Karen’s Free Health and Fitness Tips

If you are on the birth control pill, the first step in trying to get pregnant is to stop the pill. After all, the pill works by preventing ovulation, and you need to ovulate first if you want to get pregnant.

But what’s going on if you stop the pill and you don’t get your period for some time? Is there something wrong?

Missing your period is also called amenorrhea. And the very first thing that comes to mind when you don’t have your period if you could be pregnant.

Even without getting your period first there might be a chance you are pregnant. Taking a pregnancy test will pretty much tell you whether your are pregnant or not. A negative pregnancy test, especially if it’s repeated over a week or so, usually means that you are not pregnant.

But is there anything wrong if your period hasn’t come for 2-3 months after stopping the pill? And when should you see your doctor?

First of all let me reassure you. The sort of delay you’re experiencing after going off the pill is quite common and here’s what’s going on:

With unplanned pregnancy, especially among U.S. teens, ranking the highest in the developed world, the launch of my book How to Avoid Unplanned Pregnancy Every Time You Have Sex - WITHOUT Using Contraceptives has never been more appropriate. Now readers can attain straight-forward, practical advice in the privacy of their own home, with no need to stand in line or face sales clerks.

An astounding 750,000 teen girls get pregnant every year, according to the National Campaign To Prevent Teen Pregnancy. In fact, 31 percent of all young women become pregnant at least once before they reach the age of 20(1), with four-fifths of these unplanned(2). Oftentimes, contraceptives are too expensive, risky or inconvenient. As a result, unplanned pregnancies can lead to poverty, lost opportunities, social and cultural stigma.

How to Avoid Unplanned Pregnancy WITHOUT Using Contraceptives… aims to inform women in reproductive age about safe (not safer) safe, holistic none-contraceptive prevention techniques. It explores both the physical and emotional sides to intimacy, ways to assess a relationship and its longevity potential, actions that can sabotage it and of course various techniques one can use to help prevent unplanned pregnancy safely and naturally… with no side-effects associate with them.

Many Americans take birth control pills to prevent any unplanned pregnancies. This is very practical since the cost of rearing a child is not something which should be taken lightly and therefore, wanting a child in a family needs planning and careful decision making.

There are so many ways to control childbirth. You have the natural family planning, wherein you are basing your sexual intercourse on the ovulation periods of the woman. There are also those in the form of medication or pills such as oral contraceptives, or otherwise known as birth control pills.

It is undeniable that millions of women in America prefer using oral contraceptives than the natural method since it is easier to take and protects you everyday, so you do not have to worry about any sexual encounter since you are protected all the time. Even with this popularity of oral contraceptives, there are still cynics when it comes to the reliability of this type of birth control.

A study published in January, 2006 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine claims that women who use birth control pills may suffer from long term side effects. Possible side effects include decreased desire and arousal, decreased lubrication, and increased sex-related pain.

Researchers studied a group of 124 women, all of whom had previously suffered from some degree of sexual dysfunction. 69 of the women continued using the pill, 39 were discontinued users, and 23 had never used it.

The research team analysed blood samples taken from women who had discontinued use of the pill six months earlier, and found that they had significantly less available testosterone. This would make them more prone to suffer from side effects such as decreased sexual desire and less frequent arousal.

Increased globulin levels means less testosterone

According to study leader Dr. Claudia Panzer of Boston University, the women who were currently taking the pill had as much as four times the level of testosterone-binding globulin in their blood as those not taking the pill. This is what reduces the amount of testosterone the body has at its disposal.

Vasectomy, a permanent method of male contraception, is a simple surgical procedure whereby the man’s sperm-carrying tubes are litigated. The procedure takes about 30 minutes, under local anesthesia. After a vasectomy, a man is effectively sterile because the sperm produced by the testes is barred from the seminal fluid. Vasectomies do not affect a man’s sex drive, his ability to have erections and orgasms or his testosterone levels.

Vasectomies are highly effective, with failure rates reported at between 0.2% and 0.4%. The procedure is less costly than female sterilization, rarely has serious side effects, and has no adverse long-term health effects. Minor side effects may include mild pain, infection and granulomas (small benign lumps that are easily treated), and abscesses. Erectile dysfunction may occur, but is usually psychological in nature.

Apparently, the prevalence of vasectomies increases along with education and income. Surveys indicate that the majority of men receiving vasectomies are married or co-habiting, white, and educated beyond high school. Less than ten percent of surveyed samples had incomes of less than $25,000 and 81% of them paid for the procedure through private insurance or health care plans.

The most known and widely used male contraceptives are the famous condoms and vasectomy. Some male contraceptives are irreversible like vasectomy. Once it is performed it is permanent. The MRU and MPU are male contraceptives that block the vas deference. The vas deference is the tube that transports or relays sperms from one medium to another. This tube is blocked such that sperms will no longer be able to join the urethra during ejaculation. No sperms will be released during sexual intercourse but the blocking of the vas deference is reversible. It is only a slight or a small section of the vas deference that is usually blocked. A man’s fertility is able to return once and is known to have minimal side effects.

Another male contraceptive is the adherin. Adhering is also among male contraceptives that interferes with sperm formation in the testes. It inhibits the way cells in the testes work towards the development of mature sperms. Adherin has minimal or no side effects even after tests performed on rats indicated that the introduction of adherin led to a very low sperm count. It is a contraceptive that is still under investigation and it will be in the market soon. Once the normal development of the sperm is interfered with, the male can no longer be able to release sperms with a capacity of fertilizing an egg. The man is no longer fertile but do not feel scared because it is only temporary. Once this contraceptive is withdrawn fertility returns to normal within a period of 3-4 months.

This is an introductory explanation of the different types of oral contraceptive pills that may help you to finally select the one that is best for your body. 50 years on, we have discovered that the oral contraceptive pill for women still prevents pregnancy if it is made up of much lower doses of estrogen and progestin than in the early days. ‘The Pill’ used to contain 50-100 micrograms of estrogen and today it contains only 20-35 micrograms, with researchers trying to reduce this amount further to reduce side effects. Synthetic hormones (estrogen/ethinyl estradiol and progestin) used in contraceptive pills mimic the natural hormones (oestrogen and progesterone) produced by the ovaries, adrenal gland and liver.

Estrogen’s main job in a contraceptive pill is to prevent ovulation (release of an egg from a woman’s ovary). Progestin in the pill, while it does have some intermittent effect on ovulation (about 50% of the time) is relied on mainly to thicken the mucus around the cervix to stop sperm from getting through to an egg.

Birth control contraceptives are said to be very effective in controlling pregnancy and a lot has been reported about the various other benefits of they offer. But like every coin has two sides, the same way along with so many benefits, these contraceptives have some demerits also.

Demerits of Birth Control Contraceptives:

Some of the less serious side effects of the birth control contraceptives are migraine, depression, breast tenderness, and weight gain among others. Apart from this, a woman can also experience nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. However, these are not the only side effects as one can have more serious side effects like heart attacks, increase in blood pressure, blood clots, strokes as well as a condition called venous thromboembolism. For the women who are suffering from diabetes, taking contraceptives may result in increase in the blood sugar levels.

These are some of the most common side effects, but some women also experience hypertension due to the usage of contraceptives; they are also said to be contributing to gallstone formation along with some kinds of benign tumor in the liver. Not only this, contraceptives can also interfere with the effectiveness of some drugs such as rifampin used for tuberculosis; griseofulvin, which is an anti fungal drug; corticosteroids; theophyline, which is a bronchodilator; and also anti anxiety drugs that contain benzodiazepine.

Birth control is something that needs to be effective. In choosing their oral contraceptives, women have a large array of medications to choose from. Is choosing a generic contraceptive as good as choosing a brand name?

The FDA has different rules for generic drugs than for the originals. When first introduced to the market, drugs have to undergo a series of tests to make sure that they not only do what they allege, but also to make sure that they don’t have unpleasant or dangerous side effects. Generic drugs do not undergo such stringent testing procedures.

The FDA requires that generic drugs prove that they are therapeutically equivalent to the originator drug. This means that generic drugs have to prove pharmaceutical equivalency and bioequivalency. Pharmaceutical equivalency means that the drugs have the same active ingredient, in the same dosages, and delivered in the same way. Bioequivalency means that it is not absorbed at a different rate or strength than the originator drug. To prove pharmaceutical equivalency and bioequivalency, often a study is carried out with only 20 or 30 women.

How would you rate your use of combined hormonal contraceptives - are you the perfect ’student’, using them exactly as you have been instructed by your health care professional or do you regularly rely on emergency contraception (Plan B or the ‘morning after pill’) for ‘damage control’? If you are not at the ‘top of the class’ for your contraceptive behavior, you may also be playing swings and roundabouts with your emotions. The outcome of a study of 26,250 women, aged 18 to 49 has just been published and confirms that being inconsistent with your contraceptive regime can adversely affect your health, your schooling, your job and your relationship with your partner.

The study was carried out over a three month period in Spain where women completed a questionnaire at outpatient clinics of the departments of gynecology and family planning centers of public and private institutions throughout across the country in 2006. The lead investigator of the study, Dr Inaki Lete, Hospital Santiago Apostol, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, collated information about attitudes and the psychological impact of imperfect use of hormonal contraceptives from women who used three different hormonal contraceptive methods, being the combined pill, (65%) the skin patch (12%) and NUVARING(R) (23%) (etonogestrel/ethinyl estradiol vaginal ring). Non-compliant behavior (inconsistent use of a hormonal contraceptive) was defined as missing or delays in the taking/ application/insertion or removal of the pill, patch or ring. Dr. Lete is confidant that the findings from the study will help health care professionals to “empower women to increase compliance with the prescribed contraceptive regimens.”