Birth control is an important part of countless lives. It helps with family planning, controlling excessively heavy and painful menstrual cycles, and in some situations, it’s even a safety measure for at-risk individuals.
However, it does have a major impact on your body, and you should know exactly what’s going on when you take it.
Today, we’re going to go over how birth control pills work, what happens to your body when you take them, and how you can access them.
How Birth Control Pills Work: Shutting Down Egg Fertilization
Unless you’re younger, you probably know this, but getting pregnant after intercourse isn’t a random chance. Your body releases an egg once per month in a process called ovulation. This takes place within 14 days of your period ending. To get pregnant, you have to be ovulating, an egg has to have been released, and then sperm must be able to reach the egg.
Birth control pills work by preventing ovulation.
That’s a difficult thing to achieve. So, birth control pills use one or two hormones that your body already produces to trick it into not ovulating.
If one hormone is used, your treatment will have progestin. If your birth control pill uses two hormones, estrogen is the second hormone.
By increasing the progestin and estrogen levels in your body, your body doesn’t release an egg, and you don’t ovulate. As such, you can’t get pregnant.
Learning how birth control pills work is key, but so is knowing your alternatives. Make sure you’re informed about the importance of emergency contraception awareness to stay protected in every situation.
What Birth Control Pills Do to Your Body
So, we’ve covered how birth control pills stop ovulation, and we talked about how hormones are used to do that. What actually happens inside your body, though?
It’s a lot more complicated than hormones being released and then your body skips ovulation. A few changes happen.
First, the progestin and estrogen don’t actually stop ovulation on their own. Instead, they cause your pituitary gland to release hormones that tell your ovaries it’s time to release an egg. So, while you’re getting hormones from the pills, your body stops producing a couple of other hormones. Those include follicle-stimulating hormones and luteinizing hormones.
That takes care of a big part of the problem. Your chances of releasing an egg don’t drop to 0, but they do drop enough to make ovulation very unlikely.
Progestin-only birth control pills have another effect on your body.
Your uterus is lined with mucus. Progestin forces that mucus to thicken. Sperm has a hard time navigating the uterus and reaching the egg when thick mucus is blocking the way.
Not only is it far less likely that you will release an egg, but if you do, sperm will have a much harder time reaching it. That elevates the effectiveness rate of birth control pills to a 99.7% success rate.
However, when you mess with hormones, you have an effect on your entire body. Hormones play such a significant role in nearly all our body’s functions that it’s not practical to restrict the effects of a hormone-based treatment.
As such, there are a variety of minor side effects that you’ll experience during your time on birth control pills.
The most common and most noticeable changes are things you already dealt with the last time your body had major hormonal changes. Just like when you were in puberty, it is very likely that you’ll develop minor acne, mood swings, and maybe depression. This comes from your hormones being skewed.
However, you can also experience tender breasts because your hormones stimulate them, and it’s possible that you’ll gain a few pounds.
None of these changes should be very dramatic, and they’re certainly not as bad as when you went through puberty, and your hormones were completely out of control.
A positive side effect of birth control, outside of preventing pregnancy, is that it can help lighten your period.
It’s not often used specifically for this if you have an average period. However, if you have heavy flow or excessively painful periods, birth control pills might be recommended not to prevent pregnancy, but to reduce the intensity of your period.
Are Birth Control Pills Safe?
Birth control pills are safe the majority of the time. Unfortunately, there are some risks. In very rare situations, they can cause heart attacks and strokes, or you might develop blood clots.
Those are rare, and they are typically caused because of pre-existing conditions. That’s why birth control pills are prescription only. You can’t buy them off a store shelf, because you need to know how birth control pills work, and to have a doctor check your health before treatment and monitor you throughout your time on birth control.
Accessing Birth Control Conveniently
Unfortunately, it’s not easy for everyone to go to a doctor’s office, ask for birth control, and get a prescription. There are travel limitations, limited doctor options, scheduling conflicts, and more that can make birth control pills seem inaccessible.
At HealSend, we make it easy to get birth control pills online and connect with licensed doctors from the comfort of your home. You don’t need to travel to a doctor’s office or deal with rigid scheduling requirements. Everything is done online, and scheduling is flexible.
A doctor in our network will go over your medical history and health benchmarks to ensure that you can safely take birth control pills, as well as teach you how birth control pills work. Then, they’ll look at your goals and why you’re trying to start a birth control regimen, and they’ll prescribe an appropriate solution.
Your prescription gets filled, you take your birth control pills as directed, and you check in with your care provider remotely for refills and evaluations.
HealSend is the evolution of healthcare. For immediate support or more information, contact us by phone or send us an email anytime.
