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What’s in a birth control label?
Any prescription birth control method you buy in the United States comes with a square of delicately thin paper, folded until it won’t fold any more, covered in teeny-tiny print. It’s called a “package insert” or a “label”—and it may be telling you lies. First, some history… It wasn’t so long ago that there was […]
5 myths about the emergency contraceptive pill, busted
Emergency contraception pills (ECPs) are the subject of more rumors and misunderstandings than any celebrity I can name—despite the fact that the medical community has been studying them for over 50 years. Part of the confusion is due to outdated information included in package labeling, and part is due to political interference with science . […]
Getting pregnant: Yes you can!
As a doctor, one of the things that most surprises me is the number of women who don’t use birth control because they think they can’t get pregnant. Risk can be tricky to understand and we all want to believe that things like car wrecks and debilitating diseases never happen to us or to the […]
Earth Day Reminder: Birth Control is Green!
Kirsten Moore is a consultant for the Reproductive Health Technologies Project (RHTP). It’s almost Earth Day and you’re thinking about what you can do to help the planet. An article blaming your birth control pill for a plethora of environmental woes, from intersex fish to male prostate cancer, shows up in your twitter feed. So, […]
Should the pill be available over the counter?
In 2012, a small Pennsylvania college made national headlines for putting packs of the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B in a vending machine in their student health center. Imagine the uproar if that vending machine had packs of the pill in it, too. Selling the pill in a vending machine wouldn’t be legal in the […]
Jump to conclusions
“Jump around, jump around, jump up, jump up, and get down!” Great lyrics to get you moving. Bad strategy to avoid a pregnancy. original post
Sexy thoughts
Ever wonder where the claim that “men think about sex every seven seconds” came from? It’s so widely known that Snopes has debunked it —and we can assure you it’s not based on scientific research. A new study from an Ohio State University shows that the real number is more like every 4,275 seconds, or […]
Some good news about birth control and heart health
With all the recent press about the pill and blood clots, you may be wondering if you should be worried about heart health while using birth control. Fear not, a new study shows that women using progestin-only methods—like the implant , the mini-pill, and the shot —were no more likely to have a heart attack […]
Blame it on the pill (again)
Another day, another study attempting to link the world’s ills to the birth control pill. Headlines are blaring news of a study, published in BMJ Open , that alleges that the pill may cause prostate cancer. In fact, as others have noted , what the study really shows is that rates of prostate cancer are […]
Debunking the birth control/memory myth
You may have caught recent headlines to the effect that hormonal birth control was found to affect women’s memory. The study making the news tested women’s ability to remember details about disturbing pictures a week after they viewed them, and claimed to have found a difference between women who were on the pill and those […]
