Birth Control Online

In these tough economic times, women are reporting that they've put off having a baby or have decided not to have any more children, according to a survey released today by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization focusing on reproductive health issues. The survey of 947 women ages 18 to 34 with annual household incomes of less than $75,000 was conducted this past summer, and the findings confirm the results of similar surveys conducted earlier in the year:

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Last year, I contemplated my risk of staying on birth control pills until I reach menopause and lamented the dearth of research on the long-term use of contraceptives by women. Well, I feel a little vindicated after reading a review paper published yesterday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The authors, female cardiologists from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, complain that there aren't well-designed trials looking specifically at how birth control pills and other hormonal products affect a woman's risk of developing heart disease.

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DENVER -- Teenage girls taking low-dose, oral contraceptives with 15 mcg of ethinyl estradiol showed abnormally low levels of bone growth, or even lost bone density, compared with teens who took a product with a higher dose of estrogen, researchers said.

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Remember during the stimulus debate, when the Republicans told us birth control funds didn't have a damned thing to do with the economy - and the Democrats, as usual, knuckled under to them? The Guttmacher Institute has just released a report on the impact of the recession on family planning, and the results are predictable - at least, if you're a normal (i.e. non-wingnut) person.

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Given that birth control pills have a wide range of well-documented side effects, including bloating, mood changes and sluggishness, all of which can affect your quality of life to varying degrees, it seems reasonable to assume that your daily dose of hormones could also impact your running performance. A study released earlier this year led by researchers at Texas A&M seemed to give credence to the idea that the pill takes a toll on physical performance, finding that women who took birth control pills developed 40 percent less muscle mass than women who did not.

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This year 2.25 million Americans will get married�and a million will get divorced. Could birth control be to blame for some of these breakups? Recent research suggests that the contraceptive pill�which prevents women from ovulating by fooling their body into believing it is pregnant�could affect which types of men women desire. Going on or off the pill during a relationship, therefore, may tempt a woman away from her man.

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