Hormonal Birth Control & Your Body

Hello and welcome to the Ark Woman podcast. This is an exploration of woman kind. Here we discuss what it is to be a woman in the modern world while utilizing ancient and modern modalities in tandem to create a bounty of health for the body, mind and spirit. Good day wonderful women and welcome back to the Ark Woman podcast. Today we're going to be talking about hormone or birth control. We're going to have a pretty deep dive into its history and then we're going to look at post hormonal birth control syndrome or PVCS which you may or may not have heard of. We're going to dive into a bunch of different organs and vital systems. So just to list them off here the adrenal glands, the liver, the thyroid. We're also going to be talking about metabolism and cardiovascular system. Mental health, our skin, yes it can impact our skin, the gut microbiome, the vaginal microbiome, the libido and we're also going to be talking about endometriosis and PCOS. Just because hormone or birth control isn't given to women who are diagnosed with these conditions as a cure all and I'm going to be talking about the benefits and the risks associated with that. I will just say at the very start I am not very pro hormonal birth control unless it's for endometriosis, migraines and quite severe PCOS. I think it can be used as a tool and that's where I use it positively in my clinic. I've recommended that some women go on hormone or birth control because sometimes the benefits of using hormone or birth control far outweigh the risks you know. Otherwise I really don't think it's a good decision for a lot of women to go on hormone or birth control. If you're listening to this and you're on hormone or birth control and you're just wanting to find out a little bit more about it, please know that I'm not judging anyone that's been on a hormone or birth control. I've made a bunch of content online around this and that's kind of the assumption that a lot of women have around this that I'm judging them for being on hormone or birth control. I'm not at all. I think you're kind of misplacing the attitude I have towards it. That's not placed on women. It's placed on the pharmaceutical industries and the scientists that have put these medications forward with little to no regard for overall women's health and there is this overall attitude with hormone or birth control which is if it ain't broke, don't fix it which I think is really problematic because it is broken. You should fix it and you know there have been better iterations of hormone or birth control in the modern age you know but it's still not good. Women are still getting pretty sick from this and I'm going to be talking about the intricate ways in which that occurs. Just to start off as well, when we talk about these hormones, estradiol and progestin, we have to know that there is a really significant difference between this normal cycling estradiol that we produce in our body which is also called E2. So that's the type of estrogen that you produce in your body when you're a cycling woman. There are about three different types. When you produce when you're postmenopausal, when you produce when you're cycling and one you produce when you're pregnant and you do produce all three but you produce more of them at different points in your life and so when you're a cycling woman you produce more E2 estradiol and progesterone also known as progestin which is a synthetic progestin. So there is a pretty stark difference between these two hormones and you might be thinking how can it work as a contraceptive? Well it's similar enough for your body to think and for it to impact these systems and to impede on you know you ovulating either directly or indirectly and so hormone or birth control will act on the system directly so it stops ovulation altogether and stops the cycle. It doesn't regulate your cycle. It stops the cycle and intervenes that HPA axis, the hypertherlamic pituitary adrenal axis and also your HPA axis which is your hypertherlamic pituitary ovarian axis so it's impeding on these two communication signals between your reproductive system and your brain and other organs in your system like your adrenal glands. So it'll either indirectly or directly so combined oral contraceptives for an example so also known as the pill will directly impact on your ability to ovulate it stops you from ovulating and so the withdrawal bleed you have when you're on hormone or birth control or combined oral contraceptives I should say like the pill you are going to be having a withdrawal bleed so that's not a real period. It isn't it isn't you know and then the other ones that indirectly impact your fertility and actors of contraceptive are very often just the progestin ones and so that thickens your uterine lining or sorry it thickens your cervix cervical fluid and makes it this antibacterial thick mucus layer and basically creates this plug in your cervix so sperm can't get in and it also impedes on your ability to ovulate indirectly so women on progestin only styles of contraceptives are far more likely to ovulate than women who are on combined oral contraceptives. Also to note that there is no contraceptive out there hormone or birth control out there that only has estradiol so every type of birth control contains progestin and so this is where there might be an issue is because progestin carries the risk very often. There are different types of progestin so some will be anti-androgenic and so that's where it can be used to treat polycystic ovarian syndrome which can be really successful in the short term but then of course it's going to have long term negative impacts as well. Anyway let's get into it as I've already kind of started I just thought it was a really good idea just to start with that so you understand the difference between those and the different types of hormonal birth control because there are so many different types of hormonal birth control. I go through this in the course and how each of them have different negative impacts and you know what maybe we'll do it here as well but just to start out just so you know that's the type of birth controls that there are there's combined or there's just progestin on its own they're not the same as the naturally occurring hormones in the body and but they're similar enough for us to have negative impacts. And we'll also say that there can be some positive impacts from this but again the risks definitely outweigh the benefits when we talk about hormonal birth control and again no judgment on you. I've had a little bit of a prelude to that so hopefully you understand where I'm coming from so let's get started. Let's talk about hormonal birth control's history. I think it's really important as women that we touch on this aspect of hormonal birth control because we talk about it in the modern age but we don't talk about what its origins are. I really am a deep believer in that we can find out a lot about the modern age from our past so hormonal birth control its history really involves painful and sometimes lethal doses of synthetic estradiol and progestin which particularly affects women of color. So in the mid-1950s the first large scale human trial of the pill so combined oral contraceptives estradiol and progestin was launched in a public housing project in Puerto Rico. Why? Well because the FDA said to these two scientists one of them was a gynecologist John Rock and the next was a biologist Gregory Pinkers. You can't have this trial on on American soil it's too dangerous the risks outweigh the benefits basically we can't we can't pass you for ethics on this trial on American soil so this if you know fine we'll get passed for ethics in Puerto Rico they have a population crisis over there we're going to go there we're going to get funding from Margaret Sanger who is the known pioneer of eugenics so if you don't know about Margaret Sanger look her up she's pretty evil horrible person her whole deal was I want there to be babies but I don't want these babies to be brown or black or Asian or Hispanic or Native American I don't want anyone to have babies that isn't white she's the mother of eugenics so deciding on who gets to have babies she was kind of like feminist Hitler in a way she's evil I'm not going to spend too much time on her but please look her up at the fact that she's the one who funded this first hormone of birth control trial the reason why she funded is because she was like great this is a way that we can low key sterilize mothers and stop mothers from having children that I don't want to have children and then so white people can have children just fucked so fucked anyway so they were like fuck you FDA we're going to Puerto Rico they've got a problem and it's a third world country at that point in time you know in the 1950s we're going to go there and they're just going to say yes because we're going to give them up you know the governments and money and they'll pass us for ethics and we'll just run it through one of the universities there which is what they did and so up to 1,500 women participated in the trials in Puerto Rico over several years it has to be known we have to know this multiple women in this in this trial died when we look at the original documents it's like 11 or 12 women were reported as dying and then I remember finding the refining the documents a few years later two years ago and it was eight when we looked again last year it was five and this year they're saying it's three so they're slowly redacting the proof that women died in these trials or they're just saying oh I had nothing to do with it so one of the cases was one woman committed suicide if you look at her documents you can find that there is no prior proof of her having any type of mental health challenge and then she's committed suicide and we will talk about the risk of suicide depression and anxiety and mental health and hormone or birth control and then you'll understand why but they were like okay we're not going to include that we're going to redact that death from this so you see how they've been quite sneaky so they did that and even though multiple women died and you know the The documents had been partially redacted when they presented them to the FDA several years later after the trial had worked. This birth control, even though it did ruin women's lives, caused sterilization in mothers and women in Puerto Rico. It was still a successful contraceptive and the FDA said, "Okay, deal. Let's do this. You just got to decrease the estradiol and progestin component because that's what they kind of came to in the study is that the high amount of estradiol and progestin." So I think they halved it. Even then, that's so much more than what you get in a modern day contraceptive. So they halved it and they gave it to women in American soil and then it spread out to Australia, New Zealand, Europe and other westernized countries in the world. And so within four years, four million women were using this birth control pill. Alongside this, at the same time, IUD experiments were occurring. So from the 1950s and 60s, so the first IUD was silkworm guts attached to a silver wire and it was inserted into women of color who had no anesthesia and because it was hard to insert these IUDs into women, they actually had to cut out pieces of their cervix. So we cannot talk about hormone or birth control without talking about race. We cannot talk about hormone or birth control and IUD insertions and any type of hormone or birth contraceptive without talking about feminism and also talking about the women who paid the price for us to have this medication in the first place. So we really need to talk about that and give some light to that because women of color suffered immensely for this medication to break through. Once it breaks through though, the advent of hormone or birth control was absolutely revolutionary. It resulted in pretty significant social and economic improvements for women. It gave them freedom to choose whether to have children and work outside at home. You know, it literally changed women's lives. One study even found that hormone or birth control contributed to a 30% increase in women's wages by the 1990s. So 30% increase in wages in 40 years. Woohoo. But still a lot better than what women had been getting. And because it was normalized in society by the 1960s and 70s, we had more college enrollment of women and completing their college enrollments and their university enrollments in the 1960s and 70s worldwide. So really significant. And I'm not saying that hormone or birth control is absolutely evil. There are positives too and this is one of them. You know what I mean? I wouldn't have been able to go to university and have the life that I have lived if hormone or birth control hadn't have happened in the 1950s and 60s. But women suffered for me to be able to have that, you know what I mean? And I think that's the baseline foundation of hormone or birth control. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't have access to this. I'm not like that. I think it's important to women to have all access of birth control. At some point in your life, maybe that was the best thing that you could have done. And I don't really believe in judging yourself or would a kura shura not into that. If you took the hormone or birth control and you're kind of regretting it, whatever, you know, you did the best you could with the information you had at the time. And that's the same thing these women did. And I think it's really interesting because women have been complaining about side effects of this birth control pill, but they just put up with it because the benefits outweigh the risks. They were like, I am living with an abusive husband. I don't want to have more of his babies. I'm going to take this pill. Underneath the nose, I don't need to tell him about it. So I don't have more of his babies and I don't have to be financially trapped in this situation and I can escape. Or women who was like, I want to go to college and I also want to have sexual experiences. Okay. I'm going to take the birth control pill. There are a lot of kind of people online at the moment saying that the reason why the birth control pill was dolled out is so we could get more women to the workforce and so we could tax 100% of the population, which I think is like a really fun conspiracy theory. I'm not sure if I'm into it. I just think, you know, things happen. I really don't believe in a malicious 1% who are just kind of running everything. But if that's your thing, that's great, but that's just a conspiracy theory. You can look into it if you're into that. But I'm not really of that mindset. I just think, you know, birth control pill happened. It was funded by the mother of Planned Parenthood and Eugenics Margaret Sangha because she wanted to be a racist a-hole and she didn't want black women to have babies. That's really at the root of it, which is that better or worse? Who's to know? But as I said before, there is this idea around, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You know, hormone birth control has not kept kept up with this modern advancement. You know, there is this attitude of, it's not broken, we're not going to fix it. Pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to improve on hormone or birth control pills and other forms of contraceptives because they know the burden of pregnancy falls on women. And I just think it's so hilarious because they've done these really weak attempts to form hormone or birth control and give it to men and men alike. The side effects suck. And the side effects are not even a quarter of the ones that women today are experiencing. And you know, a lot of women are like, "Fuck and suck it up. We're doing it." And they don't think that's okay. If they are going, "No, our bodies are changing. We don't feel good." Like, I love men. We want them to be healthy. If they are having a quarter of the negative outcomes that women are having, what does that say about pharmaceutical industry? You know, I don't think that we should be attacking men for that. Like, they have every right to say, "No, this doesn't feel good. I'm not doing it." We need healthy men in our society for us to run properly and for us to be in our feminine, basically. So I'm not really for pushing birth control onto men. I'm also not pushing the sector needs onto men either because it increases the rate of prostate cancer. I digress. But there is this thing in society where we just expect that mothers are the ones and women are the ones who just the whole burden of pregnancy and child rearing falls on women. And until that changes, the pharmaceutical industry is not going to change, basically. So let's move on to women and hormone of birth control. So most women use hormone of birth control for reasons beyond contraceptives, such as managing menstrual issues, period pain and heavy periods, PCOS, acne, ammonaria and endo. Let's just go through some quick stats. So why women take hormone of birth control? So 35.2% take it for cramps and pain. So you could say that maybe that's undiagnosed endometriosis. Endometriosis takes up 4.5%. One specified hormone or symptoms is 12.5. What are the chances this is where women are in their doctors office saying, you know, this symptom is happening and they're just been given hormone of birth control. 90%. You know, that's what's happening. Then acne, so 15.9 and it's really sad that the 50, you know, around 90% of that statistic as well as probably teenagers, which is really, really hard to know because we're giving women this medication that we know causes heart attack and stroke and has black box mornings. And we're giving it to women saying it's going to get rid of that acne, which, you know, really sad. And then 31.8% of women are on hormone of birth control because they have a regular periods. And so those are the women in their doctors offices where they're saying, my period is so irregular, which might be undiagnosed PCOS and their doctor is like, here, it's going to regulate your cycle. It doesn't. It puts your cycle on cause. So, hormone of birth control just like offers this temporary solution. So hormone of birth control acts as a band aid for hormone of issues. It doesn't fix the underlying problems. Once you stop taking it, the symptoms usually return. And so we'll start talking about post hormone of birth control in a second and how that connects to that. And so overall, though, since the 1950s and 60s, there have been dismissed concerns. So all the concerns of women going towards pinkis and rock, the scientists who ran that FDA, you know, Puerto Rican trial, women were coming up to them and saying, I have problems, I have problems and they just weren't being listened to. Their concerns were absolutely dismissed. And so women, even after this FDA approval have been reporting side effects, but these concerns have been dismissed, right? And so this kind of loops back into that expectation that women are of the burden of pregnancy and child rearing. And they're just like, well, fuck in whatever. You either fall pregnant. And you have to have a baby or you put up with these symptoms. So really sad. And there's just enduring side effects. So despite side effects, many women tolerate them to maintain their freedom, reflecting the unspoken truth about the sacrifices that women make for reproductive control. So I spoke about this very briefly before, how hormone of birth control works. So hormone of birth control delivers synthetic estrogen and progestin throughout the month. So these hormones suppress the pituitary gland from releasing follicular stimulating hormone, which matures ovums and luteinizing hormone, which ovulates them through a process called negative feedback. So synthetic hormones in hormone of birth control are different from natural ones. And contraceptives don't have the same molecular structure or benefits as natural hormones. But they're similar enough to trick our body into thinking that we maybe are already pregnant. So if you have to progestin around your body's thinking, okay, we might be pregnant. And it's going to stop ovulation, but it's not going to think it's pregnant enough for you to start a whole cycle or to basically grow a whole uterus and have all those physiological changes. So some hormone of birth control methods don't directly suppress ovulation, but do it indirectly. And so all types of hormone of birth control work by directly or indirectly suppressing ovulation. Suppressing ovulation with hormone of birth control means you are not cycling. The bleeding is a withdrawal bleed, not a true period, which only happens with ovulation. So let's go through a few of the different forms of hormone of birth control. So never ring. So the never ring is a contraceptive device that you insert into the vagina. It's this ring that you basically put at the base of your cervix. And it functions really well. similarly to the pill and it prevents pregnancy. It has a really high risk of blood clots compared to some other hormone or contraceptives and it provides continuous hormone release for effective contraceptive. Next is the patch. So the contraceptive patch contains synthetic forms of estrogen and progesterone. It carries a really high risk of blood clots which is quite similar to the novering. And so you basically apply it on the skin and it releases hormones continuously to prevent pregnancy. And you know you need to replace it all the time to maintain effectiveness. The next one we're going to talk about is the mini pill. So this is a progesterone only pill. It does not directly suppress ovulation. So this is one of the types that indirectly suppresses ovulation and fertility. So that's how it works as a contraceptive. So it thinks the uterine lining, it alters cervical fluid to prevent pregnancy. So it creates this cervical mucus plug and it stops sperm from being able to enter the cervix. On the off chance that you do ovulate on this mini pill. So this is pretty popular but it has lots of side effects right. So irregular menstrual bleeding, acne, breast tenderness, decreased sex drive, depression, headaches, nausea, ovarian cysts. And I have heard a story of women having headaches on this as well. Next is the combined pill. So this is the one that we call the pill. So this has extra dial and progesterone. It suppresses ovulation directly. And so it has lots of different side effects as well. Nausea, headaches, breast tenderness and mood changes and there's more there as well. It can cause irregular bleeding or spotting and usually in the first months of use and that usually will go away. Some women also experience changes in weight so they gain weight. They might experience a decreased libido or changes while taking the combined oral contraceptive pill. Next is the arm implant or we call this in Australia the implant on. So arm implants are the common contraceptive option and they consist of only progesterone only. And so you basically insert a bar of progesterone underneath your arm kind of near your armpit and it just stays there and you can feel it. It's just underneath your skin. So the side effects include weight gain, excessive bleeding and headaches and many women have them removed. So this is the one that women will usually have removed the most or give up the most. And they work by continuously giving you a low dose of progesterone which prevents pregnancy indirectly again. And then we have the injection also known as the depro-provera. It delivers really high doses of progesterone that completely suppress natural hormone production. It works by preventing ovulation and thickening that you can you know that cervical mucus again and that inhibits sperm to be able to get through there. It lasts 12 weeks per injection and if you use it you have a high chance of pregnancy and so this was shown in Sex and the City I think Carrie Brudge was the one who had this type of contraceptive and she missed her injection as you felt pregnant. The other thing associated with this is huge risk of breast cancer, huge huge risk of breast cancer associated with the depro-provera or the progesterone injection. Also weight gain migraines, nausea and loss of menstrual cycles altogether because you're not cycling right. And then lastly we have the marina or the skylo which is a progestin IUD which is inserted into the uterus and it releases really small amounts of progestin, common side effects, our depression, symptothemic reactions and it's really effective at preventing pregnancy. The marina can last for up to five years, skylo lasts for three before needing our replacement. There are negative side effects associated with all of these so I'm just going to talk about them all together before we move on to each of the different organ systems. So cancer, so this is a thing that I find really annoying when you talk about the cancer risk associated with hormone or birth control, the alapathic or the scientific community will pipe up and say oh you know it prevents other forms of cancers. That's really theoretical. We don't actually have a lot of evidence to show that it decreases cancer risk in women on hormone or birth control. All of those studies are epidemiological studies and we can't draw conclusions from those studies. So whenever people are like you know it does prevent cancer, no it doesn't. We don't have evidence of that, that's very theoretical. We have those solid solid science that shows us that it does cause cancer. So hormone or birth control is a known carcinogen as recognized by the World Health Organization. It's on the same level, it's a class A carcinogen which bacon so really processed nasty bacon and cigarettes and alcohol are also on that class A, also hormone or birth control. So pretty crazy. Next is iron content and iron accumulation which a lot of people just don't talk about in relation to hormone or birth control. So hormone or birth control pills contain iron so especially those sugar pill days if you're taking a combined oral contraceptive, it will kind of be these days that don't have an e-synthetic astrodiol or progestin those pills if they're red and they have the letters fe on them will contain up to 70 milligrams of iron which is a huge amount of iron, huge huge huge amount of iron and so women already absorb iron really well but if you're not having a regular period what's going to happen? You're going to accumulate all this iron and this iron will feed pathogenic bacteria in the gut if it's unbound and if there's too much of it it can cause damage to your organs like the liver, it can cause systemic inflammation. So really need to focus on that if you've been on a hormone or birth control contraceptive no matter what it is and you haven't had a period for years then you really need to make sure you're looking your gut and your liver and your blood system because you might have too much iron and that can cause problems as well. If you have endometriosis or PCOS as well you can accumulate iron again even more easily and readily and then on top of that you have reduced bleeding while on hormone or birth control so really look out for that. There's also an increased risk and a higher likelihood of antidepressant prescriptions among specifically like young women starting hormone or birth control which really talks about its mental health impacts and so just to go through a few of the different side effects before we move on to each of the different systems individually this is all of the negative impacts it can have on your body so misperiods, light periods, heavy periods low libido, pain with sex, infertility which is really controversial it does increase the time to pregnancy. Chronic infections, gut dysbiosis, leaky gut, dry skin, IBS digestive problems, skin issues, adrenal fatigue, energy reduction, thyroid dysfunction, headaches, vaginal dryness, hair loss, antioxidant depletion so increase any inflammation in the body, depression, nutrient deficiencies and anxiety. So those are just a few of them and then it also intensifies a bunch of other things in the body so as we know it's a known cause of cancer specifically liver, breast and cervical it can negatively impact your thyroid so it's associated with high polythyroidism which we will talk about also your gut health and your autoimmunity and microbiome health. There is a 300% increase risk of Crohn's disease which is an autoimmune disease in women who have been on hormonal birth control really significant and then cardiovascular systems as well so heart attack stroke and blood plots which we know about and unfortunately this year already there have been a few documented cases of women in the US who have died from Yaz, Yazmen and Ocella which all have black box warnings so really sad. So let's move on to next you know talking about hormonal birth control post hormonal birth control syndrome so also known as PBCS so what is it? It's an array of sign and symptoms that emerge after discontinuing hormonal birth control. These can include issues previously suppressed by hormonal birth control or new side effects that it's caused so symptoms can range from headaches, mood swings, anxiety, depression, acne, menstrual irregularities, PCOS, endo and we will talk about that. Does birth control cause PCOS? No it doesn't but we will talk about that later in this episode. Infatility, hyperthyroidism, leaky gut and autoimmune related conditions as well. So why? Why does this happen? So hormonal birth control disrupts the communication between your ovaries and your brain so that HBO access I was talking about and so it makes it really hard to reestablish that connection once you've been on hormonal birth control for a long period of time. So if you're on hormonal birth control for like things like PMS, acne pain these things are going to return. If you don't work on the root of why they've come back and alongside that as well irregular cycles so 40% of women who come off of hormonal birth control will experience menstrual irregularities like ammonaria or short lewdial phases and this kind of these both tie into the fact that it negatively impacts your hypertherlamic, pituitary, ovarian and adrenal axes and so when we're trying to reestablish that connection that's where we can kind of get these nasty symptoms. So if you do have these symptoms please don't get gas lit. So many women experience this when you discontinue hormonal birth control and you know you might have new symptoms come up so say you've been on a hormonal birth control and you went on you know a progestin only anti-androgenic type because you had really bad cystic acne and it comes back and you're saying to your doctor it's back again what can I do and they're saying oh just go back on the pill again and you're saying no I think this is a symptom of PBCS please research it because it can take up for nine months for your cycles to regulate after stopping hormonal birth control absolutely it's shorter if you know what to do. If you're going to your doctor or your health practitioner you're saying I think I have PBCS I've symptoms of this syndrome. And they say, no, you don't. And they try and gasp at you. Just get a new doctor. Just get a new one. There's so many of them that they're not going to listen to you and take you seriously. Tell them to get fucked basically. You're paying them. I think it's really important when you're going through this journey of healing your body after home and a birth control to remember that you are their boss. You are paying them. If you had a tradesman come to your house and you were like, OK, I want the door to be green. And they say, no, we can only do blue. You would think that's a fucking joke, right? Hopefully you'd think that's a joke. You'd be like, well, I'm not going to hire you. I'm going to get someone else. Why? Why? Are we not doing that with our health? Like, don't outsource your health to these doctors who don't care about your health. Have a good relationship with your health practitioners and support the doctors that are doing the good work, because there are amazing doctors out there. There are incredible doctors out there who do care about your health. I want to do the best for you. And I'm willing to listen to you and take the time. Because you're paying them. And if you're in the US, you're paying them out of pocket, darling. So they're not going to listen to you. Get a new one. If you're in that doctor's office, and they're like dismissing all of your concerns, use this statement, write this down, babe. Are you willing to put in writing your dismissal of my concerns and symptoms? Be a nasty woman is all I'm going to say anyway. That's that ran. Do with that information what you will. So let's talk about a few of the different negative impacts that you might have right after you finished birth control pill, which is going to be PBCS. So post-hormone or birth control syndrome. So misperiods, so many women discontinue hormone or birth control. Like when they discontinue it, they experience irregular periods. So research indicates that stopping hormone or birth control can lead to significant changes in hormonal cycles. So shorter, luteal phases, longer cycle lengths, and ovulatory cycles. So you're not actually ovulating. And this can last for months through in years. Hopefully it wouldn't because you're doing the right things with your body to make sure you're healing after that. And then you can also have something called post-hormone or birth control, amenorrhea. So where periods can see sort together and they can persist for four to six months after stopping hormone or birth control. So if you don't get a period for like three months after hormone or birth control, don't stress. It's okay. Your body can heal. But that's a cause for concern and you probably need to present to a health practitioner and talk about that. But if you do have misperiods, you can supplement with things like vitamin B6, which is really important. And that's going to help fully support progesterone production and a normal cycle. So you can actually bring back that cycle. And then headaches. So that's another negative one. So hormonal headaches typically stem from estrogen dominance and like high estrogen. So if you had really heavy periods before you went on any type of hormone or birth control, you start getting headaches after. It might be like high histamines and magnesium deficiency, which hormone or birth control can cause. And also estrogen dominance can be like a conglomeration of those three things. So you can definitely do things like fever, few and vitamin B2. So and these six as well can help. And also other things like turmeric, ginger, amethystides can help with that. Also acne. So especially if you went on hormone or birth control to help your acne, in the short term, when you go off of any type of hormone or birth control, it will increase your androgens and androgens can cause cystic acne. So that's something else that might happen. So in the short term, omega-3 is gamma, lenient, lenient, lenient acid, healthy fats, and eating probiotic rich foods is also going to help. The other thing that you really need to look out for is hair loss. So hair loss is a serious sign of deep hormonal imbalances. And it's really important to seek treatment immediately if you've begun feeling like you've started to shed hair everywhere. And there's a difference between hair loss type and what hormone ill imbalance that you're experiencing. So there's balding. If you're just losing hair in the middle of your head, if you're generally just feeling like your hair is getting thin, but you're not losing hair, if you're losing hair in patches or if you're losing in total body. So really important to write down what type of hair loss you have, because they all have different implications on the body. Another one is heavy and painful periods. So some women will have no periods or really lie periods after hormone or birth control. And then some women will be like, wow, I have never had such heavy painful periods in my life. So caffeine, stress, and also just hormonal imbalances, such as estrogen dominance, we usually see heavy painful periods and dysregulated estrogen, which is kind of a different thing, but it might impact that as well. So you can take things like dim and artichoke extract and make sure you're eating the fiber as well. So those will all help with that. So those are kind of the symptoms of post hormonal birth control syndrome. Now I'd like to move into each of these different organ systems. We're going to be going through a few. And I just think it's important that we start with the adrenal glands because they produce a hormone called cortisol. This is an amazing review from Taniqa who took my hormone harmony course after she stopped hormonal birth control. Serious in-depth course, hormone harmony is the ultimate missing puzzle piece of the puzzle. I felt so lost after coming off hormone or birth control that Seria has made the transition and choice a whole lot less confronting. Each lesson is full of thoughtful information and practical diagrams that gently guide and educate you on how to heal your body. Seria's immense knowledge, expertise in health and wellness industry and her science back approach helps to bring you confidence in navigating your hormonal health journey. Throughout the 18 lessons you learn practical tools to make changes to your everyday life to create healthy boundaries in the systems of your body. From anatomy, mental health, nutrition, cycle tracking and fertility, no question and no stone is left unanswered or unturned. This course is an absolute investment into your health when recreating a healthy endocrine system and healing your body after birth control. I personally feel so grateful to a found Seria's work and feel this course all women should take no matter their situation. She is real, honest and gauging and it feels like a conversation with a friend in all of the right ways. The added resources and links to podcasts and books expands on the information already given and provides options for other health professionals too. I have loved getting to know my body on a deeper level over the period of this course and I know I'll come back to it time and time again. I'm now able to move forward with confidence and knowing that I'm making educated choices for my body, therefore living a balanced and full life. Just to back up though, what are the adrenal glands? So they're also known as the superannial glands. They're small triangular shaped endocrine glands so they produce hormones and they live on each of our kidneys. So there's two of them and they produce cortisol, adacerone, adrenaline, noradrenaline and they're really important for overall function. So we need to just focus on cortisol here. So this is a hormone that controls how the body uses fats and proteins and carbohydrates so it controls part of our metabolism. It's also really important for the availability of glucose in the brain, red blood cells, skeletal muscles and when we think about cortisol we just need to think of it as a steroid hormone so it's derived from cholesterol and it's a hormone of energy, right? So it plays crucial roles in immune function and memory. It's really important for it to be balanced. So it's when it's released and we need to have it released at the right time. So it's not just a stress hormone. We can't just think about it negatively. We have to think about the fact that we need regulated and responsive cortisol, not just high chronically inflamed cortisol which we usually see in women who have been on hormone of birth control for long periods of time. So cortisol production is triggered in the brain from the CAHH being released from the pituitary and that releases a CAHH in the blood system and that tells the adrenals to release cortisol. So basically what happens is we're on a run, we're doing a cold plunge or we're running away from something that's dangerous, we need to release cortisol. So the brain will go, okay, we're experiencing stress. Let's tell the adrenal glands to produce and release cortisol and so that's when it releases. Cortisol levels usually though will be highest in the morning so they're lowest from 1am to around 5am in the morning and then they boost up at around 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning for most people and then it drops and then peaks a little bit but kind of halfway to where it was when we first woke up and then it just kind of has like a tiny little peak around you know 7, 6 or 7 o'clock and then it dips. So this is where we're talking about responsive cortisol and like a functional cortisol. So we have a peak in the morning and it reaches lowest levels at night when we're getting our deep REM sleep. But what happens with hormonal birth control is that we stop having this responsive and dynamic cortisol system and we start to actually get this cortisol that's just chronically high or chronically moderate you know what I mean. It doesn't have any peaks, it doesn't have any troughs or highs or lows, it's just chronically always the same. And so this is where women experience that wired tired so they're tired and fatigued during the day but they can't sleep at night and so this is because their cortisol is pretty much the same throughout this whole time. So it's really annoying when we talk about cortisol online and you see all of these people talking about lowering their cortisol. No, you don't want to have a low cortisol because if you have low cortisol it means that your immune system is going to be fucking shot and you won't be able to have a good life because you won't have any energy. You won't be able to push yourself through workouts, you won't be able to respond to viruses and bacteria properly. So you actually need it to be functional. The other one that is being released is adrenaline as well and so adrenaline is released in pulses and so adrenaline is released when we need releases of energy, cortisol functions lots of different things in the body. adrenaline is mainly released in the brain and through the body. So adrenaline in the brain is called epinephrine and in the body it's called adrenaline. And again, it's really important for healthy immune system but not as much as cortisol. So we don't just want low cortisol, we want functional cortisol. And so when we're talking about cortisol, we're talking about the kind of this stress response. And so this is a healthy stress response. And we actually need this stress response in the body in short-lived doses. So when we respond to exercise or other stresses. So like a sauna or when we're going for a walk or maybe you know, you just maybe someone has rammed the back of your car. It's normal for you to feel stressed in those moments. You don't have to be zen all the time. That's a normal physiological response. So let's just talk about what this response is. So I put you at your gland, releases ACTH. And then that tells the adrenaline, "Hey, stress, release hormone." And they release cortisol and adrenaline into the blood system. And then that impacts lots of different systems. So the liver will convert glycogen to glucose. So increase your blood sugar. Increases your blood pressure. So vasoconstriction of your blood vessels. So your blood vessels get smaller. You increase your sweat. Your breathing gets faster. Your heart rate is accelerated. You get tunnel vision and your digestion slows down. So it moves your blood away from your internal organs into your extremities, which makes total sense because now is not a time to thrive. Now is a time to survive. We have a stressful thing that's happening right now. It's not really, we're not going to prioritize digesting that delicious smoothie or cacao you had today or that steak. You know, that's not the priority right now. We're running away from tiger. We're recovering from cold or whatever. We need to make sure that our stress response is initiated. So we can act accordingly. Interestingly as well, it'll pull a lot of the blood from your prefrontal cortex where you think and problem solve. And this is where your emotional center is as well in your communication center. And it'll take the blood out of that brain center and push it into your amygdala, which is kind of your survival response, which I think is really interesting. And so there's also this interaction with the adrenal glands and the thyroid is also known as the ATA axis, so the adrenal thyroid axis. And so what we're going to be talking about here is basically how hormone or birth control it causes low grade chronic inflammation. And so this inflammation is a stress response in the body. So what's that going to do? All right. Brain's going, okay, there's inflammation in the body. There's something here we need to fight it. Let's tell the adrenal glands to release cortisol and adrenaline to a certain degree, but mostly cortisol. And then we're going to be able to activate this immune system. We're going to create inflammation. We're going to be able to fight this off in a normal physiological system in nature that would work. But it doesn't know that we're living in a modern world and that you're going to be taking that hormone or birth control pill tomorrow or you have an IUD in your uterus. And it's releasing this low grade, progestin and estradiol. And you're going to be exposed to this for long periods of time. So this puts a consistent and constant demand on the adrenals and they keep releasing cortisol. And so this impacts your body pretty negatively. Specifically, your thyroid, so it'll downregulate thyroid hormones. We will talk about when we talk about the thyroid and it also impacts your gut. So inflammation is an immune system tool, basically. And white blood cells are a part of your immune system. 80% of them reside in your gut, so your large intestine. And so when we have high cortisol, we often see intestinal hyperpermeability or lehigar. And so this can be triggered by hormonal contraceptives, especially if you're taking, you know, oral contraceptives because it's going to be going directly into your gut microbiome. And so this will respond to widespread inflammation and immune responses throughout the entire body. And so it creates this really huge snowball effect, basically, you know, you're taking your hormonal birth control pill or you have it inside of your body, your body is going, okay, let's tell the adrenal glands to release more cortisol. Cortisol is released. It causes more inflammation in your gut. That signals to the brain. It just creates this huge downflow effect. And so you can kind of get, dare I say, adrenal fatigue. So it's not an officially recognized scientific literature term. But it's used by like alternative health practitioners to describe fatigue and symptoms of attributed to chronic exposure to stress, which if you've been on hormone of birth control, you have had chronic exposure to stress. So we can also see this as HPA dysregulation. So it's either adrenal fatigue or HPA dysregulation. It's pretty much the same thing. So stress is constant in our modern world. And then we add on hormonal birth control as well. And so there's this adrenal fatigue life cycle. So first off, there's this early inflammation cortisol levels rise as the body struggles to control inflammation. And this leads to cortisol resistance where cells don't use cortisol properly and then are actually listening to cortisol properly. And then this problem progresses, right? So inflammation continues unchecked cause causing cortisol to levels to eventually drop. And so then that's when we get hormonal chaos. So this presents this presents persistent inflammation. This leads to hormonal immune system imbalances and results in pretty much overall dysregulation. And so how does hormone of birth control impact the adrenals? So it disrupts that ovarian adrenal thyroid access that we're just talking about before, because the adrenal glands talk to mostly most organs in the body, as we were just talking about before, but they have an intimate connection with the thyroid and the lubeau, which we were talking about, which is why I thought maybe in this podcast, we'd just start with the adrenals first. And so when we disrupt this HBA regulation, it manifests with symptoms of adrenal fatigue and it impacts those other symptoms as well. And so we were just talking about this inflammatory response. And so the estrogen component of hormonal birth control, if you're on a combined oral contraceptives, they will have significant impacts on the body and increase inflammation in the body as well. And so the body is going to release cortisol to counteract this inflammation, but it's, you know, inflammation is persistent and excessive. So the adrenals produce more. And then what we find is that we elevate this cortisol binding glopulence. So this is a protein that binds to cortisol and prevents it from performing its intended functions in the body. This is kind of a different system in your body. Your body is going, okay, we are producing so much cortisol. The cells are resistant to it. We need to release this globulence, this protein that's going to bind up and pretty much contain all of this cortisol in the blood system. This prevents cortisol from working, which means that this inflammation goes unchecked and then the adrenal glands are going, oh, we don't have enough cortisol in the blood. Let's produce more. And so this creates a pretty huge problem because as cortisol is a cholesterol steroid hormone, what can happen is that your adrenal glands are producing so much cortisol. It stops producing testosterone and DHEA and aldosterone as well, which we need these hormones in certain amounts in the body for proper function. On top of that, hormone to birth control depletes the central nutrients like magnesium, zinc and bivitamins, which we need for adrenal health and function and also to produce hormones. So we just get this huge hormonal cortisol dysregulation. So we usually have a decrease in higher resting cortisol levels. And then because it's kind of static and staying at the same level, we have delayed cortisol peaks. So you're not seeing a peak in cortisol when you're working out or exposed to stress. So you're not having a healthy stress response. And then you have lower cortisol levels upon waking. So you're just fucking exhausted in the morning. You have fatigue. So wide and tied throughout the day, you can't sleep at night. And then we have these maladive reactions to the HBA axis. So we don't have a proper stress response. We have like this blunted stress response, which is really problematic. So adrenal fatigue, reproductive health. So we can see anovulatory cycle. So you're not ovulating because high cortisol stunts your brain from releasing a hormone called gonadotropon releasing hormone. So this makes total sense, right? So your body's like, this is not safe. Why would we ovulate? There's so much cortisol around at the moment. There's haywire, the adrenals of fatigue, the gut isn't healthy, there's systemic inflammation. Why in the world would we ovulate right now and risk pregnancy when we are obviously not in a safe environment? So cortisol will block GNIH. You also see PMS symptoms. So whenever we have high cortisol, we have low progesterone and we have low magnesium, which means you have really painful periods. You can have increased sugar intake problems, so you can have cravings because you have a stress response and your metabolism. You can be a bit shot as well and you can start to crave sugar. And then as well, progesterone deficiency. So the interesting thing about progestin, and we will talk about this in the mental health section, but we'll just touch on it here, is that progestin can be made into cortisol. And so if you're taking a style of hormonal birth control that contains progestin, hot tip, every single type of hormonal birth control contains progestin, it can be made into cortisol. So. It'll be interesting about the adrenal gland and just beautiful to start with that because we need to understand, you know, the adrenal glands, the liver and the thyroid to kind of understand how it impacts all these other systems as well. Okay, let's move on to a different organ. Let's talk about the liver. So the liver is crucial for metabolism, detoxification, nutrient absorption, blood sugar balance and immune function. So it also eliminates necessary, unnecessary hormones, including synthetic ones from hormonal birth control, which can really stress out the liver. So what are the functions of the liver as well on top of that? Is enzyme production? So enzymes are basically the proteins in the body that do work and we need them, and we need them for every single function in the body. But when we're talking about the liver, we need to talk about digestion. So they basically, the liver makes lots of different enzymes, which can aid in digestion, which is really important. The other thing it's really important for is making bile, which shunts metabolites into liquid that we store into the gold bladder and then it excretes into the large intestine or the small intestine and then it goes on its journey to the large intestine and then we digest it out basically. And the liver also digest excess hormones, medication, alcohol, caffeine and a host of other molecules as well. So it's kind of where we detox the body. When we talk about the liver, we need to talk about estrogen, right? Because the liver will break down estrogen and estrogen just so you know, we produce 80% of it in the ovaries. We produce a small amount of it in the adrenal glands and some body fat produces estrogen as well. But the liver is really, really important when we talk about estrogen dominance. And if you do have any symptoms of estrogen dominance, you will most likely have to focus on your liver. The liver digests estrogen. That's the main reason why if you have heavy painful periods, you're going to have to focus on that. And so it detoxifies estrogen molecules into three different types, so two, four and 16. So two and four go through our bladder and we pier it out. But this 16 type, if we don't get rid of that through the digestive system, so we actually excrete it. So we have a bowel movement and it comes out of our bowels. But what can happen with hormonal birth control and if you're taking a synthetic astradial, is that it can be metabolized into this 16 type estrogen and that it can go through the gall bladder and our large intestine. But if you have chronic inflammation that's stopping you from, you know, digesting molecules properly, it can actually reactivate it and put it back into the system. And so this is usually what we see with estrogen dominance. And so if you have any estrogen dominance and you're not, you know, going to the bathroom enough, you have constipation and this is, this is all kind of happened after hormonal birth control. You most likely have taken a birth control pill that has had astradial in it and it's negatively impacted your gut and your liver. So really important. The other thing about the liver estrogen connection is copper. So estrogen copper have this really strong affinity for one another and copper tends to accumulate in the liver and if it's unchecked, it impacts liver function. So excess copper inhibits the liver's ability to detoxify estrogen. So they're really toxic friends for each other, you know what I mean? If copper is around, it's going to block estrogen from digesting. Copper can also act on the same receptor sites if it's free. So if it's not bound to a protein called serrulloplasmon in the body and so that can also lead to problems of copper excess in the body. Alongside this as well, really interesting that oral contraceptives, which contain an astradial, often we see elevated plasma copper levels as well. So this is usually what we see. If we do lab work or hemineral tests with women after they've stopped hormonal birth control, they have really higher copper levels, especially if they've been on a type of hormonal birth control that's contained astradial, but even antigenic progestins. So de-astrogeol can increase copper as well. So this is something to keep an eye out for. If you've never had like heavy periods and got problems and constipation and, you know, all of these different symptoms of estrogen dominance before going on hormonal birth control and you're having them after, well, okay, you probably need to go and get your copper checked out, serrulloplasmon checked out. You probably need to look at your liver markers because you might have a liver issue there. The other thing that how like the liver and hormonal birth control have this relationship is with a hormone or a globulin, I should say, called sex hormone binding globulin. So hormonal birth control depletes nutrients that we need for healthy estrogen metabolism. This leads to excess metabolite buildup and potential health problems. Hormonal birth control affects liver function as well. And so research is now suggesting that our liver may not fully recover to its original function after prolonged use. Specifically, alters the liver's production of this globulin, sex hormone binding globulin. Because the liver is like, okay, so I have to digest all of this excess, progesterone, and estrogen now. Don't know where this is coming from. I'm not used to having this huge amount of hormones running through the system. I'm overloaded. I'm going to make a protein. I'm going to make an enzyme called sex hormone binding globulin. And I'm going to release that into the blood system. And so that's going to bind up all of this excess hormone until I can deal with it. But the problem here is now that studies are actually showing that women who are on hormonal birth control have really significantly higher levels of SHBG, which remain even elevated after you stop hormonal birth control. And we also have some studies that show that this doesn't drop years after women stop hormonal birth control. You can still have really elevated levels of sex hormone binding globulin, which you don't want, because it's going to bind to hormones that you need, like testosterone. So your libido is going to be negatively impacted. Then also it's going to bind to progesterone and estrogen, which may in the future negatively impact your ability to for pregnant and hold on to a pregnancy, hopefully as well. So just something to look out for if you have these symptoms of liver function, you know, dysfunction to maybe go and get SHBG tested as well. The other negative impact that hormonal birth control has on the liver is benign tumors. So benign liver tumors, they were rarely reported before birth control was introduced in the 50s and 60s. And you know, most research indicates these tumors don't become malignant, so cancerous and they don't spread. But they have a really high risk of bleeding or rupturing, which in the liver is really serious. And women on specifically birth control pills, so combined oral contraceptive pills that have estradiol and progestin, they tend to have multiple large returers that are really prone to bleeding. And some research even suggests that oral contraceptives increase the risk of developing malignant liver cancer. So this is where we have research to prove that. And so other studies have also found no correlation and no increased risk. So interesting to see who researched that and who paid for those studies as well. One study even found that just six to 12 months of pill use, so combined oral contraceptives resulted in about 10% of these women developing tumors. So again, if you have these symptoms of estrogen dominance, then that's something that you really need to look into as your gold bladder, your liver, maybe even getting a ultrasound on that organ and making sure that that organ is healthy. Let's move on to the thyroid gland. So the thyroid gland is kind of a lesser known endocrine gland. Hopefully more women will find out about this because it's so important for your reproductive health. I mean, all of these organ systems are really great for your hormonal health and your endocrine health. But thyroid gland is something that I see a lot in my clinic as kind of a point of concern. So make sure, if you've never learned about the thyroid gland that you listen to this. So what is your thyroid gland? It's a butterfly shaped gland that's in your neck and it produces thyroid hormones. It's called a T3 and T4. T4 is inactive and T3 is active. So T3 is activated at the receptor site of cells and it can also be activated for the most part in our gut. And thyroid hormones are really important. So the thyroid gland basically sets the pace of the body. So our heart function, basal metabolic rate, so our ability to produce heat, respiration, so our breathing rate, central nervous system, hormonal health. If we don't have good thyroid health, we won't be able to full pregnant because T3 and T4 kind of activate the receptor sites of our cells and tell them, hey, there's energy around, envelop it, use it or store it as fat basically. So it sets this metabolic pace of the body. So in the brain, our brain will release TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone, releases it through the blood system, goes to the thyroid gland and says, hey, can you produce T4 and T3? And then T4 and T3 are produced or mostly T4 is produced and then T3 is activated in the gut at the receptor sites and other points in the body and they influence lots of different things in the body. So stimulates gut motility, heart rate, regulates bone and muscle growth and stimulates brain development as well. So really important for your whole body. So thyroid stimulating hormone is how your brain communicates with your thyroid and it promotes it to secrete T4 in a really small amount of T3. T4 is inactive and tap travels to tissues like the gut, liver and kidneys where it converts into T3, the active hormone. So this is really important. Nothing in the body is in isolation as you can tell by now. I've tried to talk about these endocrine systems in isolation but it's really hard to because they're so interconnected and that's how our body is so robust and that's also its Achilles heel, right? So it's so brilliantly designed and perfect because it's of how interconnected it is but it's also a problem. If one system goes out, all of the systems are going to go out to a certain degree, which is kind of good in a way. But basically, iodine is essential for creating the fire at hormones, so we need iodine. So T4 has four iodine molecules, T3 has three. So we need to activate T4, so taking away a iodine molecule to activate it so we can be used at the receptor sites. And so basically, when it gets to the receptor sites of the body, it says, hey, there's energy around. Let's do it. Basically, if you have lots of T3 around, it means you have lots of food around, so that's going to increase your blood rate and your heart rate, right? So you can pump this blood and this nutrition around the body so it can be stored and used faster, which means your digestion is going to move faster as well, because it means you're going to have more waste products. So you need to actually have a bowel movement or you need to pee more. It's going to increase your basal metabolic rate as well, because when we're using energy or storing energy, we're making heat, basically. So it's really important to remember that. Also at the start of this, hypothyroidism and hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism is an overactive thyroid, so it produces too much hormone. Hypothyroidism is when we have an undirective thyroid, so we're not producing enough hormone, or there's something obstructing those hormones in the body. So just before we move on, let's just talk about some of the symptoms of hypothyroidism. I will just say you're most likely going to experience symptoms of hypothyroidism after hormonal birth control as opposed to hypothyroidism. Well, let's just go through them. So hypothyroidism is sudden weight gain, cold intolerance, prone to depression, fatigue, dry skin and brittle nails and irregular cycles. Hypothyroidism is sudden weight loss, excessive sweating, prone to anxiety, insomnia or sleep issues, hair loss and irregular cycles. So just so you know and to look out for those as well. So thyroid SOS, so how does hormonal birth control disrupt our thyroid? So it disrupts it through the adrenal function. So again, remember, hormonal birth control is inherently inflammatory, which means our adrenal lens is going to be turned on, which means we're also depleting nutrients, releasing lots of cortisol. And on top of this, when we're releasing huge amounts of cortisol, we're releasing lots of thyroid binding proteins. And so this is going to bind up T3 and T4, so they're not going to be able to work. So this is kind of in the case where we see hypothyroidism because T3 and T4 can't work properly in the body. So this will impact mood, metabolism, mences, energy, depression, brain fog, dry skin, hair loss, aches and weight gain. And so this basically all connects to the fact that the thyroid is producing these T3 and T4, which enables us to access energy in the body. And if we can't access that, of course, we're going to have fatigue and we're not going to be able to think properly, our skin's going to be dry, our metabolism's going to be slow. We're going to put on weight because we're not using this energy. We're actually just storing it as fat. And we're not producing heat as well because metabolism creates heat. So thyroid disease, we have to say as well, is really prevalent in women. So women are five to eight times more likely than men to develop thyroid disease. Thyroidis is an autoimmune disease, whether you immune system attacks the thyroid gland. So this is the leading cause of thyroid disease and hypothyroidism. So when we're talking about all of this, we need to talk about thyroid hormone conversion. So the thyroid produces T4, which is converted into T3 as I've said a few times. If our body is inflamed and there's lots of cortisol around and our gut isn't working properly and we have leaky gut and hyperpermeability, we can't convert T3 to T4 into T3 effectively. And the reason why is because the gut is a major side of thyroid conversion and so is the adrenal glands. So if we have adrenal and gut issues like inflammation, microbiome imbalance and then we also have nutrient difficulties and depletion that's been caused by hormone of birth control. This is going to directly and indirectly hinder the ability of our thyroid gland to one, produce the hormones it needs to activate it and three, move it throughout the body effectively enough. So that's basically how it impacts it. There's also nutrient depletion. So hormone of birth control directly depletes the nutrients we need to make these hormones. So selenium and zinc and even iodine we need to a certain degree to make these thyroid hormones. We don't have them around. We can't do that. We also need B vitamins in the gut to activate T4 into T3 and that hormone of birth control will cause deficiencies in that. Also, this is really interesting is that hormone of birth control increases TBG. So thyroid binding, as I said before, so when we're increasing our ability to produce that co-obulin, we're binding T3 and T4 and we can't use it in the body effectively. So your thyroid might be fine. You might not have depletion of the nutrients you need. You might have more than enough T3 and T4. You might be converting it properly in your adrenal glands and your gut, but hormone of birth control increases TBG. So that thyroid gland hormone is not going to be able to attach to receptor sites in the cell and do its job. So that's one problem. Then another one is hormone of birth control and it's implications on impacting our inflammation of the body and generally increasing inflammation of the body. We produce more of this other hormone called RT3. So reverse T3. This is a hibernation hormone. This promotes fat storage and causes us to go in a winter mode. So we do see a little bit more of this around the time of winter and so this is natural, but because of the inflammation we have more RT3. So if you've gone off of hormone of birth control and you've noticed weight gain, hair loss, brittle nails, fatigue, please go and get a thyroid panel done. I think that's really important. We've just started to talk about the metabolism and how our body uses energy in the body, which is metabolism. So when we talk about metabolism, it's the chemical processes in your cells that turn food into energy. So when we convert mostly fat and carbohydrates, you can use protein as an energy source, but our body really doesn't like to do that. It's how we use those two macronutrients to create energy in the body. So hormone of birth control though will disrupt these metabolic processes and we will also be talking about the cardiovascular system because metabolism and cardiovascular systems are very much intertwined. And just to start this conversation as well, we need to understand that there needs to be mitochondrial flexibility. So in each of our cells, there are these tiny organelles called mitochondria. If you've learned about them in high school, you would know that they are the powerhouse of the cell. And so basically these are a bacterium that were outside of our body, eons ago, even before we were humans, you know. And even before we were mammals, really long time ago, girl. And we were like, okay, trade deal, what do you say about this? It's kind of like agricultural revolution on a microscopic scale. We were like, wow, you guys are really good at metabolizing energy. Can we ingest you and put you in each of our cells of the body and we'll keep you safe, give you a fuel source. And the mitochondria was like, that's the best trade deal in all of history. Let's go. And so that's basically the history of us in our mitochondria. And so now they're an organelle in our cell, which I think is really interesting. And they burn glucose and fat. Okay. So when we burn all the glucose in the body, we convert that into energy. And then this is associated with the hormone called insulin. When glucose is not around, so when carbohydrates are not around, which it's not around throughout the entire night that we're sleeping, and if you're on a ketogenic diet or if you're fasting, your body needs to learn how to burn fat. So the problem here is, is that only 12% of the Western population is metabolically flexible, which means we have a worldwide metabolism and insulin sensitivity problem, which means in English, about what 98% or 88% sorry of people on earth in Western populations. Their mitochondria literally are dependent on glucose. They cannot flip to making to burning fat for energy. So this is a problem because it means that we have insulin sensitivity. And so when we're talking about insulin, let's just like back up and talk about insulin first. So insulin is a hormone that is released from our pancreas. And so what happens is we eat a banana. And so the pancreas B cells will go, okay, there is carbohydrates around. I'm going to release this amazing hormone called insulin. That's going to go deliver and say, hey, you need to intake all of this glucose. And I'm also going to release insulin that's going to go and tell all of the cells in the body and tell them that glucose is around and to open up glucose channels so we can use this energy and so on. And T3 and T4 also are a part of this mechanism. So these hormones work together. What happens though is that insulin sensitivity is caused by hormonal birth control. And we know this, it impacts metabolic flexibility due to changes in estrogen and progesterone. And so even before we talk about that, I think it's really important that we talk about how a hormone's impact metabolism so we can fully understand this. I know it's hard to follow, but maybe maybe at the annual understanding. But basically estrogen, it promotes that utilization. It decreases metabolic rate. It increases insulin sensitivity. It decreases glucose update. It increases TBG, so thyroid binding, and it lowers grellin. So basically, we've got all the energy we need. Let's use it. So this is why you have so. much energy in your estrogenic phase. So when you're in your fertile phase or your ovulatory phase and you don't feel that hungry, whereas in your progesterogenic phase, so you're ludio phase, this is where we're promoting fat storage, we're increasing metabolic rate, we're reducing insulin sensitivity, we're increasing our glucose intake, we're supporting T3 and T4, sorry, T4 to T3 conversion and we're increasing reliance, so we're hungrier, we're using this energy, we have a higher basal metabolic rate. And so if these two hormones impact our metabolic system so differently, of course it's going to impact our metabolism differently. So generally we see an altar in carbohydrate metabolism, so we have generally a decreased glucose tolerance when we're on hormone or birth control and hormonal contraceptives also impact lipid metabolism, so we generally see an increase in plasma triglycerides, so triglycerides are basically long chains of fatty acids in the blood system, and we also see an increase in very low density lipoprotein. So this is called the bad cholesterol LDL cholesterol, I have a whole episode on cholesterol, please go listen to that because I don't really fully agree with that, but when we see inflammation, high LDL and high triglycerides, that is a big problem in the blood system, really, really bad problem. But basically, now you understand that, let's just back up and talk about hormonal birth control in insulin. So hormonal birth control triggers inflammation and insulin resistance, so what can happen with insulin resistance in the body is that we're in taking so much glucose, all this inflammation there, and the body's cells become resistant to insulin. So the pancreas is doing the good job, it's going, okay, I'm going to release, we've eaten something that's high in carbohydrates, I'm going to release the right amount of insulin into the body, that's going to tell the body, hey, there's glucose around, store it as fat, or use it as energy. But the cells go, there's too much inflammation around, or I'm so sick of seeing you basically, we're full, we've used up all the glucose we can, and we've stored all the glucose we can, I'm going to take away the receptor sites for insulin, and so this is where we see the cells being insulin resistant, so they're not listening to insulin anymore. And so this increases the blood sugar, which increases triglycerides, LDoclesterole and blood pressure, and a few other of these things. So you can see how hormonal birth control, how it impacts inflammation, it causes insulin resistance, and how it impacts the blood system and a metabolism system, this increases the risk of things like heart disease, stroke, and cancer. So this is where we can go into hormonal birth control, and it's plethora of negative impacts on our metabolism system and metabolic risks. So blood sugar fluctuations, distrapped hormones, and this leads to irritability, fatigue, and nausea. So when we have a healthy diet and we don't have inflammation, we can balance blood sugar. But if you have inflammation from hormonal birth control, we can still get insulin sensitivity, regardless of how amazingly you're eating on hormonal birth, while you're on hormonal birth control pills, you're still to some degree going to have inflammation, which means to some degree you're going to have some type of insulin resistance, which means you're going to have blood sugar problems. So we've already spoken about how hormonal birth control increases insulin resistance, which leads to high blood sugar, and this increases the risk of metabolic disease. And we've even seen some studies have shown that long-term use of hormonal birth control. So over six months, which most women are on hormonal birth control for longer than that, significantly raises the risk of developing diabetes, and then also increasing higher insulin levels, which is a precursor to heart disease as well. So really serious. So we see negative impacts with metabolic syndrome. We see negative impacts with blood pressure. We see blood clots as well. So leads to pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, also known as DVT and stroke. Stroke is where we have a blood clot in the brain, and we can have parts of the brain die. And just some stats for you while we're here. So women aged 20 to 44 on hormonal birth control, they face a one in 2000 risk of hospitalization due to abnormal clotting. This is compared to one in 20,000 for women who are not using hormonal birth control. So really significant increase in risk for abnormal clotting and being hospitalized for that. And then there's a one in 12,000 risk for circulatory disorders for women on hormonal birth control compared to one in 50,000 for non-uses. So again, really increased risk for circulatory disorders. So this is where we're talking about blood clots and deep vein thrombosis. And then we have a two to four times risk of, you know, progestin pills specifically. And when we're talking about progestin, we have to remember that we're talking about all types of hormone or birth control. So all types of hormone or birth control contain progestin, which means there is a two to four times more risk of producing VTE where clots develop deep in the veins. So this increases the risk of stroke and heart attack, right? Really, really scary. On top of that as well. So women show different heart attack symptoms in comparison to men. So the symptoms are, and I think all women should know this, cold sweats, fatigue, intergestion, and pain in various parts of the body. And thousands of women every single year in Western countries, they get sent home from emergency rooms where they're like, something is so wrong, I don't know what's going on. And the doctors aren't trained in how to recognize heart attack in women because the medical system was made for men. These women get sent home and some of them die. So really important after hormone or birth control that you know the symptoms of heart attack in women, you know how to diagnose it and see it in yourself and other people. And you know how to advocate for yourself if it does happen because it is a risk, unfortunately. Also alongside this contraceptives such as Yaz, Yaz, Men and Osella, they're popular, but they have a really serious black box warning for serious cardiovascular risks, despite being used for the nine conditions like acne. So these are given to women with acne problems, but they have a black box warning, which is the FDA's strictest alert. And it's only issued when substantial evidence of harm actually exists. So not so fun when we're talking about metabolism and cardiovascular systems. Now that we've spoken about those elements, I think maybe let's move on to a few of the lesser known impacts and maybe the medical system doesn't prioritize these negative impacts as much. So mental health being one of them. And this is actually changing in the zeitgeist of health recently, which I just think is a huge triumph for women because for years women have been going to the doctors and saying, you know, if haven't had depression, I haven't felt suicide or anxiety before going on this contraceptive. Why do I feel it now? And they're just ghastly and they're giving medication for anxiety, depression and suicide. And I just think that's such a travesty because hormones have a really impactful part on the brain. So estrogen and progesterone are our main six hormones and they affect neurotransmitters in the brain. So neurotransmitters are kind of like hormones in the brain in a way. And so you might recognize a few of the words, dopamine serotonin and maybe even GABA. So estrogen boost serotonin and GABA, which influences memory, movement, motivation, mood and reward, progesterone binds GABA, which is calming and slows down brain activity. So when we use hormone of Earth control over a long term period, it alters brain chemistry and research is actually exploring now how hormone of Earth control not only influences just mood but also social behavior and overall personality as well. And how can it do this? Well, it does this because it impacts that HBA access. So the hyperthalamic, pituitary adrenal and the HBO access. So the hyperthalamic pituitary ovarian access as well. So HBA access modulations really important, especially when we're talking about synthetic progesters because they alter the HBA access, which is responsible for that stress response, which results in that altered cortisol level, which we were talking about before. So that cortisol dysregulation and kind of what we were talking about then is just really going to play into how we're talking about how hormone of Earth control impacts our mental health. So progestians in hormone of Earth control, they increase free cortisol levels in the body in response to stress. So number one, because hormone of Earth control causes stress in the body, which means our adrenal glands are being signaled to release more cortisol. Progesterone can also be used as an ingredient to make cortisol as well. So we have increased cortisol dysregulation, which means we have increased susceptibility to depression and anxiety. So really important to remember that. There's also an impact on neurotransmitters because hormone of Earth control influences serotonin and GABA. These are really important for mood regulation because we're not normally cycling. We're not producing estrogen and progesterone normally, which means these hormones aren't binding to parts in our brain, which is allowing us to produce and bind GABA and serotonin to the brain. So this is again going to exacerbate symptoms of anxiety and depression. Let's start on depression. So a 13-year study following over one million women aged 15 to 34 found that those using hormonal contraception were far more likely to be diagnosed with depression for the first time. Women taking combination pills with both estrogen and progesterone had a 23% higher chance of being prescribed and antidepressant and teen ages on combined oral contraceptives. They faced 80% increased risks of developing depression. Prejusting only pills were the worst for teens specifically and it raised their risk by 300% for depression and anxiety compared to those not on hormone or birth control. So I'm here to say it's not in your head. Also alongside this is suicidal ideation, maybe skip forward 30 seconds if you don't want to listen to this part. So at recent study found that young women using hormone or contraceptives have a three times higher risk of suicide compared to those who have never used them. The risk of suicide is also the highest during the first two months starting hormone or birth control and that includes any type of hormone or birth control because remember pregesting is the main problem here. Although the risk portals after a year the risk of suicide remains higher and women who have never used hormone or birth control or compared to those. The one form of hormone or birth control that had the higher risk associated with the suicide is the patch as well. So what's the mechanism of depression and suicide ideation? So hormone or birth control contributes to depression through inflammation and immune system dysregulation. It's also like negatively impacts women more if they have had a family history or a personal history of depression before they've went on hormone or birth control as well. Hormone or birth control also depletes essential nutrients that we need for brain health. So again really really negative outcomes for depression and anxiety which we'll talk about now. The conventional belief suggests that anxiety stems from your transmitted imbalances and this leads doctors and health practitioners just to prescribe medications that suppress symptoms without addressing the root causes which is really problematic because we know that significant amount of anxiety is actually triggered by stress which we can perceive that as excess cortisol and dysregulated cortisol from uterine glands and as we know progesterone is a precursor to cortisol. If you're taking hormone or birth control that contains progestin which all of them have that in it this amplifies that cortisol response. And hormone or birth control as we know it shuts down that ovulation and prevents us from actually producing progesterone. So naturally occurring progesterone in the body will alleviate stress in the central nervous system by binding GABA which kind of alleviates anxiety. But you know this synthetic progestin is similar enough for our body to convert into cortisol but it doesn't, it's not similar enough to bind to receptor sites in the brain that bind GABA. Hopefully that makes sense. And so it creates this feedback loop. So hormone or birth control initiate stress. Then we have progestin that we can convert into cortisol and then we don't have natural progesterone which means we're not binding an activating GABA in the brain which means that we have this exacerbated anxiety problem. So I've seen this a lot in my clinic with women is that like they are running so high they're so so so anxious and they hit a wall and they feel depressed. And so this is kind of a cycle that we usually see with women and mental health with hormone or birth control. Alongside this as well is that there's a pretty direct overlap between the deficiencies that hormone or birth control causes like ion magnesium, B12, salineum, calcium, vitamin E, omega 3, vitamin C, folate, cocutan and B6. These are also the exact deficiencies that we see in women that have anxiety and depression and suicide ideation. So really interesting we need those nutrients around to produce neurotransmitters and to have good brain health. And I'll also touch on copper right. So hormone or birth control is a known cause of elevated plasma copper levels. Sarah copper concentration in women using hormone or birth control with varies across the different types that you're using. But we know that if we have excess copper build up in the central nervous system, it leads to psychological changes like stress, anxiety, depression and even psychosis. So that's really interesting. And we also know that there are studies being done on prison inmates and like violent prison inmates and they had really high copper concentrations, unbound copper concentrations in their central nervous system and stored in their brain. And we've also seen that in women who are who are postpartum and they have postnatal depression, anxiety and mating. They usually have high copper in their central nervous systems as well and stored in their brains. And we also see this in women post hormone or birth control. So copper is really important to keep an eye out for and you really need to be able to support your liver and able to get rid of that copper out of the body. No, just taking a zinc supplement is not going to work. That's a common misconception. Please don't just keep downing zinc thinking that's going to work. It's not. It just stops you from absorbing copper. Also, if you feel like you have these symptoms, then you need to go and get copper tested because low copper can cause these symptoms to a certain degree and higher copper can cause them. But I just think it's really interesting because we see, you know, the physiological impacts the psychological and we see this also with anemia. So I see this link between anemia and anxiety and hormone birth control a lot. So anemia is reduced red blood cell count, which impairs oxygen delivery and we usually see this with iron deficiency and nutrient imbalances that can lead to anemia, which makes it hard for us to distinguish between anxiety and anemia symptoms because they overlap. So anxiety symptoms are like shortness of breath, fatigue. When you stand up, you get really dizzy. Like not being able to handle stressful situations. We usually see that in anemia as well. So when we have low iron levels, this causes you to have shallow breaths because you don't have enough red blood cells there or the hemoglobin there that's bound to iron, you know, unable to capture those molecules of oxygen in your lungs and, you know, bind them into the hemoglobin structure in your blood cells and transport it throughout your body. If you have anemia, you're also going to have, you know, symptoms of anxiety and a lot of women think I'm crazy when I'm like, oh, you have anxiety. Okay. Let's test your iron, your ferritin, your hemoglobin and nine times out of 10, it comes back really low. And we treat that woman for anemia instead of anxiety, her anxiety symptoms goes away. Why? Well, because if you have anemia, your body is going to be in a low level stress response all the time. You're going to be having these really short shallow breaths because that's all you can do. You don't have the hemoglobin available to bind oxygen. So you can't have those deep belly breaths, which activate the parisimpervating nervous system, which is your rest and digest. If you're having short shallow breathing, that's telling your body, oh my gosh, something stressful is happening. Let's activate that sympathetic nervous system. So really interesting. I'll also talk about migraines as well. So women with a history of migraines or headaches are at a higher risk of developing new headaches when starting hormonal birth control, especially, especially if it has estrogen. So persistent headaches and migraines, they are linked to inflammation, hormone imbalances, celiac disease, food and sensitivities, autoimmune conditions and other. So hormonal birth control also increases histamines. So histamines are a molecule, inflammatory molecule that are released from white blood cells and they can be released in your brain. And this can cause it like an inflammation response and immune response in your brain, which can manifest as a migraine. Also we see whenever we have hormone or birth control, we have depletions in magnesium and whenever we have depletions in magnesium and headaches and migraines, we know that we have a deficiency there. So those are just a few things to look out for. And also if you have auras, so you stop being able to see properly and you know your vision gets really funky when you're having a migraine, you might also want to make sure you're going and getting your cardiovascular system check, especially if you've been on hormone or birth control because there's a really high risk of a schemic stroke associated in heart attack, associated with women who have been on hormone or birth control and they have migraines or headaches as well. Let's move on to the gut. The gut is really important. Your gut has significant impact on your hormones and can be the cause of lots of different symptoms. It absorbs food and it helps us produce the necessary hormones and eliminate excess ones. The gut contains more organisms and cells in our body than we have cells in our body. If that makes any sense. So our gut microbiome has trillions, billions of cells which are different microbiome cells. So we have different bacteria, fungi, yeast and we even have some viruses here. So we have more DNA in our gut microbiome than we do in our entire body and we have more cells in our gut than we have in our entire body as well which I think is really interesting. The gut is probably one of the most important places in the body that helps us detoxify and metabolize any type of metabolite in the body, whether that be alcohol, caffeine or hormone or birth control. And because most of the gut contains most of our immune system and inflammation is a tool used by the immune system, you can guess that we have chronic inflammation in this area. And so when we have chronic inflammation, we have chronic gut dysbiosis. So symptoms could be sleep loss, weight loss, joint pain, fatigue, hormonal imbalance, headaches, weight gain, IBS, anxiety, depression, skin issues, deficiencies as well. So how does hormonal birth control negatively impact the gut? So negatively impacts our gut flora and estrogen metabolism. So we have a diverse gut flora and we need that to create beneficial estrogen metabolites. So we need to be able to digest estrogen effectively and be able to pass it out of the system. But there is an impact of birth control on the gut flora. It's both bosters an overgrowth of harmful bacteria and yeast and overall we just generally see inflammation in the gut. So this causes immune dysregulation and risk of autoimmune diseases as well. and this leads to intestinal hyperpermobility or leaky gut, which, you know, leaky gut 10 years ago if you said that your doctor would laugh at you, but now it's actually been taking seriously. So leaky gut, officially, is known as intestinal hyperpermobility. It's also known as LGS or leaky gut syndrome. So it's a condition that leads to widespread inflammation and hormonal indistruption in the body. So leaky gut occurs when the tight junctions between the cells of the intestinal lining are compromised. So if you could imagine all of these little cells in your gut, there's only one cell thickness, which is so, so, so, so thin. Look at one of your hairs right now. Actually do it. Look at how thin your hair is, okay? And then split that up 12 times lengthwise. Can you imagine how small that is? That is how small the gap between your gut and you is in your large intestine. Just insane. And it makes total sense that 90% or 80% of your immune system and white blood cells are in this area because this is such an intricate, delicate part of you. And if there is any type of problem here, it's going to impact the whole body. So what usually happens if we have systemic inflammation, which is caused by hormonal birth control, what can happen is the tight junctions. So kind of like this velcro system between each of your epithelial cells, which are these tiny cells that line the intestinal lining of your gut, break apart. And so this allows lots of different particles to pass through. So toxins, microbes, undigested food particles, they pass through the intestinal lining and they activate your immune system. So a healthy gut will usually selectively allow necessary particles to pass through. So okay, we need that protein. We're going to keep out that pathogenic bacteria. But if the tight junctions between cells are compromised, there's literally a gap. And so that means that undigested food and harmful bacteria, yeast and parasites can get into your body. And this triggers the immune system and leads to inflammation and even food insensitivities as well. So what can cause the heat gut apart from hormonal birth control? So high sugar diets, low fiber diets, gut dysbiosis, heavy metals, infections, stress, hormonal birth control, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, also cause leaky gut. Trauma, interestingly, because it increases your your static level of cortisol. And so high cortisol is known to cause leaky gut and high intestinal hyperpermeability. Sebo, so small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So we start to see parts of your large intestine microbiome community start to move into your small intestine, which is not good. Neutrino deficiencies and also steroids as well. So when we talk about this, we need to talk about the immune system. And so the immune system has two parts. So the innate immune system and the adaptive immune system. So the innate immune system is your first line of defense and it responds really quickly. And it has non-specific barriers. So skin, mucus membranes. Whereas, you know, your immune cells like macrophages, neutrophils and natural killer cells that rapidly recognize and eliminate pathogen. That's also associated with urinate immune system. And then you have your adaptive immune system. And so this is specific and really slow to respond. And so this involves cells called T cells and B cells. So urinate immune system will encounter a newer pathogen. It presents fragments to the T cells and B cells. It activates that targeted immune response. So have you ever seen like imagine you've probably seen this on TV where you give a hunter dog the scent of something and it goes and finds it. That's kind of what your T cells and B cells do. So other cells bring a fragment of this pathogen or bacteria or something or even like part of your allergic to gluten. If you have celiacular, bring parts of the gluten molecule to these T cells and B cells and the T cells and B cells will go that's a threat we need to attack it. And so the gut plays a really important role in this. So as I said before 80 to 90% of your immune system is in the gastrointestinal tract. So if you have this, you are going to have more inflammation in your gut associated with hormone or birth control, which means that there is an increase in the risk of autoimmunity. So taking hormone or birth control raises the risk of Crohn's disease by 300% and this is because most of your immune system resides in the gut, right? And also alongside this if your family, if you have a genetic predisposition to immune diseases, autoimmune diseases, this might be triggered by hormone or birth control. So there's no data or science to suggest that hormone or birth control causes autoimmunity. I think the autoimmune genes are still there. I think they're kind of there and everyone to a certain degree. But what activates it is the issue here. And we usually see that we already have a genetic predisposition to autoimmunity and it's being activated by hormone or birth control. So you know, not the kind of the answer you want to hear because it's not so inflammatory. And it's what a lot of people are saying, but I'm of the position that hormone birth control doesn't cause autoimmunity. And I will say as well autoimmunity, we usually see that in a lot of women. We don't see it as much in men. 80% of the chances or the cases that we see of autoimmunity, we see in women, not men. And most of the most of the case when we are looking at autoimmunity in women, it has a lot to do with their reproductive hormones and a lot to do with the quarters old they are releasing as well. Alongside this as well, I will say that because you have inflammation being caused by hormone or birth control in the gut, it's causing intestinal hyperpermeability or leaky gut. It means that food particles can get in and out of your body willy-nilly, which means you're going to start getting fooded sensitivities. So as you're healing after hormone or birth control, if you start to see food and sensitivities, those foods and sensitivities have always been there, but hormone or birth control has dampened the symptoms. So you've been asymptomatic. So hormone or birth control has not made you allergic to these things. It has opened up the gateway in your epithelial cells and your body has already been on high guard. And now it's starting to see multiple things as threats. And so there is a connection between, you know, if you eat gluten. So gluten has a molecule called glyoden. And glyoden, the molecules of glyoden are really similar to some of the receptor sites and some of the membrane receptor sites in the thyroid gland. So there is a connection between hormone or birth control, intestinal hyperpermeability and the development of hypothyroidism and even Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is where your immune cells are starting to attack the thyroid because we've had this overactivization of the immune system and your body starting to think that everything is a problem and it needs to attack it. So this is where it can get really nasty. I will say though auto-immunity, a lot of people will say you'll have it for life and then I've met women who've completely reversed it. So take that with what you will. I believe that it can be reversed in some women. I think some women it's so far gone that it's hard to bring back. So if you have any symptoms of gut problems, make sure you're going and getting probably your anti-TPO tested just to rule out Hashimoto's thyroiditis because you want to get onto that sooner rather than later. Here is an amazing review from Ray who took my course after going off of birth control after 10 years. I can't recommend the hormone harmony course enough after being on the pill for 10 years. I was overwhelmed by all the conflicting information online about how to support my body. This course has been game-changing. Sarah's expertise and the way she simplifies complex topics made me feel supported every step of the way. She breaks down everything from hormonal health to cycle-tracking in a way that's easy to understand without ever feeling overwhelming. One of the most impactful aspects of this course is how to address the symptoms I experienced after coming off of the pill. Sarah provides clear guidance on what tests to take, how to nourish your body with tailored nutrition and how to integrate lifestyle changes that make a real difference. Not having to sift through an endless research on my own and felt like a huge burden had been lifted, I could focus on feeling better. The lessons are beautifully structured and cover everything from the thyroid to gut health to understanding hormonal impacts on your skin and libido. What I appreciated most with how Sarah made me feel seen and heard throughout the whole process. She is an incredible way of balancing science-backed information with actionable advice and I always felt encouraged rather than overwhelmed. Thanks to this course, I feel more in tune with my body than ever before. If you're looking for a roadmap to reclaim your hormonal health, this is it. It's worth every penny. While we're talking about the gut, let's talk about the vaginal microbiome because we have a microbiome in every single part of our body and I just think it's something that no little women pay attention to and I think it's just so important for overall health. I love the vaginal microbiome. It's really important. If you want to learn more about that, I have a whole podcast episode with Dr. Moira Bradfield Stradem. I always struggle to say her name, so I'm really happy I said it correctly just then. She is so brilliant and she again, she's kind of like me really loves the alopathic and the alternative mixing together for the benefit of women. If you're a visual learner, I highly suggest going and watching that on YouTube because just the pictures of the vaginal microbiome and dysbiosis is really interesting and she talks about UTIs and a bunch of other things as well. But just to quickly touch on it and its connection to hormone and birth control, let's just touch on on each of the different hormone or birth control types and it's documented impact on vaginal microbiome. I will say, you know, there is a gap in zivri search, which are we surprised? No. (laughs) Unfortunately. So let's just start with a combined pill. So the combined pill, because it has extra dial in it, overall can have very little detriment to the vaginal microbiome stability and can actually impact it positively, because estrogen increases blood flow to the vaginal tract and it kind of pushes glycogen and sugar into that area which feeds a different type of bacteria called lactobacillus crispitis, which for our five women will have and we need that for a healthy microbiome. We need a dominant species of lactobacillus crispitis. Then we move on to progesterone only. So we have limited research, but because there's no estrogen around pushing glycogen, which is kind of glucose, into the vaginal tract, it means that we're not positively influencing the proliferation of lactobacillus crispitis, which means that we have an increased risk of aerobic vaginitis and vaginal atrophy. So not so good. Then we move on to the novering. We usually see surprisingly, because it has extra dial and progestin. So it supports healthy vaginal microbiome by promoting beneficial bacteria of lactobacillus. So you're combined and you're novering pretty positive. And then hormonal IUD. So this is the one that has the most negative impact. So generally, higher levels of BV associated bacteria, we also have higher amounts of Gardenerola vaginitis. And then we also have just changes in beneficial amounts of lactobacillus, which means you're more likely to be associated with vaginal dysbiosis and even incidences of previtella, which not so nice. There's also a link between hormonal birth control and UTIs. So contraceptives, which include the oral contraceptive pill IUDs and even injectables, they have been all linked to increase urinal and vaginal infections. And in a 2023 study, we actually found that hormonal contraceptives significantly raised the risk of UTIs in reproductive age women. There's also an increased incidence of HPV, so human papilloma virus, which has over 150 strains. Most women will come in contact with this in their sexual life, whether it develops into HPV, which is the precursor for some cervical cancers or not, depends on the health of your vaginal microbiome. Just like the health of our immune system, if you can be around people who have a cold, that bacteria or virus can get into your system, but if your system is strong enough, you won't exhibit symptoms, but you might have two cells and B cells, which next time you come into contact with that, sees it more effectively. And again, your immune system's quite strong. Same thing with your vaginal microbiome. If you have a really strong vaginal microbiome, you're going to be able to come into contact with viruses like HPV and not actually develop the disorders and the symptoms associated with it. But because women have systemic inflammation and maybe they're taking, you know, or maybe they're on a hormonal growth control like progesterone only or the IUD that doesn't have any extra dial in it and doesn't protect them, it means you're more likely to develop things like HPV. I think mainly because if you're on hormonal growth control, the chances of you using barrier methods, hello, you're probably like, I don't want to do that. And you know, if you're having sex with male partners, most of the time they don't actually exhibit the disorder that they carry or the disease that they carry. So men can give women UTIs and yeast infections, so they can have a yeast infection or HPV and not have any of the symptoms. So they might be fine and you know, they may even got tested and they haven't gotten told. They've had HPV because they haven't had a flare because it didn't turn up on the test. But then you've had a dysbiotic vaginal environment and then you've caught HPV from them. So there is an increased incidence of women contracting HPV when on hormonal contraceptives and mostly hormonal contraceptives that are progesterone only. While we are talking about the Nether regions, let's talk about libido. Has your libido decreased? Hormone and birth control often impacts libido as a primary effect, which can be really disheartening and frustrating. So you're like, okay, I'm on hormone and birth control. Fuck yeah, I'm gonna enjoy worry free sexual experiences. Where's my libido? (laughs) What a joke. And so we also see this as well. Like, and if that's not you, amazing. I'm so happy that you've kept your libido but multiple studies have shown us that hormonal birth control decreases sexual interest. It reduces arousal and it gives us, you know, difficulties of achieving orgasm, even things like sexual dysfunction, painful orgasms, less frequent sexual activity. So research also indicates that women on hormonal birth control are 32% more likely to have sexual dysfunction and 8.7% more likely to experience orgasm disorders compared to women who are not on hormonal birth control. So how does this happen? Hormonal birth control impacts the central nervous system, right? It inherently causes inflammation. It triggers a stress response. And so this activates the sympathetic nervous system which is responsible for fight and flight. How is that gonna impact our libido negatively? So we need parasympathetic nervous system regulation. So rest and digest to maintain healthy libido. If you have high stress, high cortisol, high inflammation in the body, it's going to stop you from feeling horny because it's not safe. And the other element is the progestin aspect of hormonal birth control. So progesterone blocks hormones responsible for ovulation. And so this continuous progestin will signal to the brain that pregnancy cannot take place or like let's just not release the hormones that we need to ovulate, which is basically luteinizing hormone testosterone, which activates as sexual response and estrogen. And so these are the three hormones that we usually are associated with more libido. So these are the hormones that are around in ovulation when we are going to want to have more sex basically because it's the reproductive cycle. But if you have progestin, it's blocking LHFSH estrogen and we'll talk about how it hormonal birth control impacts testosterone in the body as well. Cortisol blocks GNRH, which is blocking these hormones on a different area as well on a different side. We're not going to have any desire because we don't have the hormones around that are associated with the desire. And then also let's go back to when we were talking about sex hormone binding globulin. So sex hormone binding globulin, we see more of it around when you're on hormone or birth control, right? Sex hormone binding globulin will bind to testosterone. We need testosterone to have libido. Whenever we see low libido, we're going to be looking for low testosterone. And sometimes if you have normal testosterone, you go and look at SHBG and it's super high. And so we know that a lack of libido associated with hormone or birth control is partially attributed to this high SHBG. So that's three of the different ways that, you know, hormonal birth control will directly or indirectly impact your libido. The other interesting thing is attraction. And so this was really popular a few years ago. It is being more popular as now. And we'll just talk about how hormone or birth control negatively impacts who you're attracted to. Or I would say negatively impacts who you're attracted to. I don't want to say that, but it impacts who you're attracted to pretty significantly. So we need to talk about how estrogen and progesterone impact who were attracted to first. So estrogen. High estrogen levels during ovulation means we are seeking out someone who is genetically dissimilar, different to us and has high testosterone. When we are in our luteal phase and we have progesterone, the body thinks it's pregnant. It's just going to assume that we're pregnant just in case if you're a normal cycling woman. And that means we're going to be seeking out men who are genetically similar to us and have less testosterone. Why? Well, when we're in our estrogenic phase, when we're ovulating, we want to be seeking out partners that are genetically dissimilar to us so are offspring, are healthier. And we need to make sure that our partner has high testosterone as well because that means they're going to produce lots of sperm. We can pick that up through our pheromones. It's really interesting the science of attraction and hormones and endocrinology. So fascinating. When we get into the progesterogenic phase in our luteal phase, why are we seeking out people who are genetically similar to us? Well, we want to go out and have sex with a partner that's different to us. So say a thousand, two thousand years ago, we want to go out to a different village and we want to make love to someone who's genetically different to us while offspring is safe. Then we want to come back to our family so they can look after us when we are pregnant, makes total sense. So this impacts who we're attracted to. When we understand how attraction shifts during the menstrual cycle, this highlights how our preferences will change when we're on and off of hormonal birth control. So research shows that women on hormone birth control tend to be attracted to partners who are genetically similar to them and who have low testosterone. So what is this mean when you go off hormonal birth control? Well, I've heard this story of women when they go off hormonal birth control, they cannot stand the smell of their partners. They lose attraction to their partners and that's because their bodies like, oh, this person is genetically similar to us and they have low testosterone. we're not going to be attracted to that partner, but it's not going to happen all of the time. So studies actually suggest that women are more likely to remain with their partners deemed attractive before starting hormone or birth control. So attributes like facial symmetry, muscular build, and being associated with higher sexual attraction and relationship, stability, post-hormone or birth control. English, what does that mean? It basically means if your partner has high testosterone, is genetically dissimilar and is attractive. And so I'm going to use terms that might offend some people, but from an evolutionary perspective, we need to choose partners who have a muscular build, who have high testosterone, because we want someone who is genetically dissimilar to us and who is healthy and who can protect us. Our body doesn't know we live in a modern age where we don't necessarily need protection, but we still have this ancient body, right? And that makes total sense. So if your partner is that and you go off of hormone or birth control, I've heard of women being like, I'm so much more into him. If your partner doesn't have high testosterone, doesn't take care of himself, doesn't have good facial symmetry, all of these things you can attribute to lifestyle choices. The chances of you staying with that male partner posed to an unabirt control are slim to none. A lot of counselors know about this, a lot of family planning, counselors, and relationship counselors know about this and they know about this phenomenon that when women go off of hormone or birth control, it's a 50/50 chance whether they stay together or whether they break up, which is really interesting. Hormone or birth control also has an impact on sexual orientation. So research is actually showing that our sex hormones impact who were attracted to and potentially across different gennas. And so we can see this phenomenon through midlife sexual orientation changes in women. So women who have gone through paramanopause, they might find that they're suddenly attracted to men or women or non-binary people. And so there's an amazing doctor, so her name is Sarah Heel. She's the author of your brain on birth control. So she talks about this in her book and she observes that some bisexual women become more interested in male partners after stopping hormone or birth control. And this can also happen in the other directions as well of seeing women go off of hormone or birth control who have been really into men and then all of a sudden they're into women. And so this really talks about how our sexual orientation can be governed to a certain degree by our sex hormones. And then of course, hormone or birth control can impact that as well. So really interesting, right? How hormone or birth control impacts all of these different systems? I will touch on a few things just to close up. I will close up with endometriosis and PCOS. So a lot of people, when I talk about hormone or birth control online, will kind of go, well no, you can use it for endometriosis. And I will say this is the one and only place where I will suggest to women that they go and get some type of hormone or birth control in the short term when they have endometriosis because endometriosis is fucking debilitating. And the benefits of hormone or birth control far outweigh the risks of endometriosis. If it is absolutely ruining your life, if you only have one good week out of the month, yeah, going on a progesterone only type of IUD, implant on or pill is really going to help you because it's going to stop those endometrial lesions from growing. You know, a lot of the time women with endometriosis, if it's really progressed and it's, you know, that stage three or four, what we can do is suggest a progesterone only, which is going to stop the growth of those endometrial lesions because endometriosis is a estrogen, you know, dependent disease. We can't have endometriosis without excess amounts of estrogen, so we can stop that, right? That's going to stop the growth. You can have a laproscopy to take out those endometrial lesions. And then we can figure out what's triggering your endometriosis. Is it an immune reaction? Is it because you have high cortisol? Is it the impact of high estrogen? Do you have genes that predispose you to producing too much estrogen? It gives you time to do all these tests and to figure things out, whether it's diet or in your immune system or whether you need to go on a supplement, whether it is, are you having methylation problems with folate? Are you having methylation problems in your liver? Is it your liver that's having a problem? Is it, you know, what I mean? It just gives you time to be able to figure things out and then you can wean off of hormone or birth control. And then you can start cycling again and maybe you can fall pregnant. I think using hormone or birth control tactfully as a tool with endometriosis is an amazing thing and it's life-saving medicine. I will say that headaches as well, migraines as well. If you have really bad migraines associated with high histamines, can be an amazing tool to put that on pause while you figure out why this is happening and then you can wean off of it. PCOS is a different story. So it can regulate your cycles in the short term. And you know, when I say regulated, it just means you have like a fake withdrawal bleed every single month. You know, I'm actually having a real cycle. But PCOS symptoms can be debilitating as well, you know, like you can get really intense here toism. Maybe you're losing hair. Maybe your acne is out of control. Same thing, you know, go, go on a combined or a oral contraceptive. That is anti-androgenic and that's going to give you some time to change your diet and some lifestyle habits, start taking some supplements and exercising to what your body needs. And then you can wean off of it. I think for those two disorders and maybe a few others, it's really great to use tactfully. Otherwise, I don't think the benefits outweigh the risks, you know. I will also say as well that a lot of women with endo and PCOS, when they present to the doctor's office, that's the only option that's given to them. And I will say, you know, if that's the only option that's been given to you and they're not open to talking to about the different types of contraceptive and what's actually good for you, I think finding someone else is really going to be good because they should be able to work with you on what you want. If your end goal is to not be on hormone or birth control, that needs to be known as respected by your doctor and they need to make an actual plan with you so you can move towards that goal. I will also say on top of this as well is that there are so many people online saying, "No, it's PIL PCOS. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up girl. You have no idea what you're talking about. Zero." Okay, so after you go off hormone or birth control, you can get some PCOS symptoms. Does that mean you have PCOS girl? No, it doesn't. It doesn't mean you have PCOS because after you go off hormone or birth control, you get an increase in angiogen suddenly, right? Because your kidneys or you're not your kidneys, your adrenal glands are suddenly producing testosterone, maybe for the first time in years or months or however long you've been on hormone or birth control. It's just what happens to most women. So you can get symptoms of hyper-angrogenism. You can have amineria and anovulatory cycles. Does that mean you have PCOS? No, it doesn't. I say maybe wait three or four months if those symptoms are still there, go and get tested. If your diagnosis positively with PCOS has hormone or birth control caused your PCOS? No. It is aggravated something that was already there that was possibly asymptomatic. I've had women in my clinic who have been asymptomatic and then we look at, they go and get an ultrasound or a blood test and I'm like, "Oh, you're PCOS." And they're like, "Whoa, what the fuck?" So you can work in both directions. You really need to stay away from anyone online or any health practitioners who are saying that birth control causes PCOS because that's just not true. If they are saying that they don't actually understand what they're talking about and I just think that's really inflammatory and it scares women and it's not constructive. So that's my piece on that. As we close up this episode, I just think it's really important just to touch on a few things that I can send you away with because I am aware that not everyone is within the financial space to be able to go forward and do the hormone harmony course that I have online. So here are a few things that came up a lot in the course that you can go off with. I have already said a few things that you can test and a few things that you can take specific to different conditions. This is something that's more general. So the first thing that you can do is go and get a Dutch test. So that's going to test estradiol, progestin, lignizing hormone, follicular stimulating hormone. You also want to go and get your adrenals checked out. So you want to make sure you're going and getting testosterone checked, specifically if you have PCOS symptoms. And then on top of that, looking at cortisol, DHEA because if your adrenal glands are pumping out lots and lots of cortisol, it's going to be should be using less and less of these other hormones it produces. Alongside that, looking at your liver markers is really important. If you have anemia or anxiety, making sure you're going and looking at your ion studies, really important. So there are a few labs that you can go and do. Again, if you have hyperthyroidism problems, going, getting a full thyroid panel, don't just go and get to your S.H. tested. Also make sure you're doing this with someone. Don't do this alone. Please do this with someone. It's really, really important. It's really hard to make sense of these labs. And you need someone who's quite experienced to look at them because all the different interactions are really interesting and bad advice could set you on a really wrong path and you could spend a lot of money and actually make the problem worse. So again, please make sure you're working with someone. On top of that, here are a few supplements that you can take that just came up in this course over and over and over again. It became an inside joke. I was like, "Here I am." So the first one is magnesium glycinate, so taking 300 to 400 milligrams a day, you're going to have deficiencies in that no matter what type of hormone or birth control you're on and it's just good for every single system in the body. Next is something called cacermin. So cacermin is the natural pigment that's in turmeric and I like to take a higher dose of that or recommend a high dose of it. So 2000 to 3000 milligrams is great. Really beautiful for your liver, really beautiful for calming down intestinal hyperpermeability and any type of inflammation in the body. Alongside that, omega-3 is so get a really good fish oil supplement. So with a nice ratio of EPA to DHA, 3000 and milligrams a day is really beautiful and that's going to really tackle that inflammation that you're having in the body. And the last one is actually a herb and you wanna be making sure before you're doing this that you're sleeping enough and you're eating enough protein, if you're not doing these two things, please do not move past, go, do not collect your Saint Mary's this source. So this is an amazing herb and this stimulates your liver and it can really help your liver to start actually metabolizing and digesting this excess synthetic estradiol and progestin in the body. Another one you can do to stimulate the liver is things like green tea extract. You can even drink matcha, that would be great as well. So hopefully you can take a few of these things away also on top of that, make sure you're walking enough, getting some resistance training in and you're sleeping really, really, really important. And just make sure that after you go a formative or birth control, you can't just give it up. You have to be very, very mindful about your healing process after. Because if you're not on top of it, your health is going to suffer. If you're trying to get pregnant, as well you want to be waiting at least three months, at least three months. Ideally you want to be waiting at least six. Because you're the seed in the soil babe, if you're not fully healthy and you're starting off on a back foot, your pregnancy is going to be hard, your baby is going to be depleted. The experience that you have in birth isn't going to be amazing, you might not let down. You're falling pregnant, you really need to keep in mind. It's not about you anymore. You really have to care about this child as well. And so if you really want a good pregnancy, birthing and mothering experience, just put the work in six months before you get pregnant, especially if you've just finished home and a birth control. Just because you can for pregnant, just after home and a birth control, doesn't mean you should. (laughs) Which isn't what you want to hear. I know it's really exciting when you want to have a baby, but yeah, that's my piece on that. Hopefully you enjoyed this podcast and you learned a lot. Hopefully you don't feel too scared or fearful. Your body can't heal. I've seen a miraculous change in women's health after home and a birth control. And if you're interested in the hormone, how many cause it's available now. If you use the discount code, how many on option one, option two or option three. So all options of payment plans, you can get $100 off. So if you're like, oh God, I really want to do this, but that's an investment of my health, then you can use that discount code. Hopefully you have a beautiful morning, midday, afternoon, evening and I will see you next time. (soft music)