Progestin IUD Effects
Are IUDs okay for the young female body, or not?
What are their side effects?
What does it say in “peer review” literature?
Here is one study looking at social media comments on IUD users.
It’s called: TikTok, #IUD, and User Experience With Intrauterine Devices Reported on Social Media
Abstract
TikTok, a video-sharing application, offers a growing platform for contraception-related content. The top 100 videos tagged "#IUD" were compiled using a web-scraping application.
User demographics and video content were analyzed by two independent reviewers, with a third to arbitrate differences.
More videos had a negative tone (37.8%) about intrauterine devices (IUDs) than positive (19.4%),
A0nd 27.6% mentioned distrust of health care professionals.
Of videos conveying patient experiences, all had a negative or ambiguous tone and 96.8% highlighted pain and other side effects related to IUDs.
IUD videos on TikTok often portray negative experiences related to pain and informed consent.
Another team did a deep dive into progestin IUDs effect on behavior, and brain.
Who ran this study?
1 Department of Psychology & Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Paris-Lodron-University Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
2 Department of Women´s and Children´s Health, Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
3 Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, United States
4 Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Tübingen Center for Mental Health (TüCMH), University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
The authors concluded that progestin containing IUDs lower testosterone.
Lower levels of testosterone… takes the control “out” of emotions, and makes women more prone to:
Depression (known for years since contraception 1st used 60 years ago)
Anxiety
Trouble with emotional processing
Increased “reactive” emotionality
We also now know that the “lower” the testosterone level (especially in ratio to estrone level) women become more vulnerable to breast cancer.
Why? Because testosterone’s final metabolite protects breast tissue.
A group of German researchers echo these sentiments.
The title of this article says it all: The levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine device is related to “early emotional reactivity”: An ERP study (Berkson put in “s)
The authors say:
Women on birth control had harder time controlling their emotionality.
Especially with IUDs.
Moreover, IUD-users showed a higher negative amplitude of the frontal N2 in comparison to all three other groups, with the most consistent differences during up-regulation.
The lower the testosterone, the more the emotional dysruption.
This comes from:
1Department of Neurobiology and Biophysics, Vilnius University, Saulėtekio ave. 7, 10257, Vilnius, Lithuania. Electronic address: ingrida.zelionkaite@gmc.vu.lt.
2Department of Neurobiology and Biophysics, Vilnius University, Saulėtekio ave. 7, 10257, Vilnius, Lithuania.
3Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Ülikooli 18, 50090, Tartu, Estonia.
4Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Women's Mental Health & Brain Function, Tübingen Center for Mental Health, University of Tübingen, Calwerstraße 14, 72016, Tübingen, Germany.
5Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Women's Mental Health & Brain Function, Tübingen Center for Mental Health, University of Tübingen, Calwerstraße 14, 72016, Tübingen, Germany; DZPG (German Center for Mental Health), Partner site Tübingen, Germany.
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Providers that work with hormones begin to appreciate that each hormone has a “personality”. Both physiologically (actions on the body) and psychologically (actions on the brain).
*** Testosterone, in Goldilocks levels, not too much, not too little, helps emotions be more grounded.
From an emotional point of view:
Less T = more emotionality.
Less T = more reactivity.
From a breast point of view:
Less T = more vulnerability to breast cancer.
Less T = more lumpy, bumpy breasts, cysts, DCIS and more.
There is a highly popular hormone book out on the market, presently.
All the gals in the gym are singing it’s praises.
All the patients are bringing it in.
The author says birth control hormones are the same as our own nature made hormones.
How can we listen to much else of what this “expert” says?
Because nothing can be further from the truth.
This doctor is backed by the North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Big time.
Wow. No wonder folks are confused.
Look where your info is coming from.
Who they are aligned with.
What exactly they are saying.
Realize that “naturally made” hormones are totally different from “pharmaceutically” “made.
Big Pharma hormones are made to be “altered”. So they can be “patented”. For profits.
That’s why we need large studies to see how these “foreign” molecules are handled by most of humanity.
When, in practice, we have access to bioidentical hormones. Just exactly like Nature made.
Available by compounding pharmacists. Great smart amazing healers.
Who the “system” and NAMS (in partnership with Big Pharma) dismiss and make sound dangerous. Because they compete for dollars.
I don’t mean to sound shrill.
I hate folks that sound such.
But gotta call a hormonal spade a hormonal spade.
The public is constantly getting the “hormonal wool” pulled over their eyes because these “others” wants money, profits and they subsidize the associations docs are trained by.
It’s an entire system.
The docs “parrot” what the associations like NAMS teach and do not realize the wrongs they are committing.
They are trying to do good. But it turns out otherwise.
As they do not do the deep dives either.
I ask you: how can a provider you go to, that specializes in all this, not do deep dives into all this?
But it seems that “fear” rules the docs more than the detailed science.
I get fear.
It’s scary.
It’s real.
No one wants to lose their licenses. Which are threatened if you do not do “standard of care”.
But standard-of-care lost its way after the first WRONG Women’s Health Initiative that got totally reversed by the original authors. Yet it’s still debated. YEECH.
In reality, as we move forward, the hormonal buck stops with one person, one patient, at a time.
Waking up.
And slowly, docs waking up.
Yesterday, Dr. Jen Simmons reached out to me to create another teaching course for professionals. On hormone protocols.
What good is it to become aware of hormonal health benefits if you can’t find providers to provide them?
Dr. Simmons and myself, “if” we do move ahead, will focus on hormones for providers. Then we’ll especially dive into hormonal therapies for high-risk women, like breast cancer patients.
She and I both are ex-breast cancer patients. We both are on hormonal therapies.
Knowledge is power.
Dr. B.
References:
TikTok, #IUD, and User Experience With Intrauterine Devices Reported on Social Media. Obstet Gynecol. 2023 Jan 1;141(1):215-217
Editorial: Effects of hormonal contraceptives on the brain. Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). 2023 Jan 31;14:1129203
The levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine device is related to early emotional reactivity: An ERP study. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2024 Apr;162:106954
yes! Ditch the IUDs
Can you give the name of the book that patients have been talking about?