And not just because it brought us a great Loretta Lynn song: A new study suggests that the birth control pill can decrease your risk of ovarian cancer.
According to the study, a woman’s ovarian cancer risk is cut by 20 percent for every five years she is on the pill. Researchers tracked women who had never taken the pill to those who had taken it for more than 15 years. They found that even 30 years after women had stopped taking the pill, they still had about a 15 percent reduced risk of getting ovarian cancer, compared to women who had never taken oral contraceptives.
The experts estimated that use of the pill so far has prevented about 200,000 cases of ovarian cancer and 100,000 deaths from the disease. Based on current levels of oral contraceptive usage, they guessed that 30,000 cases could be avoided every year.
Not bad.
Of course, the pill also has some side-effects that women should be aware of, but the ones that are the most over-hyped also tend to decrease once you stop using it:
While the pill protects against ovarian cancer, it slightly increases the chances of breast and cervical cancer. But those risks disappear after women stop taking oral contraceptives. And the pill also provides long-term protection against endometrial cancer, which affects the lining of the uterus.
The Pill isn’t for everyone, and a lot of women’s bodies don’t tolerate hormonal contraception. But for a lot of women, it’s a life-saver (quite literally).
One thing that bugs me about these studies is that they always focus on “the pill” as the end-all be-all of contraception. While it makes sense that they would focus on hormonal contraception, I wonder if the findings are limited to birth control pills, or if they extend to things like the NuvaRing. As a Ring enthusiast myself — and as someone who just went back on birth control after a five-month hormone-free stint — I’m curious as to whether or not my birth control has any anti-cancer benefits (I do know that it doesn’t make me irritable, doesn’t decrease my sex drive, doesn’t make me gain weight, doesn’t make me moody, is easy to use, is affordable with my insurance, gives me lighter periods and makes my boobs bigger, so I’m not complaining, but I’d love to add “decreases my risk of cancer” to the list).
Of course, I’d also love it if there were better non-hormonal birth control options out there, but none of the ones I’ve found would work for me. I definitely don’t want my tubes tied because, although right now I don’t think giving birth is in the cards for me (I like the idea of having kids, but I’d prefer to adopt), I am the kind of person who might change my mind. Natural Family Planning isn’t going to work, because (a) I’m too lazy and too busy to keep track of my cycle in great detail, and (b) I want to have sex when I want to have sex, and the idea of abstaining on certain days does not appeal to me. I also don’t want to deal with the fear that I might fuck up the whole cycle-tracking thing; nothing is going to kill my interest in sex like the running “You could be pregnant” chorus in the back of my mind. Condoms are great, and they are also a regular and required part of my birth control, but I don’t want to rely solely on them. IUDs make me nervous given their history and their potential for making you permanently infertile (a potential that I know is very, very small, but it still makes me nervous), plus a lot of doctors won’t insert one if you tell her that you may want to have children some day. Diaphragms and cervical caps seem like a lot of effort and are just not gonna happen for me. So for now I’m good with the NuvaRing, but I’m hoping that something user-friendly, safe and non-hormonal hits the market before I hit menopause. I am not, however, counting on it.
What do you all use for birth control? Do you like it? Any ideas of the health benefits, despite the “staying un-pregnant” aspect? And men, these questions apply to you, too — What do you use? If you have a female partner, what does she use? Does she like it? (And if you have no idea what the answers to these questions are, perhaps it’s time to talk to your partner and find out).