Do birth control pills kill your libido?

Birth control is an effective contraceptive, but it may also dampen a woman's sex drive. Tune in to find out what studies and anecdotal evidence have to say about birth control and side effects in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House Towards dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
This is Fallin and I'm Kristen and Kristin Night. Today

(00:20):
I thought we'd start with Lester her email we got
back in March after our podcast on whether you need
a period every month, we got an email from Ginger
who said that she was surprised that we didn't mention
more of the negative side effects that someone experienced on
birth control. Um, you know when Ginger was on birth control.
I hope she doesn't. Iight me mentioning this, but we're
not saying her last name. She suffered from horrible migraine headaches.

(00:42):
She knows other women who experienced the same thing. Uh,
she's you know, there are a lot of emotional side effects.
She described it as an emotional roller coaster. She had
a friend who had to go off the pill because
she was having panic attacks, and another friend whose husband
almost loved her because her mood was so affected by
birth control that she was a different person. Oh my goodness,
it sounds terrible. Yeah, but you know the one thing

(01:04):
she didn't mention is a very common side effect of
the birth control pill. You often hear about lowered libido. Yeah,
especially with the birth control pill, as you mentioned, as
opposed to other types of female birth control methods, A
lot more women seem to be voicing concerns over yeah,

(01:24):
a diminished sex drive after after being on the pill
for a while. But if you if you look at
um the common commonly listened side effects on birth control packaging,
the most common side effect you'll probably see it's breakthrough
bleeding or spotting UM. And then other side effects include nausea, headaches,
breast soreness, acne, depression, moodiness, weight gain. And some doctors

(01:48):
are concerned that women are not being informed before they
get on the pill about the possibility of the lowered libido. Right,
And then other doctors will say, we probably shouldn't tell
women because then I'll spect is it a mind of
a matter thing? I mean, basically, when you take a
birth control pill and if you have, you know, an
off week, immediately blame the pill for a lower sex drive.

(02:09):
And it's not the best marketing tagline either, Hey, take
this pill related to sex. You won't want to have
sex anymore, but at least you won't get pregnant. That's
how birth control. So let's talk a little bit about
this murky territory of oral contraceptives and sex drive, because,
as you and I have found out through our research,

(02:29):
there's not a lot of conclusive evidence one way or
the other. So let's talk about why that's true. Murky
is the key word, because they weren't even studying sexual
dysfunction in womenal very recently, I think as early as
like n I mean it was the first huge, like
nationwide study on female sexual dysfunction in the United States,

(02:50):
which I found to be pretty astounding. But there's my
anecdotal evidence for you know, many decades, as the New
York Times points out, and an article by Mary doing
Wall that you know, women know might whisper to each other, Hey,
if you're not in the mood, it might be a
birth control pillm um. And there was a study that
came out in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that this
article in the New York Times talks about, uh that

(03:12):
relates this potential diminished sex drive to the level of
a certain protein in a woman's body that is caused
by oral birth control. Right, Basically it all goes back
to good old testosterone, the sex hormone. But here's how
your pill might affect it. An oral contraceptive blocks testosterone
production the ovaries, but at the same time, it's increasing

(03:34):
the production in the liver of a sex hormone binding
mechanism called globulin. And basically what the globulin does is
it attaches to all the free testosterone in your blood,
which makes it inactive. Basically, without any active testosterone, you
can't get in the mood. Yeah, and um, what what
scientists also found when they were looking at the levels

(03:55):
of globulin in a woman's body who had been taking
oral contracept is, even after some women stopped taking birth
control pills, the levels of globulin and their body were
still much higher than It took a long time to
for it to even work its way kind of out
of the body and for those levels to to at

(04:16):
least return back to slightly normal levels. Right, So it
was sort of a disappointing conclusion that even if you're
getting off the pill because you have this lord libido,
you may not see effects for several months. We should
probably know that this study came out and not everyone
bought into it. No, this has been a pretty contentious
study because a lot of scientists are still kind of
hesitant to say that this single sexual side effect is

(04:40):
really no caused by oral birth control pills. Right. They
don't want to say just a single protein like globulin
is responsible for all of this. But then when they
try and pin the blame on something, it kind of
this is again where it gets murky. They're willing to
blame everything. Yeah, if you look at just general information
about female sexual dysfunction, it just it runs the gamut.

(05:04):
They basically say, well, you know, it could be anything.
Could just be stressed out, you could have bad hormone levels,
you could be in a stressful relationship, etcetera, etcetera. It's
just kind of like, well, if you have a problem,
go see your doctor, because we can't really tell you
what the problem is. Yeah, and if you go see
your doctor, basically what you would really need, uh is
an hour to tell him everything that's going on with

(05:25):
your life. But I don't think any doctor has an
hour besides a psychologist, and that's just you know, a
fifteen minute hour. But even though there have been some
divisions among among experts about whether or not oral birth
control really does finish sex drive. There has been a
few studies that do say yes, this is a problem

(05:46):
for women, and research conducted by the Kinsey Institute, it
found that at least one in four users of oral
contraceptives suffered from diminished sex drive. And there was one
specific study that I found that looked at women who
were on birth control for three, six and twelve months
and looked at the reasons why some of the women

(06:07):
stopped taking oral contraceptive and it found that of the
forty seven percent of women who discontinued oral birth control pills,
the emotional side effects and decreased frequency of sexual thoughts
and psychosocial arousability categorized eight of the cases like of
the reasons why they stopped taking oral birth control. So

(06:30):
it seems like from the Skins Institute study, this is
having a pretty big effect on women ditching the pill. Yeah,
an anecdote evidence that you know, every single article on
this will pick up the fact that you know, the
woman quit taking the birth control pill, life became better,
the love life picked up, but then all of a sudden,
you know, when your love life picks up, you need
the pill. It's sort of a vicious cycle. Um. But

(06:52):
then on top of this Kins Institute study, we have
another study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and
Gynecology that says, well, all, you know what, side effects
aren't really a big factor for women quitting oral contraceptives.
This was a similar type of study of women looking
at three, six, twelve months of taking the birth control pill.

(07:12):
And this study found that most subjects reported no changes
in headaches, wait, moodiness, or sexual satisfaction during the first
three months and concluded that side effects are a less
important reason for discontinuation than widely believed, right and anecdotal evidence.
And all these articles will pick up on that too.
You'll have doctors in these articles saying things like, well,

(07:33):
you're gonna start taking a birth control pill, and three
things are gonna happen. Your libbia is gonna go up,
or your libertia is gonna go down, or it's gonna
stay the same. And you know what, Molly, I think, Uh,
that's the same effect of oh, I don't know, eating
eating a sermon and mashed potatoes one night. Yeah, be
it'll put you in the mood. Maybe it won't and
go to Yeah, we could go to a play, the

(07:55):
same thing could happen. To go outside, the same thing
will happen. There's just no telling. It's kind of frustrating
to see how, you know, little people know about this.
And this was one of the biggest complaints from the
Kinsey Institute was that they were hearing all these anecdotes
of women who were on oral birth control and having
the diminished sexual side effects, but doctors, like you mentioned earlier,

(08:17):
doctors weren't talking about it to their patients. It wasn't
being mentioned very much in the literature surrounding oral birth control,
and they thought it was a pretty big problem. So
only this made me wonder a little bit about female
sexual dysfunction in general. Maybe this is just the symptom
of a wider problem, right, And it's very hard to

(08:40):
study sexual dysfunction. First of all, we should not know
because what is normal. You know, there is no normal,
like number of times you should have sex a week,
normal way to feel about sex. So it's very hard
to study this. For one thing, Well, Mollly, I was
so surprised to stumble on a University of Chicago study
on sexual dysfunction in Women that came out in nine

(09:00):
and it concluded that about forty of women and thirty
percent of men in the United States suffer from sexual dysfunction.
And I had no idea that the percentage would be
that high. But even more fascinating to me was the
finding that sexual dysfunction is the highest among younger women.

(09:21):
It was of the women in the study aged eighteen
to twenty nine reported physical pain with intercourse, reported experiencing
non pleasurable sex, and six reported sexual anxiety. Jeeves. Yeah,
and if you look at think about that age group
eighteen to twenty nine, culturally, that is the time when

(09:43):
you know, women are probably expected to have the most
sex during their life, right, But who's telling us that
popular culture? Popular culture? Yeah, I mean, I hate to
hate to go back to the age old reference, but
case in point, Sex in the City. Yeah, it's a
very popular show. These women are having sex all time, um,
you know, And so maybe things like that influence women

(10:05):
to think, well, if they're not having sex like five
times a week, then something's got to be wrong. But Molly,
as we found out from the Mayo Clinic, it might
not It might not be that, it might not be
that you know, besides those numbers you just threw out there, Kristen.
Some of the other things I found interesting were the
number of doctors who say that you shouldn't just immediately
change your your type of pill, because that's what I'd

(10:27):
always heard, that if you are having to with one
type of birth control pill, try another one so you
find one that works. But really they're saying what you
should look at is other things that might be going
into your system, like antidepressants. They can lower libido. Alcohol,
even though you might think that it gets you in
the mood, it ultimately dampens your sex drive. What else
is going on in your life, fatigue, stress, low self esteem,

(10:47):
relationship issues. Uh so it might just not be the
birth control pill. But they are saying that instead of
pill hopping, you might want to choose another method of
administering those hormones to your body. They're showing that um
method of the way the hormone is delivered makes a difference.
So if you're on something that's like the birth control
shot or the newb ring ways that which the hormones

(11:10):
are just going into your body differently than by mouth,
it might make a difference. Yeah, and UM kind of
going back to all of those reasons you were talking
about that that could be contributing to a diminished sex strap. Um.
One thing that I read from the Mayo Clinic that
a woman's desire for sex is based on complex interaction
of physical well being, emotional well being, experiences, beliefs, lifestyle,

(11:32):
and current relationships. So basically every major factor of your
life is contributing to your activity or lack of activity
in the bedroom. Yeah, it was sort of. It's a
little bit overwhelming to basically be told examine your entire life,
including all your beliefs, thoughts, ideas, relationships. But like you
said that that doesn't mean that you just have to
kick birth control. Um, since there's so many other other

(11:55):
methods out there right now. It might just be a
matter of talking to your doctor about what's going on
and seeing if if you might be able to changeing
stuff a little bit. Um. And the Mayo Clinic did
recommend some lifestyle changes that it says can make a
big difference in your desire for sex, and I think
these can go for making a big difference in your
quality of life in general, UM, such as regular exercise, UH,

(12:19):
coping better with stress, being happier because that's so simple
to do. And um, this one strengthening your pelvic muscles Eagles, Eagles,
that's always a good piece of advice. And the Mayo
Clinic also gives us such relationship tips as make time
for intimacy. Perhaps you're just not making enough time to
experience the rubbing up of your sex drive. Yeah. So

(12:41):
so thanks for that Mayo Clinic. And if you know what, Molly,
I think, beyond this, I don't think the way you
need to deliver much more sex advice for our listeners.
I don't think that that's really our realm of expertise.
So I would advise maybe, you know, going talking to
an expert if you have a problem, right, talk to
a doctor. Yeah, but just remember the thing I think, Molly,

(13:03):
from all of this, that I think you can take
the most comfort from is what you said about there's
no such thing as a normal amount of sex. True.
Not everyone is Carrie Bradshaw. True, and thank God for that.
I don't know i'd like her shoes. True. Well, we
want to hear from you, guys, So if you have
any questions or comments for mer Molley, or any suggestions

(13:26):
about things that you would like to hear us talk
about on stuff mom Never told You, feel free to
send us an email at mom stuff at how stuff
works dot com. And if you would like to learn
more about the birth control pill, contraceptives, and sexual health
in general, head on over to how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

(13:51):
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