Category: Health and Wellness
TORONTO -- Women who take oral contraceptives lower their risk of developing ovarian cancer, with the protective effect still shielding them decades later,
even if they've long since stopped taking the pill, a new study concludes.
The medical journal that published the article, The Lancet, called for wider over-the-counter access to oral contraceptives, saying there are "few drugs
available that confer powerful and long-lasting protection against a highly lethal malignancy after such a short exposure."
"Women deserve the choice to obtain oral contraceptives over-the-counter, removing a huge and unnecessary barrier to a potentially powerful cancer preventing
agent," the influential journal said in an unsigned editorial.
The senior author of the study, Dr. Valerie Beral of Cancer Research UK epidemiology unit at Oxford University, called the ovarian cancer protection offered
by oral contraceptives "a bonus."
"Young women don't take the pill because of cancer, they take it to not get pregnant. And actually many of them, I think, worry because of all the press
stories and so on that maybe this is putting them at risk of cancer in later life. But in fact, the reverse is true," Beral said in an interview from Britain
on Thursday.
"It is a very fatal cancer. So it's a nice bonus to have."
Ovarian cancer is one of the heartbreaking forms of the disease. It is curable if detected early, but is almost never diagnosed in the early stages, because
symptoms are vague and there is no screening test at present.
The Canadian Cancer Society estimates 2,400 women were diagnosed with ovarian cancer in this country last year and 1,700 women died from it. On the list
of cancer killers of Canadian women it ranks fifth, after lung, breast, colorectal and pancreatic cancer.
Beral and her co-authors - from the collaborative group on epidemiological studies of ovarian cancer - estimated 200,000 cases of ovarian cancer and 100,000
deaths from it have been avoided worldwide because women have used oral contraceptives since they were introduced in the 1960s.
With global numbers of women using oral contraceptives having risen in later decades, the authors estimate the number of ovarian cancers being prevented
will rise to at least 30,000 a year in years to come.
"When you save 30,000 deaths from ovarian cancer, that's major. In cardiovascular health or any other field they would be celebrating this," said Dr. Andre
Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada.
The study, which will be in Saturday's issue of The Lancet, is actually a pooling of data from 45 previous studies which followed a total of over 110,000
women. About 40,000 of them had used oral contraceptives.
The longer women used oral contraceptives, the greater the reduction in their cancer risk. The reduction persisted long after women stopped using the pill
- though the protection appeared to attenuate a bit as time from usage increased.
The protective effect was seen regardless of ethnicity, education level, age at which a woman's period began, family's history of breast cancer, use of
hormone replacement therapy, weight, height, smoking and drinking history.
While the protective effect was not as great as that associated with never smoking or quitting smoking, it is nonetheless substantial, Beral said.
"There's nothing much you can do for 10 years that reduces your risk for the rest of your life by 30 per cent life."
Beral didn't want to comment on The Lancet's call for over-the-counter access to oral contraceptives, though she noted Britain is in the process of mounting
a pilot study which will have trained pharmacists prescribing the medications in drug stores.
Lalonde said he thought it was too soon for Canada to move in this direction.
"I think that over-the-counter, we're not there yet," he said, suggesting a Quebec program allowing nurses and nurse practitioners to prescribe oral contraceptives
should be watched and assessed before further moves are considered.
And Eduardo Franco, head of McGill University's division of cancer epidemiology, also cautioned against the idea.
Franco, who wrote a commentary that accompanied the Beral article, said a decision to use oral contraceptives should be discussed with a health-care provider,
because it involves weighing other risks and benefits.
That kind of encounter also gives health-care providers the chance to discuss other important reproductive health issues, such as the importance of having
safer sex and the need to have regular cervical cancer screening. Franco said forgoing the discussion would mean "we're missing a wonderful opportunity
to provide a message."
Yeah, if you never want kids, it works against Ovarian cancer. It's also the most effective method of birth control unless you have a hysterectomy.
Jen.
hmmm, they don't mention all the other side effects the pill has. I don't think it should be over the counter. lots of young girls no doubt, will be taking it and not consulting there doctor about it. There are lots of things that need to be checked before your on the pill and even while. this is coming from someone that knows this for a fact. I went blind from the birth control pill, not to mention it almost killed me! it caused a blood clot on my brain, and other issues with that. so it's all good to say the pill is good for this and good for that. but they also need to stress the side effects. so my vote for making it over the counter is hell no!
guess noone liked what i said. hehehehhe this board died
Yike it logged me out. i have to agree with shea I have a few articles myself.Ok let's try this again I have a few articles to post some i have links for. It will ask for your email address, but if you really are against giving it send me a pm or just post a fake email address like boob@hotmail.com
this first one tells you some things your doctor might not have told you about the pill.
http://www.mercola.com/2004/oct/27/birth_control.htm
I'll give you that link for now because there are about amillion related links you can read on that website I will post this and then post more on what I'm about to say. I have a condition because of the pill which means sex is painfull because I strted taking the pill before i ever had sex to help with heavy painfull periods I have never had pain free sex. Not only can the pill cause blood clotts and be deadly to a woman, but they can also kill a woman's labito, be a high risk for breast cancer, cause problems such as fibromialga, cause mygrains and nausia, cause painfull vulvas and put vitimen deficancies in the body. If I had a daughter I'd never be ok with her getting it over the counter. It is scarry and can ruin a woman's physical and sexual health. I'll post more articles below they might have more to do with my specific condition, but if you want to know about the pill don't let them fool you in to thinking it is all grand and beautiful.
this is more about how the birth control pill cause vulvar pain.
Contraception & Family Planning
Researchers Find Possible Association Between Birth Control Pill, Condition Causing Painful Sex
Oral contraceptive use may be associated with vulvar vestibulitis, a condition in which the tissue around the opening of the vagina is inflamed, making
sexual intercourse painful, Reuters Health reports.
The condition is most common in young women, and medical treatment is "rarely" successful; most women must have the sensitive tissue surgically removed
in order to be free of pain during intercourse. In a study appearing in the Aug. 1 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Dr. Celine Bouchard of the Hopital du Saint-Sacrement in Quebec and colleagues interviewed 138 women with the condition and 309 women without it.
The researchers found that women who had taken oral contraceptives were almost 'seven times' as likely as women who had never taken oral contraceptives
to have vulvar vestibulitis.
Women who began using OCs before the age of 16 were more than nine times as likely to develop the condition as women who had not taken the pills by that
age, and the chance of developing vulvar vestibulitis increased further in women who had used OCs for up to two to four years.
Pills that contained higher doses of androgen and progestin and lower amounts of estrogen were found to have the highest correlation with the condition.
Bouchard said that she thinks the hormones in OCs may "act on receptors" in the vulvar tissue, causing the tissue to become "more sensitive to irritating
chemicals" and eventually painful to the touch.
However, Bouchard noted that not all cases of vulvar vestibulitis are associated with OC use, and she added that doctors should not stop prescribing birth
control pills to young women.
"Until our results are validated by another similar study with a larger cohort of patients, I would be reluctant to suggest to physicians to inform young
girls about this association," she said, noting that oral contraceptives are "still the best method of contraception to prevent undesired pregnancies."
However, she said that doctors may want to discuss the link with young women taking OCs for 'non'-contraceptive reasons
(McCook, Reuters Health, 8/7).
table end
How Contraceptives Kill a Woman's Libido Long-Term
Birth Control Pills
The benefits of taking oral contraceptives may be no match for the risks. According to a study, while contraceptives allow a woman to have intercourse without
fear of getting pregnant, they could extinguish her sexual desire ... permanently.
The pill has been linked to a number of side effects, including:
list of 5 items
• Migraines
• Blood clots
• Weight gain
• Painful intercourse
• Problems with orgasms
list end
However, the side effect least talked about is its tendency to silence a woman’s libido by decreasing testosterone levels. Contraceptive drugs slow down
the production of hormones in the ovaries and raise levels of sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), a chemical that kills the libido.
And while experts believed any sexual dysfunction from taking oral contraceptives would disappear when a woman stopped using them--that no longer seems
to be the case.
Permanent Libido Damage?
Researchers studied 125 young women who visited a sexual dysfunction clinic; half were taking oral contraceptives, 40 had previously taken them and 23 had
never been on the pill.
After measuring the participants’ SHBG levels every three months for a year (via blood samples), researchers found:
list of 2 items
• Seven times the amount of the libido-killing SHBG hormone was present in woman who took oral contraceptives, compared to women who never used the pill.
• Even though SHBG levels declined in women who had stopped taking the pill, they still remained three to four times higher than they were in women with
no history of using oral contraceptives.
list end
New Scientist
May 27, 2005
So if Shea's comment seemed like she's one in a billion out there, she's not. Be carefull and discuss all your options.
laters
Candi
good points candi. if they make it over the counter, like i said, young girls will be taking it not knowing there side affects. yeah, it does name a few on the crap paper that comes with the pill. but, we all know that doesn't tell you half of what you need to know! it says blood clots in your legs. where does it say a blood clot in our brain? so again, my vote. hell no!