The women’s health crisis conversation continues. In part 1, I laid out some groundwork pertaining to some of the ‘why’s’ of how we got to where we are today. There are social determinants of health that are bombarding women from all sides – toxicity, social pressures, societal stressors, and more which have led to a myriad of health issues in the feminine sphere.
Luckily, we have up-to-date studies and sound-minded healthcare professionals who are doing their gosh darn best to shed light on the issue of womanly struggles. It can take DECADES for new research to migrate into a PCP’s office – which is incredibly alarming. Needless to say, most of us can find more benefit from researching on our own accord – or finding someone within the alternative realm who is dedicated to helping YOU understand the WHY behind your health issues.
Toxicity, as mentioned above, is found in our food supply, cosmetics, hygienic products, and more. I hate to say this, but my career as a holistic nutritionist wouldn’t exist if the powers that be cared about keeping you alive and well. There wouldn’t be a Bill Gates to protect you from, or the owners of Kellogs or Nestle.
Think of our current position in life as a pinball machine. We can’t escape toxicity if you are living as a humble American who is conscientious of their finances; shopping at the usual stores for groceries, cleaning supplies, cosmetics, etc.
Bam! We hit the side of genetic predispositions. Whatever your lifestyle and diet push you towards, chances are you are going to be dealing with SOME sort of physical or mental affliction – varying from mild to chronic.
You seek medical care, and they prescribe you a medication to reduce the undesirable symptoms you are experiencing. Little do you know, that said medication is causing imbalances and nutritional deficiencies in your body. Which now, on top of toxicity & an unhealthy lifestyle, your liver and other filtration systems are desperately trying to keep up with the toxin load.
And here you are, in this pinball machine hitting all these dead ends of modernity.
Let’s talk about one prescription in particular which happens to be controversial, as it was at one time in history praised as a necessary resource, pinnacle to the women’s rights movement.
Birth control!!
The hormonal contraceptive pill came to be a magic tool in which women could control their motherhood destinies. They had a say in the when & where & how, ‘for once’.
The objective here is to give you an empowered mindset surrounding this topic. To have a broader view of the story in order to make an informed decision about what you choose to put in your body. Contraception is such an interesting topic because, for one, most women today have been on it at least one point in their lives. It is something that we all have heard about or participated in. Additionally, it’s tainted with strong societal opinions, policies, and religious perspective.
It has infiltrated female healthcare in such a way that being on it is completely normalized, like buying a topical acne treatment.
Before I touch on that, let’s go over the historical backdrop to paint a necessary picture as to what we are actually up against here.
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Let’s go all the way back to when female reproductive functions were first observed.
There was not much science to go off of in the 1800s, except some physicians & scientists noting that sperm swam best when a women’s cervical mucus was the most ‘fluid’. Erik Odebald, a physics PhD and physician, gave cervical fluid more of a spotlight come 1957. He pioneered the research to bring about conclusive evidence to what everyone already suspected; women are only fertile for a handful of days each month. During these days of ovulation, Odebald & others discovered that cervical fluid was watery & viscous (now called ‘hydrogel’). Sperm rely on ovulatory cervical fluid as transport to the egg, and this is the only time in a women’s cycle where this transportation is possible. Amazingly, a women’s body develops cervical mucus before & after ovulation which kills the sperm due to it’s acidity. During ovulation, the sperm are there to stay and can stay alive & well up to 3 days living within the desired consistency & pH of cervical mucus.
Pretty amazing huh?
Now you might be wondering why you haven’t heard of this. Or maybe you have, you just acknowledge that it hasn’t been emphasized in schools, in your doctor’s office, or in Planned Parenthood before they slide you the pill.
Instead of leaning into female physiological mechanisms, the world pivoted. Maybe it mocked the rhythm method the gynecologists brought to the Catholic sphere, which poorly calculates the ever-so-fluctuating fertile window. Maybe people were plain skeptical. Withdrawal, mentioned as far back as the Torah, doesn’t get enough credit. Either way, they chose to ignore the key fact in procreation: men are always fertile, and women are only fertile (at max) 1/4 of every month. Sadly, the onus came on women to take the pill.
A women’s body doesn’t thrive on control & suppression. We all thrive on balance, flow, & respect.
To completely relinquish the chance of pregnancy, many turn to hormonal contraceptives, even though this intense suppression of fertility comes with costs.
The pill came about from a dismal depiction of procreation, family, and security. Margaret Sanger, a historical figure who played a big part in public conversations surrounding female health, is largely to blame. I’m sure her idea of the pill was birthed from her upbringing – seeing her mom endure 7 miscarriages, have 11 children, and later meeting death at a terribly early age of 49. Later, she witnessed many in poverty seeking abortions as an obstetric nurse.
Enough was enough!
“Birth control is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit and preventing the birth of defectives” – Sanger.
Her eugenicist beliefs carried on to her founding of Planned Parenthood, as they were methodically placed in black neighborhoods as an attempt to keep population numbers controlled.
The red flags should have been raised during the trials. The first subjects, without their consent, were male & female psychiatric patients from the insane asylum at the Worcester State hospital.
Some trials occurred in the states, others in Puerto Rico to avoid anti-birth control laws. Racist eugenicists from the US targeted Puerto Rico which had a growing population of Hispanics. 265 women of the Rio Piedras neighborhood underwent clinical trials without knowledge of the pill being a new experimental product or risk of serious effects. 3 died and 22% dropped out due to severe side effects.
In another trial, 50% of the participants of Puerto Rican medical students dropped out due to side effects such as bleeding, blood clots, & nausea. I can’t imagine the monthly cervical dilations, uterine biopsies, and abdominal incisions being too comfortable, either.
The trials were carried out to Haiti & Mexico. Overall, some women died, some women became suicidal, some women’s personalities changed completely according to their loved ones. Despite the atrocious outcomes, they pushed to clear the pill through the FDA, which was accomplished in 1960.
We see that in some ways it was a hero’d invention. We can’t, however, turned a blind eye to the unethical & detestable processes and ideologies in which the pill was founded.
The history of the birth control pill is dark, racist, classist, and ableist. Don’t believe that this pill in its Godless design has simply been cleansed of its despicable past + purpose.
In order to make her dreams a reality, Sanger had to find someone with a lab. She aligned herself with a rebel scientist named Gregory Pincus. The very scientist who formulated the pill was kicked out of Harvard for successfully creating in vitro rabbit embryos. Pincus was the perfect chemist companion, as he discovered progesterone could curb ovulation altogether. Using fertility awareness methods (FAM), such as taking body temperature, they observed a static temperature (no rise before ovulation) & an absence of stretchy hydrogel cervical fluid. Additionally, month after month of absent periods meant the women’s uterine walls were too thin for egg implantation. Sanger’s plans were finally realized.
The magic pill was magic indeed!
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We are approaching 2025, and people are waking up. This movement, fueled by feminine freedom, comes with serious downsides.
To define hormones, they are simply messengers delivering important information to other bodily systems. Claims to be hormonally imbalanced has strong connotations, as hormones are the epicenter of communication between all of our organs:
“They cause tissue to grow and recede; they determine the building or breakdown of muscle, bone, and fat; they convert glucose, they affect blood pressure, pH, and electrolytes; they determine sleep or wakefulness, hunger or satiation, euphoria or relaxation, fight or flight. In a word, hormones greatly influence how we feel, and whether we are well.” -Jennifer Block, journalist and author of ‘Everything Below the Waist’.
Propaganda surrounding the pill had themes of ‘harmless’, ‘normal’, ‘necessary’. I can tell you truly, from what I see in my practice here at Olive & Dove, that’s far from the truth.
A visual of your cycle, with & without influence:
A women’s cycle is a beautiful dance highlighting layers of creativity, emotions, skills, energy, and expressions. We are not wired to have our reproductive hormones flatlined.
Doing so, especially for a number of years, puts women at risk for osteoporosis, early heart attack, and even breast cancer.
Some women experience a decreased sex drive while on the pill (completely negating the point of being on it).
Dr. Axe found a devastating study that long-term use of birth control (10 years) increases risk of developing hypothyroidism by 283.7%.
Birth control can shrink your cerebral cortex by 1% while using.
It can destroy your gut microbiome, which holds 70% of our immune system and a significant portion of our mental health.
It’s been shown to increase infertility. We are already being pummeled with microplastics, toxins in our food + water, forever chemicals in our Lulu lemon leggings, EMFs, and taking the brunt of the highest frequency of vaccines in human history. No, you don’t have wiggle room to just ‘take an extra pill’. Develop peace where you can (out of your control), and take action wherever possible. The health of your future babies and the generations thereafter depend on it.
It has been documented to deplete B Vitamins: B2, B3, B6, B12, vitamin C, zinc, folate, calcium, tyrosine, CoQ10, Vitamin E, selenium, zinc, and magnesium. It is worthy to note that those are essential nutrients to support a healthy fertile, child-bearing state.
Personally, I cannot come to terms with the fact that girls barely over the puberty line have been prescribed the pill with such ease due to preventable symptoms like cramps & acne. Given that contraceptives deplete crucial nutrients for female reproductive health, it’s obvious that this pill can hinder a girl from experiencing the true expression of her femininity (and the awkwardness of it!).
There is absolutely no excuse for using the pill as an acne or PMS solution for teens; all doctors involved should be held accountable for not sharing all of the possible solutions for the health struggles young women face.
Moving on from teenage years, there are varying reasons why women lean on the pill in their adulthood. Low & behold, there are smarter, less invasive ways to avoid pregnancy, reduce or eradicate PMS, or to say goodbye to acne forever.
We live in the age where there are smart rings like the Oura ring and Ultrahuman ring which link with apps like Natural Cycles to effectively track your cycle.
Birth control DOES NOT balance your hormones. As you can see from the graph above, it just turns off the communication between your brain & ovaries in order to mask undesirable symptoms around menstruation. Many witness this first hand when they finally get off the pill to see their hormones rear their ugly head again. The root issues were never dealt with.
As I mentioned above, women thrive on flow & balance, not control & suppression. In raw form, devoid of pills masking the problem, our symptoms are messages to US from our body. Some symptoms are cries for help – in great need of nourishment, lifestyle changes, letting go of perfectionism, adequate sleep, a break from Dior perfume, more boundaries in relationships, a switch to nontoxic cookware, or drinking water not filled with the scum of society.
In 2023, OTC purchases of hormonal contraceptives in the US reached about $672 million. Imagine if these contraceptive users could instead be provided fertility experts, smart rings and apps, the Daysy thermometer, condoms, and more resources to help better understand their biology and live in respect of its power to hold & grow life.
As women, it’s time to take responsibility over our own fertility – to learn that avoiding pregnancy is as simple as practicing abstinence when you are fertile – and enjoying those windows safely open for the majority of the month (oh! And with someone who you are relationally promised to, embodying monogamy, safety, & security).
Better yet, practicing abstinence until you & your person are in a blessed, sacred, marital covenant.
I hope this post illustrated this specific social determinant of health. How by simply shrugging away Odebald’s findings, and an infiltration of radical ideas from someone who thought they knew what was BEST for women in society, we have today a desensitized view of the intensely negative impacts of what contraceptives can bring.
If you are someone who wants to get off the pill, or at least support themselves as best as possible while they are taking it, head over to my services page and book an initial consultation with me. Let’s get you detoxed & balanced, in the name of womanhood!
Bee Westwood, MScN
