Rumor Control: What Everyone Should Know About Birth Control

After being fed up with all the mood swings caused by my birth control, I wanted to make a change. So I did what the commercials told me to, and I recently asked my doctor about new birth control YAZ.

But while I was waiting to see my doctor, the nurse who was taking my blood pressure let out a little secret.

"Don’t go on YAZ," she said. "Almost all the pregnant women that came in this year were on YAZ."

Now, there isn't even the slightest bit of evidence to say that YAZ is any less effective than any other birth control pill, but I decided to try a new chewable birth control, FemCon Fe. It's so new that there aren't any rumors about it yet.

Although FemCon Fe doesn't have a reputation yet, there is an ongoing war between the millions of rumors about birth control pills and the truth.

Take a look at some of the most conflicting rumors about birth control that both men and women need to know.

BIRTH CONTROL MAKES YOU GAIN WEIGHT

This is the most common beat-a-dead-horse-4-billion-times rumor. Up until about two months ago, all of the four doctors I asked gave me the same exact answer to that question.

"Birth control pills don’t make you gain weight - that’s just not true anymore."

Then they gave me a judgmental look like I’m a lazy sack of crap for even attempting to blame my fat-ass on something other than Cheetos and VH1.

If you do feel as if the birth control is to blame, you shouldn’t let a doctor tell you how a drug affects your body. There aren’t any clear answers about weight gain and birth control, but you just have to decide what’s better: an unwanted extra five pounds or an unwanted baby.

Bottom Line: Depending on the woman, it’s possible.

ANTIBIOTICS LOWER THE EFFECTIVENESS OF BIRTH CONTROL

This is a tricky one that I first learned about the hard way. A year ago, my doctor, knowing full well that I was on birth control, prescribed me an antibiotic for strep throat.

Being the neurotic drug-hater that I am, I checked out every possible side effect that might not be on the label. I checked out WebMD.com, and sure enough, it was right there in black and white:

"This medication may decrease the effectiveness of combination-type birth control pills. This can result in pregnancy."

Feeling high and mighty that I caught a mistake my doctor made, I called her office to tell her that she forgot to tell me that this medicine could make me pregnant. I expected an immediate "I’m so sorry" followed by a basket of my favorite flowers sent to my apartment. Instead, I got, "That’s not really 100% true. If it does lower effectiveness, it’s very little. It shouldn’t really affect anything."

Since my doctor disagrees with WebMD and the label on the drug, my next step was to call another doctor, who told me something very different.

"You should always use another form of birth control when taking antibiotics - there is a reason why that warning is on the label."

Maybe it doesn’t lower the effectiveness of the pill too much, or maybe it does. Either way, it’s not a risk I’m willing to take and neither should you.

Bottom Line: It’s true.

BIRTH CONTROL CAUSES CANCER

This was something that even I thought was true up until a few days ago. The reason why this rumor just won't die is simply because there was a time when this was true. Women who took birth control before 1975 were shown to have triple the likelihood of getting breast cancer.

Another reason this rumor is popular is because, in some cases, exposure to birth control has caused cancer.

The fact is that taking birth control can actually protect you from getting cancer in the uterus, and recent studies have shown that birth control is not linked in any way to causing breast cancer.

Bottom Line: False.

HOW DID THESE RUMORS BEGIN?

There are many theories about how rumors get started about birth control, but here are some of the likely reasons these rumors start.

1)Conservative organizations with political agendas use the rumors to light controversy about the pill, hoping that women will reconsider using it.

2)Some of the rumors are still around because of the high dose of estrogen pills that were around in the '60s and '70s. But today’s birth control pills have a fraction of that and have fewer side effects.