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In the third installment of our "Big Pharma" series, Dr. B dives into the research behind the types of birth control and the true impact it has on the female hormonal system. All of this and more on the Real Health Podcast!
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What is The Real Health Podcast with Dr. B?
On a mission to share practical solutions to improve your wellbeing, The Real Health Podcast will equip you with evidence-based recommendations essential to achieving a healthy lifestyle. Join Dr. Barrett Deubert as he shares his passion for educating, inspiring, and empowering individuals to achieve “real health for real people”. Breaking down health topics such as: immunity, stress, real food, natural living, and much more to provide you with actionable steps to improving your family’s health.
Mic check. Back at it. Back in the game. Gosh, I had to run today. After running yesterday, my body is down a little bit. Getting a little sore.
Dr. Barrett:Welcome back to another episode of the Real Health podcast. So excited you're jumping into this big pharma series as we just look at medications, popular ones on the market, and we just understand the risks. I think it's one of those things that we can look over when looking at medication options. Truth be told, most practitioners are prescribing it really don't know the full side effects, and this is so true of today's podcast as we dive in and talk about birth control.
Dr. Barrett:Hormone based birth control, a lot of times you hear, well, there's there's no side. I mean even the OB GYN committee, I forget the the the letter name of their committee, but they just recently reported, "Hey, there's no side effects of hormonal birth control, it's all safe and effective." But that's the language that we hear a lot when it comes to medications, when it comes to vaccinations is "safe and effective." So I just wanna kinda explore birth control with you today, just kinda talk through some of the, known side effects that birth control really has an impact on the body, which I think you'll be surprised about so that you can make an educated decision with your health care practitioner on whether or not this is a good option for you. So last week we talked about Ozempic, the week before we talked about cholesterol and statins, and this week we're talking about hormones and hormonal based birth control.
Dr. Barrett:Now there's a lot of different forms of birth control, but we're gonna specifically address the hormonal based birth control, the one that is producing, progestins which is a synthetic form of progesterone. So you have, you know, you have the pill, you have the IUDs, you have arm implants- injections, and then there's some other natural alternatives that we'll get to in a second. But when we look at, before we look into the hormonal birth control, side effects, we're gonna talk about the cycle in general. Let's just talk real quick so you have understanding about the female cycle and what's happening in the body. So when the body is is getting ready day from day 1 to day 28, 29, 30, whenever however long your cycle is, day 1 is technically the 1st day that you see any bleeding.
Dr. Barrett:So that's the 1st day of menstruation. And when we, when we count up until the egg release, we we call this the follicular phase of the cycle. So the the most dominant hormone in this phase is estrogen. There's a little bit of production of progesterone, it's very slight. And then when we get this sharp elevation of estrogen as that swings up really high and we get this estrogen surge, that's when a lot of times, the body will ovulate, release the egg, and that female body when it drops that egg, that egg then signals to the brain to release progesterone and actually the corpus luteum, which is kind of the shell of the egg, in a sense, that is released as well, it produces progesterone in of itself.
Dr. Barrett:So we get this secondary progesterone surge in the second half of the cycle. So we get this estrogen, good amount of estrogen production to an estrogen surge and the slow production of progesterone to this rapid production in the luteal phase 2's different phases, main phases with an ovulation window in in the middle. And so, when we look at hormonal based birth control, what's actually in that quote unquote the pill, what's happening is you're taking in every single day you're taking in progestins. So this is a synthetic form of progesterone, it is not progesterone. It is a synthetic form progesterone typically made out of testosterone and when we look at progestins, this kind of signals to the brain to not ovulate, okay?
Dr. Barrett:So when a progestin or progesterone is in the body, we know ovulation has has already happened. And one of the things that we see is that when you get this steady production of progestin or progesterone, it tells the brain that "Hey we don't we don't need to ovulate so there's no need to create estrogen." So that is that's what prevents pregnancy is is in essence, hormonal birth control stops ovulation and it stops ovulation by mimicking the luteal phase of your cycle which is your progesterone phase. So if you think about it, you're constantly taking in progesterone every single day, in the form of progestin, tricking the brain to think that it's always in a luteal phase, well then you never get into your, your follicular phase. And then when you may get a, you know, a, in your pill, you get some sugar pills towards the end, and those sugar pills are really just designed to drop all hormones from the body, and signal to the brain like, "Hey, there's no hormones and then and then there's a there's a bleed and there's a restart."
Dr. Barrett:But pretty much for as long as you're on hormonal based birth control, you're you're not you're not ovulating. And fundamentally, the the side effects are from that. This is where all the side effects come from is anovulation. Anovulatory cycles are not ovulating. Ovulation is critical in so many levels and what we find is that women that are on, hormonal based birth control, even even when they get off, we see anxiety, depression, and failure to handle stress or stress intolerance.
Dr. Barrett:And so why do we see these things? Why do we see these 3 symptoms show up with hormonal based birth control anxiety depression and intolerance of stress? And then one of the main reasons that we're seeing it is when we look at, progesterone and estrogen, the true effects on the on the body, it all has to actually- it all goes back to its effects on the brain and specifically what we look at is its effects when it comes to GABA receptors in the brain. So progesterone, when it is broken down it actually breaks down to a form, to another hormone called pregnenolone. Pregnenolone.
Dr. Barrett:And pregnenolone when it is high, which is actually a like a precursor to, to hormones that even comes from the adrenal glands, it when it's broken down, it stimulates GABA receptors in the brain. So what we see is that all of those good, like, feel good effects of progesterone are really because progesterone being produced in your luteal phase is broken down into pregnenolone and then pregnenolone stimulates GABA receptors in the brain and that is your inhibitory neurotransmitter, like your break system to the brain. So immediately this causes causes like a calm down effect and this is a relaxation effect of progesterone. But instead what happens is when we're taking synthetic progestins, we're never making progesterone. We're never actually making progesterone.
Dr. Barrett:And actually, she'll be told we're not even making estrogen because we're not ovulating. And what we find is when you are pan low in all hormones and we and the body doesn't go through these hormonal swings of high estrogen dominance and then high progesterone dominance and then a return back to baseline, what we find is that the female body is hormone insensitive. So, what ends up happening is the flexibility of adapting to hormonal swings isn't there. And when the female comes actually off of birth control and then continues to live life, what they find is there's correlation between women in on birth control as it may be a teenager in their 20s and greater effects of like postpartum depression, greater PMS symptoms, more difficulty going through menopause because of this hormone flexibility issue. When you are young, your brain is learning how to adapt to hormonal fluctuations.
Dr. Barrett:When you chemically induce, yourself with progestin and block all hormone production and pretty much flatline your hormones as a child going through puberty or, you know, going into your twenties and thirties, you you become, hormonally inflexible. And this is one of the biggest reasons not only do we see anxiety, depression, but it's also one of the biggest thing the biggest reason we see it as causing stress intolerance. The inability to properly handle stress. There is a lot of studies showing how hormonal birth control prevents the body's ability to actually make cortisol efficiently during during stress seasons. So when women are on hormonal birth control and they were stressed, their cortisol production and their healthy inflammatory system compared to those that were not on birth control and their cortisol production was drastically different.
Dr. Barrett:The women not on birth control were able to was able to produce enough cortisol to adapt and handle stress. And I don't know maybe it's one of the reasons why we're seeing such a, a high rate of anxiety, depression, PMS symptoms, menopausal conflict, and stress intolerance in this in this next generation. As more and more hormonal based preferential is being used, we are getting more psychiatric disorders. There is absolute correlation here. And so when you put your when you put your daughter on hormonal birth control or, you know, the 25 year old college students on on on hormonal birth control and they're depressed, they're anxious, they go to the doctor and the doctor says, "Hey, I don't know why maybe it's because of school."
Dr. Barrett:Right? But it's not caused by, you know, your birth control. It absolutely birth control absolutely causes anxiety and depression. And then all of a sudden, the patient then gets put on an anti anxiety medication or antidepressant. Meanwhile, it's really just messing up this hormonal symphony of of the body.
Dr. Barrett:So one that's one of my my big red flags is how hormonal birth control really rewires the brain and affects not only GABA production, but actually affects neurodevelopment, literal brain development. It interferes with women's ability to go actually go through puberty efficiently and cognitively grow. So when we look at birth control, not only does it have this like hormonal effect, but really it does through the brain. And that's that to me is one of the biggest concerns when looking into it, for our female patients. So hey, maybe that was you, maybe you were on it as a child or in your twenties or thirties and you're having those symptoms- you- maybe you're having that those anxious symptoms today or depressive symptoms or stress intolerance symptoms.
Dr. Barrett:What do what do we do here? Right? So one of the best things to do is, is get into, you know, stressful environments, like sauna in cold plunge and, go through these, you know, modalities that will challenge your body and force your body to go through, you know, big hormonal surges, high cortisol production and and be able to tolerate that. Right? I think that's a- it's a really good way to build stress tolerance.
Dr. Barrett:And for most, it's it's really just getting you back to ovulation. Ovulation is so vital to longevity. I mean estrogen alone, for females, estrogen is so important. It's important for neuroprotection, brain protection and with Alzheimer's dementia, it's essential for bone development. Right?
Dr. Barrett:And we're just blocking that for years potentially and maybe even decades if you never return back to ovulation because you've stunted it for so long. So so what do we do here? We try to get your body ovulating. You know, ovulation, a strong ovulation and strong cycle is not for fertility outcomes only. It's actually for longevity.
Dr. Barrett:It's for energy. It's for beauty, it's for sex drive, like there's research that shows how when estrogen surges and starts to peak, you know, a few days before ovulation that female has the greatest greatest level of sex drive and their skin starts to glow. They have this energy and vigor to their body because right it's this fertility window that's innate and instinctive within them. And so this is why you know we see low sex drive is poor ovulation, poor estrogen production, estrogen surges pre ovulation. So you know that's the big effects that hormonally induced progestin induced birth control has, within the hormonal system.
Dr. Barrett:There's other there's other side effects that I wrote down and we see birth control as being a issue where not only does it suppress ovulation, but we actually get major nutrient depletion. So the specific nutrients that are depleted with birth control are are methylated b vitamins. So b 6, 9, and 12, Methylfolate, methycobalamin, and pyridoxal 5 Phosphate. Those 3 b vitamins, what we would call the methylated b vitamins, b 6912, are so important in so many areas of the body neurotransmitter production in the brain, you know, hormone synthesis in the liver, but also one of the things that we see in infertility outcomes and, in miscarriages is we see nutrient depletion because of years of birth control usage. So birth control will directly deplete your levels of b 6, 9, and 12 which has a role with fertility outcomes and miscarriages.
Dr. Barrett:So if you've been on birth control in the past, you absolutely need to be looking at these methyl 3 these 3 methyl b vitamins, b 6, 9, and 12. There's also selenium is a known depleted mineral in the body with hormonally with hormonal based birth control. And selenium, yeah, that's vital for even thyroid function. We see, weight gain, blood clots, low libido, hair loss. We see PCOS and acne all related to hormonal birth control.
Dr. Barrett:So you can't tell me there's no side effects. There are absolute side effects. To every every medication has a side effect and the pill, the hormonal based pill is is definitely making a dent to the hormonal system. Okay. There are other- there are other hormone based birth control, but it's not the pill and that's more of like an IUD and intrauterine vise.
Dr. Barrett:And most of those are progestin alone as well. So those are progestins or synthetic synthetic progesterones and they're gonna have they're gonna have the exact same effect. Now the way they they stop consumption is a little bit different, but the effects in the body are are the exact same. And we see it again, anxiety, depression, poor poor ability to handle stress, migraines, inflammation of cervix, pelvic pain, female loses their cycle, hard to regain, because of IUDs. And then there's, there's arm implants that that has like a slow release of progestin.
Dr. Barrett:Those are like your and then there's shots obviously as well, which are massive loads of of of, progestins. So those are the main birth control agents that are being used. So if, you know, that doesn't that doesn't sound great, right, what are some other options? So for my wife and I, what we have done is we use what's called the Oura ring. So Oura ring, "o u r a."
Dr. Barrett:An Oura ring measures measures your cycle and it does through body temperature differentials. So you can get a few old school piece of paper, get a chart and you can track a few things. If you track your body temp and your cervical fluid, it'll give you some understanding of of, you know, when you're ovulating and how long your cycle is. Now for Becky, the Oura ring does all that for us and it makes it super simple. So far since using it, we knock on wood, metal, glass. I don't care what, knock on everything. We haven't had a baby, so we're done. 4 kids. We're good. So right now we're using the Oura ring as our our primary way of, you know, pregnancy control.
Dr. Barrett:So it's a great option because it really helps you understand the natural rhythms of your hormonal system. So it looks at body temperature differentials and even takes in account stress and it really charts it really, charts it really well with natural cycles. But again you can do it the old school way and chart. The great thing about charting your cycle, the great thing about grabbing data is that you know what your body's doing. You know if it's making enough estrogen, progesterone, if you're ovulating because you're gonna get that one degree temperature spike elevation on the day post ovulation like you know that's happening.
Dr. Barrett:So it's so great to see the temperature change of your cycle so you know, hey, this is where my cycle's at and you know your fertility windows but you also know how healthy your body is. So that is kind of the wrap of birth control. There's not much more to dive into it. I felt like that was a good overview of the side effects and really how it's affecting the body and then some natural alternatives which again, O ring or tracking your cycle is the go to option. And for those that have done birth control in the past, make sure you're looking at nutrient deficiencies and make sure that you are supporting ovulation and getting that healthy estrogen to progesterone production for a healthy cycle, but a healthy brain.
Dr. Barrett:Hey. Thanks again for listening. Hope this was helpful. Hope this is valuable for you and we'll talk to you soon.