The Contraceptive Pill - Friend and Foe

The contraceptive pill is brilliant in many ways but it's a divisive tool when you look at it: I have significant reservations. Ambivalent is probably an understatement - on the one hand, it's a fantastic treatment, yet on the other hand,  can there be a better way to screw up your hormone system totally, utterly and for a long period of time?

I realise that, for doctors, it's the first choice for treatment of PCOS symptoms and can be useful - especially combined progesterone/oestrogen pills which are known to regulate oestrogen dominance and help with testosterone levels but, I'm not sure I can subscribe to a "cure all" pill which is apparently better than your own body at regulating hormone levels. Furthermore, in many cases, its been used by the medical establishment as a metaphorical sticking plaster which doctors love: easy to prescribe and a great way to get women to shut up and go away. 

If we start from my theory that actually PCOS is a symptom of Endocrine Distress:

• - For those that begin with PCOS symptoms early and are then prescribed   the pill as a way of controlling  hormones, then it would seem far better that we treat the causes of the hormone imbalance and allow the body to come back to balance through supporting natural systems, rather than bombarding an already stressed system with even more chemicals. 
• - For those, like myself, who were already on the pill for a number of years before symptoms began, I can't rule out the possibility that the pill is culpable in the development of my condition - who knows? but I do know that there's little chance that it can be helping matters!

Looked at one way, the pill is awesome:

Effective, convenient and reliable birth control which puts the woman squarely in charge of her own destiny when it comes to contraception. It's been a major societal boom, changing womens' lives forever and changing everything about our culture in the meantime. I would be hypocritical not to mention that I've been a major beneficiary of that - having confidence in my ability not to fall pregnant unawares has been terrific. I'm sure the majority of my peers would say the same. 

Looked at another way, the pill can only be bad news:

Taking something day in day out for the last 23 years which has, by design, altered my hormone configuration, prevented my body from doing what it's supposed to do, altered every aspect of my physiological being, from mood, to fertility, to weight management and water retention? Maybe, in my case, the price has been too high. 

Of course, every woman's decision will be different, based on her own circumstances, reproductive health and a decison making process which reaches far beyond a mere "technical" evaluation of the the facts. That's as it should be. I don't intend to tell anyone what to do. 

I guess my real problem is with the attitude of the medical profession to the pill and its role. Nothing is a cure-all. I'd be far more comfortable with a situation where the pill was simply one step amongst a whole range of treatment options, with the pill pretty far down the list of ways in which to regulate an imbalanced endocrine system, trying other remedies to assist the body back to health first. Surely thats better than - "oh, she's got a problem with her ovaries, let's just switch em off!"?

Furthermore, I think there needs to be much more monitoring of the effects of pills on healthy women as they start taking them. In my case, I asked repeatedly about the effect the pill might be having and was repeatedly told that it wouldn't be significant. That's a heck of a sweeping statement to make about something which has such wide-ranging effects by design. 

What I do know is that the pill, whilst brilliant technology, is a mechanical response to a system that we don't fully understand. It stands to reason that it should be treated with caution.