Antidepressant Medication For Pms

Do birth control pills make women gain weight?

The notion that birth control pills make you fat is just part of what the paper's lead author, physician David Grimes of the University of North Carolina, calls an elaborate mythology, one "fueled by rumor, gossip and poor-quality research." As it turns out, there's never been convincing evidence that the pill in any of its forms provokes weight gain. Another recent review paper found little evidence of weight gain among users of progestin-only pills, and a similar study from 2008 likewise failed to find any connection between weight gain and pills that contain progestin and estrogen.

Some studies hint that the pill might even have the opposite effect. According to a 1997 study, users of birth control pills have a basal metabolic rate almost 5 percent higher than people who have never used the pill, and a small 2009 trial concluded that the pill reduced body fat in women who took it. A study published last year tracked nearly 500 women aged 15 to 19 over several years and found that while all the teens gained some weight, those who used birth control pills gained about a pound less than those who didn't. (Young women who used injectable hormonal contraceptives like Depo-Provera did pack on extra weight—they gained twice as much, on average, as everyone else.)

If the pill doesn't cause weight gain, how did it get its reputation? Chalk up some of it to folklore about hormones, which are regularly blamed—sometimes with just cause—for everything from moodiness to bloating and breast tenderness. It's not just sexist thugs who joke that female hormones make women bitchy and unappealing around their cycles; plenty of women make PMS jokes, too. The pill is often said to mimic pregnancy, and everyone knows that pregnant women experience huge changes to their bodies, including additional pounds.

Perhaps the most powerful factor in the spread of misinformation is the pill packets themselves. The labels of most oral contraceptives list "weight gain" among their common side effects. If the drug companies themselves are telling us that the pill makes us fat, why shouldn't we believe them? The warnings on the label are not always so trustworthy; in many cases, they're simply a function of the quirky way in which side effects are reported in clinical trials. Participants are asked to report any symptoms they notice during the study, and those that turn up most often may end up being listed even if there's no proof they were caused by the medication.

The PMS Comfort Blog | Antidepressants, Birth Control, PMS & PMDD

However, drugs come with a big potential problem: side effects. Side effects of medication is one of the main reasons people seek out alternatives to drug treatment of all diseases, including PMS and PMDD. But sometimes those side effects are a lot more than just an annoyance, which is why two stories you may not have seen should concern you. “There are now more than 7,500 individual lawsuits pending in state and federal courts involving girls and young women who suffered blood clots (leading to deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, heart attack, stroke, or sudden cardiac death) or gallbladder injuries as a result of ingestion of the popular birth control medications Yaz, Yasmin, and Ocella.”

Hormonal birth control has a very long history of causing blood clots, and while the current forms are safer than the birth control that was used decades ago, it obviously is still a big problem. And these drugs are some of the most commonly prescribed for PMS and PMDD!If there are 7,500 lawsuits, you just know that there are more girls and women injured by these medications who never made it to a lawyer’s office. Let’s call this Exhibit A in why we think natural relief of premenstrual issues is superior to a potentially dangerous drug approach.

On to exhibit B: The Food and Drug Administration last week put out a safety advisory for Celexa, one of the commonly used antidepressants for PMS and PMDD, letting cardiologists and psychiatrists know that doses greater than 40 milligrams could lead to potentially fatal abnormal heart rhythms. Although there appears to be no additional benefit to higher doses of the drug, the drug labeling information had claimed that some people required a 60 milligram dosage!

This is all very concerning in its own right, but if you read my last blog post , millions of antidepressant drug prescriptions are being written by non-psychiatric health care practitioners, who aren’t as adept at managing complications from psychopharmacological compounds—and who weren’t even targeted by the FDA advisory.

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