I think it’s time someone address the elephant in the room that is the overprescribedness of oral contraceptive pills to women.

The stories of women who have taken my course surrounding this, as well as my own, are enough to make me cringe knowing what I now know. 

You see, when I was 16 years old, less than two years after starting menses, my mom came home from her OB/GYN annual exam and brought me a package of birth control pills. She said she had told her OB about my acne and my boyfriend (insert eye roll) and he wrote a prescription for Loestrin, a low estrogen birth control pill, without even seeing me as a patient.

I started the pills because, after all, it seemed to be the popular thing to do anyway. All of my friends were taking some form of birth control pill. I was the only one up to that point who hadn’t started one. Soon after starting it, I started dealing with horrendous pill bleeds during “sugar pill week” and headaches along with it. The cramps were awful, but usually subdued with some Midol and a note to sit out for P.E. class. 

Fast forward to college, when I was informed my sophomore year that the pill I had been taking had been discontinued and that I needed to switch to another brand. No big deal, I thought.

But oh, it was. It was a big deal.

I was switched to Ortho Tri Cyclen Lo, followed by traditional Ortho Tri Cyclen, followed by Seasonique and various other brands. 

Every single one of them made me batshit crazy. I’m not kidding, I was a basketcase. Sleeping in the frigid cold dorm of my sorority house, I would break out in hot flashes during the night. I was highly anxious, started to become depressed, and was really struggling, to which my OB back home said, “Eh, I’m sure it’s just the sophomore blues.” 

What? What even is that?

My best friend took me to the school therapist where she helped me piece together triggers: when had all of this started, and what was potentially causing it? At the time, I hadn’t made the connection before then, but it was in her office that I realized the birth control switch-ups could absolutely be the culprit. 

It was at that point that I went off of them entirely, and less than 2 years later I got married and entire a dark downward spiral of migraine headaches, irregular periods, and hellacious period cramping. That’s when my migraine journey (shared on the podcast and in other blog posts) began. 

When my husband and I sought fertility doctors in our late 20’s (though for just a brief amount of time, thanks to my experience), I got to have all those same feelings all over again when the Dr. put me on oral prometrium and various other synthetic hormone. After just 2 weeks of panic attacks, lack of sleep, headaches, and all the feelings, I threw in the towel. My husband and I decided that was not for us. I couldn’t go back to batshit crazy again.

Soon after, and in sharing my journey with close friends, I realized I wasn’t alone. One of my closest friends divulged she had had the same experience, trying various pills back in the day, and again dealt with symptoms that made her feel crazy during her infertility journey. Then, when I launched the SYNC course, the stories came gushing in.

Ironically, when course takers begin my course, the first thing we do is get them set up with a functional medicine doctor to do proper testing and get to the root cause of any imbalance. Except that most women decide they’ll start with their current OB/GYN or GP to save money, and guess what they’re met with:

“Oh, you’re feeling off? Let’s get you back on birth control.”

A dear friend recently told me that her teenage daughters are met with the exact same experience: when they start OB exams, many are encouraged to start oral contraceptives if they’re dealing with irregular cycles, cramping, headaches, acne, you name it.

Why is this the case?

In my personal opinion, after hearing story upon story of this, I have to say it’s because most doctors just don’t know how to get to an underlying cause. So they instead prescribe medication.

Isn’t that what most modern medicine is? Doctors are there to prescribe treatments and drugs; not always to get to the root cause of what’s going on.

And let me be real: I’m saying this with love. I’ve loved many of my doctors, but I’ve also learned that every one of them is different in their knowledge, training, and style. And for me, functional medicine is the ONLY route I’ll go for the rest of my life. 

Doctors have got to stop prescribing oral contraceptives to teens who aren’t necessarily looking for birth control, whose hormones are in their early stages of figuring themselves out. They have to stop Band-Aiding women who are struggling and instead, learn to do the proper testing and help them. Or, better yet (and I have yet to see this happen), admit when they don’t know what they don’t know.

I’m not here to shame doctors. In fact, a very big part of my coaching involves getting women in the hands of the right doctors. But I am here to say that someone has to step up and speak out about this.

Is there a time and place, and women who require oral contraceptives? Sure. But not everyone. 

Could my infertility journey have been related to starting birth control at a young age?
Could my migraine journey have been connected? 

I know I certainly believe so. And so do millions of other women. It’s time we listen.

xoxo,

Jenny