people that like, “Hey, here’s the pill and here’s an option and here’s all the pros and here’s all the cons and you can choose and you can even try it for a while and we can re-discuss it,” that will be a whole different land than where we are right now.


Female: Can I jump on that? I’m a medical professional. I’m a nurse practitioner. Literally, I’m a women’s health practitioner. We literally use the pill for everything. If you got headaches, if your cycle is irregular. I really felt like I went to school and learned how to prescribe birth control. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the side effects of that.


    To me, I always want to know the why. I’m a big researcher, super type A. that didn’t sit well with me. Like we’re really going to just write this prescription and send people on their way? Personally, I think I only adopted that point of view because I never did well on the pill. I was one of the people that had side effects. I would have yeast infections and melasma on my skin and really bad mood swings and all this stuff. I never stayed on the pill for an extensive period of time and I found that I really can’t take any type of hormonal birth control.


    But if would have had a positive experience, that would have never come up for me when treating my patients. That was really, really important for me to seek out that education and to look into functional medicine and connect with other providers who have those points of view. But I was totally the black sheep in the school. They’re like, “No. You just use birth control and she’ll be good.” As soon as she already gets pregnant she just comes off and she’s like super fertile. Awesome.


[0:10:08]


Lindsey: Oh, that’s how it works.


Female: Yeah, yeah.


Female: These ladies have pretty well touched on the fact that women and young women and teenage girls and all that need to be given more options or more education really. But as that’s coming to be more public knowledge, I feel like there is a movement starting that’s like not everyone has to be on the pill from the time they start their period until they’re ready to have kids.


    I feel like just like BIRTHFIT in the birth movement is not like you either have an un-medicated home birth or you have a planned epidural hospital birth. BIRTHFIT wants you to be educated and then make your decision. Like Brittany just said about in medical school being like, “Well, this is the thing — It’s the Band Aid you put on all the things that are wrong with you,” I’m one of the ones that feels better on the pill. I’m glad that it’s there but when you want to have kids, that doesn’t go so well.


    I find myself — drowned out by plane. I find myself drowned out by the plane. I’m trying to come off the pill and get pregnant with PCOS. I have learned to track my cycle and I’m in the fertility awareness, like Facebook world. And so when I say things like I feel better on the pill, it’s like I kind of get shamed for saying that too. I’m kind of navigating this both worlds thing and, I think, moms need that option in birth and non-motherhood transition women also need that option just for learning about themselves and making choices about their family planning.


Female: I’m going to go slightly back to some of the side effects that most people have never even heard of. Birth control, the pill can actually deplete B vitamins. So, let’s think about it in relation to folic acid, folate, those things that cause neural tube defects, those things that cause miscarriages especially if you have a methylation defect.


    As someone who is homozygous for one of the methylation defects, I was told when I was 16 I would never get pregnant. I have a 15-year old daughter. It fucks with your mind. So, I was never told the side effects. I was never told what I needed to do. It was just you do this because if you have sex once and you are not married you will get pregnant and die of childbirth. And because you died in childbirth you’re just going to hell, so good luck.


    From the personal aspect, it’s why was I never given informed consent? Why was I told this is your option, not that you have options? And, I think, that that’s where we’re lacking even going back to education in fifth and sixth grade. I’ve had patients come in that they’re like, “I’m trying to conceive. I’m just so stressed. We’ve been doing this for years.” And again, talking acupuncture with them, but they’re like, “You know what, I was on the pill and I was told that — I thought I could just get pregnant like that. I had no clue that I could have to struggle. Because when I was taught about sex and I was taught about pregnancy, they didn’t discuss infertility. They didn’t discuss the problems. They didn’t discuss the future. They discussed what could happen that will scare you most at that moment.”


    That’s not right. We should be empowering people to make an educated decision based on knowledge and based on all the possibilities, what are the risks, what are the benefits, what are the alternatives and what will happen if you do nothing because that’s just as important? So, when it comes to the birth control pill, I think we just throw it to everyone and we don’t tell them what they’re actually taking and what the actual risks are. I think we’re doing the disservice to all women by not actually educating them so that they can make the informed decision on whether or not they want to take it or they want to find alternatives.


Lindsey: Right.


Female: Unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies can’t make that much money off of the one-time purchase of an $11 [0:14:49] [Indiscernible].


Lindsey: Yeah?


[0:14:55]


Female: There’s something I wanted to add. I also coach rowers, and that includes young women that are 17, 18, maximum 24. Makes me feel very young. One thing that I noticed as the racing competition approached was that some of them were losing weight really fast. And so I noticed that what they were doing at the gym wasn’t as good as before so I started having this conversation. Because I don’t coach them on the water. I just do the strength and conditioning part.


    And I realized, as I put it out there, that many of them are actually on birth control. The conversation we got into was because some didn’t get their periods for a while. Because I asked. I’m like, “How are you doing? Are you getting your period?” Some did, and others didn’t know because they were on IUD of some sort that nobody gets their period. What really worries me is this idea that not having your period is great. It’s the best thing that can happen to you because it’s just a hassle, it’s cumbersome and it’s great if you don’t have it.


    Somehow, that is told to these girls. For me, I feel like there’s a sense of urgency with them because it’s not just about the weights or the speed in their boat. I’m thinking you are half my age and I wish for you to not have fertility issues in a couple of years. You know that you don’t bust your body right now because you’re just thinking of this moment right here. And I feel that within the medical industry or whatever it is, they’re like, “Well, just take this and you’re fine. You won’t have period anymore. You’ll be fine, whatever. And indeed, once you’re finish, you can just stop and decide to have kids and it’s going to happen.” And I felt very inadequate in addressing this.


Female: I would say this is an agenda pushed. I can think of one major Chicago hospital right now that the running agenda is pretty much like, “Don’t worry. We can stop period because I know that it’s just really ruining your life.” And that’s just like — They’ll come in and they’re like, “Well, I started Mirena,” which is one of the IUDs that has little hormones that usually decreases the period a lot or stops it. Or something else.


    They’ll come in, they’re like, “Well, my periods were XY and Z. Sometimes X is fine. They were just existing. But I went in and so I’m taking this now so that I can really decrease my cycle and maybe even just stop it altogether.” And it’s like, was that what you went in for? Was this a concern? Was it heavy? Were you bleeding a lot? Were there fibroids? And they’re like, “Well, not really. I mean, we went in because it was my annual and they just said if I start this I could really cut down on how many periods I have. And so just that would really help me out.”


    But again, all the in between missing information. And, you’re right, it’s a great disservice to tell somebody here’s a solution for information you didn’t ask about, you don’t know about, and also how can that be undone because sometimes it cannot be undone. And definitely when I see athletes that have lost their periods from possibly too much over training, female athlete triad, a lot of times they’re put on the pill to force a period to happen or they’re given progesterone to make a bleed happen which is not a real period but it will give you a bleed. Am I grossing you out? Welcome to the world of women. It’s fucked up.


    Then we have these women who’ll say, “Oh, but then I took this medicine and I did have a cycle so things are fine.” It’s like, no, you didn’t. You took a medicine to force a bleed which is not a cycle. You still don’t know what’s going on. And they’re like, “But that’s okay because when I want to have kids, they just come down back in and we can do something.” It’s like, what is that? Oh, the fertility button. I totally forgot about that. You just, boom, hit that, we’re good.


    It does make me actually angry because it’s like you’re being lied to left and right or the information is not given. So, you’re at a crucial point to step, if nothing else, raise questions, raise a flag. And a lot of times I just tell people to go in. I’m like, I don’t know, if they’re not real pleased with the answer and they’re feeling a little ballsy, I’m more than happy to say here’s a nice little list of questions to go ask and just see what you could. I know your doctor is going to be little annoyed but that’s what you’re trying to ask for yourself.


Female: Yeah. And ask them what’s the function of your period? We get so much incredible information from understanding our cycle and understanding what is going — That tells us so much about our health. And that’s important for anybody, athletes included. It’s not just about I have this inconvenient couple of days every month or week every month. There’s a purpose and a rhythm of your body. It’s important to understand and to know that. And there’s a lot of power in that.


    We don’t get taught that. In annual exams, I literally — I mean, my poor patients. I would show them what their cervix looks like and feels like and how to find them. I would explain. When do you ever get that education? You certainly don’t get that in elementary school. My mom teaches sex ed and she basically told me when I was 12, “If you get pregnant I will disown you.” No joke.


[0:20:09]


Lindsey: That’s what I heard too. Hold on, we got three questions. Taylor, Erin and Lane.


Male: I’m a dude. This might be a dumb question but for the ladies on the panel and any ladies out here, obviously, going from being on the pill to trying to get pregnant, there are some difficulties.


Female: Or not trying to get pregnant.


Male: It doesn’t just happen. So, my question is: What were the biggest difficulties in the transition from the pill to getting pregnant or what were the hardest adjustments you had to make to try to get pregnant from coming off the pill?


Female: Well, this didn’t happen to me. Hello. This didn’t happen to me specifically but I have a lot of very close friends that their cycle never really came back. And so they had to go on a journey of a lot of expensive and very stressful treatments to get pregnant and I just don’t feel like that’s something a woman should have to do. But, yeah, that is unfortunately a big side effect.


Lindsey: Did anybody listen to Laura Bruner’s recent podcast? She was the female athlete triad, took forever for her to get her cycle back. I think the biggest thing that we need to start doing in our country, and I’ll bring it back to — I’ll get the questions — is celebrating when a female has her first period instead of going, “Ugh, it’s such a drag,” or, “If you get pregnant, I’m going to disown you.” Like creating power around that.


Female: So, obviously, I have three babies but I’ve also been on multiple types of birth control. I was on the Marine Corps and who wants to have their period in Iraq? I didn’t. I did not. So, most recently, I was on Mirena. I got it after my six-year old and I had it up until about 18 months ago. It was great. I was in the Marine Corps when I got it. I didn’t work then. And, honestly, I forgot about it.


    In retrospect, looking back, I think I had probably a lot of symptoms and things going on that probably were a result of the Mirena. I had suffered from vertigo quite often and some other things like that. In retrospect, I’m sure that was a factor. When I finally had it, we decided we’re going to — We’re a blended family. We decided we’re going to have a baby together and I got it taken out and it was horrible. It was horrible.


    I was a mess emotionally. I had the worst period I’ve ever, ever had. It was like two weeks long. I had two weeks leading up to it and two weeks after it that were complete — I was a disaster. And I went to my doctor to find out what was going on. I told her I thought I was suffering from what was a Mirena crash. It’s out there. I read a lot about it. Other women are suffering from the same thing. She was straight out, “There’s no such thing. It’s not your hormones. It’s not because your body stopped making progesterone that you’re suffering from this.”


    It was insane. Luckily, it didn’t affect me. I got pregnant the next — I was scared to death I was going to have that every month for a while until my body kick started or whatever had to happen to get me back to normal. Luckily, I got pregnant but I entered pregnancy in a scared place. I was not good. It was during the open which shouldn’t matter but it did. I wanted to do well that year. I’d done pretty well the year prior. And I couldn’t do anything. I was like I would cry in the middle of every workout I did. I broke down crying and I lay on the floor. I was like I don’t know what to do. I need to go take a nap. And I was not pregnant yet. I was just having a period.


    So, I don’t know. I wish in retrospect I hadn’t been on that. I talked to Gina a lot about this after I had my baby, what I should do now. Luckily, I have the knowledge now that I’m not doing something like that. It was super hard and not a fun experience and it kick started the pregnancy on the wrong foot. That’s my story.


Female: Well, I think some people have touched on this a little bit but I just wanted to fully have the conversation. I know so many of us have made decisions about our birth control based on, like at the time when we went on it, when we were younger, in our 20s or whatever, and we had the choice.


[0:25:09]


    But now so many doctors are telling moms to put their children at 12 and 13 — I have an 11-year old daughter and I think about that all the time, about their sex education, what are they learning, which is pretty minimal. We’re really lucky to be in a space where we actually have a really good sex ed program in three different pretty development ages and through our


[0:25:34] [Indiscernible]. It’s a program that’s open to our community.


    That has been very eye-opening to me as a parent. Like what do I need to be educating? Where do I find that education? How do I help educate other moms so that they’re not putting their daughters on a birth control just because of XY and Z reasons for their skin or their — That’s the big one we get right now. It will help you with acne or it will help your cramping not be so bad. You’re having your first period, your first couple of cycles. It’s not going to be pleasant. It’s the most uncomfortable thing you probably ever felt in your life.


    The thing we’re talking about, this should be celebrated and honored as like a rite of passage. It used to be that way. And so I just kind of, from a mom’s perspective, I want to just bring that up, if there’s any suggestions or ideas, places for information for other people in this group or listening to this that what do you recommend on where should we go to make sure we’re helping moms get really good education and helping them create that space of honoring it?


Female: Something that I’ve been thinking about this whole conversation. It may have a little bit to do with that, is like a generational — Issue is a wrong word but we don’t have another word for it right now. Like this generational maybe underlying tone of shame when it comes to talking about sexuality and our periods and our cycle.


    When I got the sex talk, I was so nervous. But I was in fourth grade. I was super young. My mom, I could tell, was just, “Oh, Jesus Christ. Don’t let me do this.” And my mom came from a very Catholic family where there’s just not a lot of conversation. And, of course, my dad was just like, “I’m not the one to have that conversation either.” To me, I think the most important thing we can do that maybe doesn’t answer your question very well is that the information comes from the mom.


    You brought this child into the world. You should be the one educating your children. I think that’s the really awesome finishing touch to the BIRTHFIT circle is you birth a BIRTHFIT baby and they’re just in it. They’re at BIRTHFIT from the time they’re born. And while that is then your responsibility to get that information, you should be the one teaching your child. Don’t rely on school. Don’t rely on the doctor. Rely on yourself.


    Now, to answer your question, where do we get this information for women? Well, yourself, number one. How does your cycle work? What’s worked for you? What do you do every single day to make sure that you’re in touch with your body? Which functional medicine doctors do you see? How much blood work do you get every work? What’s your nutrition like? Everything that we do every day.


    Get personal experience information then reach out to people you trust who have information that you think is legitimate and then share. That’s the best thing you can do. You’re so lucky that in your community something like that exists. I mean, that’s really awesome. And that’s what we’re trying to create. And I recently get off the Mirena as well. It’s been about a year now. Oh my gosh, this year has been awesome because I’m like, wow, I can’t wait to tell my daughter about this one day.


    If they want to go on birth control, okay, I mean, that’s a conversation. I’m not going to be like, “Okay, close the door. You’re in the doctor’s office. I’m not there,” type of thing. I think it starts with us. That’s the most important thing.


Lindsey: For sure.


Female: I would also add to Erin’s — She’s saying, what if you’re in the doctor’s office and the they’re saying, “We’re here to treat acne. We could do this. If there’s cramping, the period lasted two weeks.” The answer is always the pill. So then, I think, you need to give parents that confidence to say, “Why is this happening?” Not I’m sure we have a pill deficiency and so we’re here to replete ourselves. But like why is she having bad cramping? Why is she bleeding for two weeks? Why is her skin so bad right now? Why is that happening?


[0:30:03]


    And if that doctor is like, “Well, blah, blah, you’re female and you have a period and so have a pill,” then you just obviously need to move on. That person does not have a good answer for you. I think it’s having that time, just like we add to a birth, and everything else we do here, the question is make the time for the why and if that person can’t answer it then move on to someone who can.


Lindsey: Awesome. There’s a duo, I think it’s a duo. They’re called The Fifth Vital Sign. But they were on the podcast a while back and they’re trying to go around and educate, I guess, middle school girls, nurses, whoever they can, about their cycle. I think Embo hit it on the head with like we got to talk to the next generation about being comfortable in their sexuality because if you’ve read the book — I’m stealing it from Lane.


    If you read the books Lying-In or Born in the USA, the history of childbirth in America is so related to religion, not spirituality, to religion, to control. The pill is a form of having control of your body but also not having control of your body. As Embo said, you’ve got — The conversation has to start from within and whatever that within is, either with your mom or your aunt or whoever a female person is in your family. I think that’s brilliant. But I’m going to turn this over to Lane because she’s had a question for like ten minutes.


Female: So, I’m just going to share little bit and probably taking a different direction but as soon as we started talking about this, something came in my mind. Anyways, back track, I grew up in a different type of environment, didn’t get the talk, totally laissez-faire style of parenting, figure it out on your own, have a great time, see you at midnight, kind of thing.


    Dad wasn’t around a whole lot in the picture. So, for me, I was left to make a lot of these decisions on my own. I think, from a very young age, I knew that I wanted control of my body but I kind of knew that I wanted control over situations not necessarily medications. So, for me, it was all about involving — and this is really the whole point — involving your partner. I mean, from the very beginning, I’m like why aren’t we talking about the man? It’s not just some sort of free for all.


    And so laissez-faire self parenting leads to lots of casual sex. There is that. But every partner that I had, it’s like making sure that we are both on the same page and there’s communication there. So, I’ve never been on the pill and that’s different. But I’ve always felt in control. It’s kind of a different take on it. It’s feeling control but feeling control through the people I’m choosing, how I’m expressing myself with my body and my sexuality.


    For me, that’s really been empowering just in itself of just like action base and where I put my body, what I let happen to it. Where I’m going with this is just, I think, that the men also have a big role in it in educating young boys about their role in this whole childbirth motherhood transition, fatherhood transition so that it has power and meaning to them too and they don’t feel so disconnected like, “Well, this isn’t my problem.” That’s all the onus is on the woman.


    And so I kind of take a little bit of offense to that because, I think, that there needs to be a back and forth. They are very much a part of this conversation. Yeah, I’ve always like the idea of not contaminating, I guess, my reproductive organs and I feel like for whatever reason it’s given me a pretty good shot at feeling like when I’m ready to get pregnant, I got pregnant. I’ve been married, never got pregnant because I knew for sure that wasn’t working out and I didn’t want to get married, didn’t want to get pregnant.


    I feel like always having a clean slate to work with has allowed me freedom in my body and my mind to know that once I was ready 100% to have a baby I had a really good shot at that. I just feel like pick good partners, make good choices. That is also a great form of birth control in my opinion.


[0:35:04]


Female: Lane killed it.


Lindsey: Yeah. I got real. That was awesome, Lane. Go ahead, Embo. She wants to say something.


Embo: No. I just totally agree with that. And like being proactive in whichever direction you choose when it comes to birth control, I think is what I really got out of that. I kind of am jealous of your life a little bit but we all learned something from our own path. I think that was really cool.


Lindsey: As a female, maybe I got off birth control, how do I get to know my cycle? Help me. Help me.


Female: Read Taking Charge of your Fertility by Toni Weschler. The end.


Lindsey: That’s all you all’s answers?


Female: No. I mean, it’s totally normal to not have an immediate return to a cycle. I mean, it might be all over the place. You might feel really crappy and moody. I generally tell women it’s going to take probably three cycles for things to start to normalize because birth control hormones, synthetic hormones, that’s a powerful drug that you just come off of and maybe you were on it for 20 years. It’s going to take a little time for your body to rid itself of all those things. You need to be doing your four pillars. You need to be putting good nutrition in your body. You need to replete all those B vitamins that had been diminished.


    I mean, I hope to God you’re taking a prenatal vitamin if you’re on a birth control pill. Every woman of childbearing age should be on a prenatal vitamin. But you need time to replenish the things that might be depleted. That means that maybe going in and seeing a functional medicine provider and getting lab work, that means your mindset and your mindfulness practice, that means exercising so you can metabolize all that stuff out of your body.


    And then if it’s taking a little bit of time, again, connecting with a provider who can maybe do some additional lab work. We know that — Gina can speak to this too — birth control suppresses thyroid function, which is usually important for fertility. So, first we’ve got to start getting you to cycle again so that you can actually track it. That’s key.


Female: Acupuncture works great for all kinds of female hormone things.


Lindsey: Awesome. Anybody have any more?


Female: Also in getting to know your cycle, as difficult as thing may be, to use Diva Cup. A Diva Cup is a very interesting little tool to see exactly what’s going on in your cycle. It takes some getting used to. It’s not your first period tool when you’re 12 years old. But even now, at 28, it’s been useful. It’s been interesting.


Female: I just wanted to — Okay. Like 20 minutes ago, the token dude disappeared, but his question was like what was the hardest thing when you go from being on the pill to trying to get pregnant and like that is not the only way things happen. You can go from being on the pill to just not wanting to be on the pill. You don’t have to be pregnant if you are not on the pill. I mentioned Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler which is the kind of the fertility awareness thing.


    I mentioned it to one of my friends who had some misconceptions about how the pill worked and what her body was doing. I was like, “That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.” I told her that. She was like, “I don’t want to be fertile.” So, for anyone listening or watching, don’t let the title of the book scare you. It’s also giant but it’s very digestible. I think I read it in like a weekend because once I started reading I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is magic.”


    Don’t let the title scare you and think like, “Well, I don’t want to be fertile because I don’t want to have kids.” It’s really about taking charge of your body and your health and how you want to be in control of your life.


Lindsey: Awesome. All right. So, I hope we didn’t throw a ton of information your way and now it’s all weighing you down. The biggest takeaway here, and I think it’s happening more and more, is that when things like this, of this magnitude, are introduced into our lives either by our healthcare provider or suggested by somebody, I think it is our responsibility to seek out information and know the risk and benefits.


[0:40:10]


    Because this is going into our bodies. This is something that we are putting into our bodies. And maybe when we start to look at the risk and benefits then, as Lane was saying, maybe we might explore more or we might be more selective with our sexual partners or we might be more selective on when we have sex or when we — Just in the way we do things and the actions that we have, that we carry out day to day.


    So, the pill maybe completely appropriate for someone at some point in their life but knowing that person’s health, knowing their environment and everything else that’s going on, I think that’s really important. We’re at a time in our lives where lots of information is coming out about the pill. Do the research. Know what you’re putting in your body. That’s it.


[0:41:53] End of Audio

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