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- Living on The Huffington Post
Jump to full article: Huffington Post (blog), 2008-05-02
Author: J. Douglas Bremner
Intro: A collective howl is going up amongst women over at medications.com over the birth control pill, Yasmin. These women are complaining of depression, anxiety, loss of sex drive, headaches, and dizziness, and most of them didn't feel like they were adequately informed about these potential side effects. In fact, Yasmin is the most bitched about drug on medications.com, with over 4,000 women logging in to report problems with it. It looks like Yasmin needs to join the blogroll of medications that if they don't kill you they will drive you crazy. . . .
How can this be? Birth control pills (or oral contraceptive pills, or OCPs) are combinations of sex hormones related to estrogen and progesterone. . . .
For smokers there is an increased risk with OCPs that gets worse with age. For instance, the risk of death is 1 in 200,000 per year in non-smoking women under the age of 35. However risk increases with age and smoking to 1 in 700 per year for smokers over age 35.
The risk of cancer with OCPs overall isn't great. Some cancers, like cervical cancer, increase after ten years of use, the overall risk from breast cancer is not increased. OCPs reduce the risks of ovarian and uterine (endometrial) cancers. OCPs reduce the risk of anemia, pelvic inflammatory disease, and osteoporosis.
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