Questions & Answers

Should You Take Birth Control Pills While Recovering From Leaky Gut

We’re going to talk about, well lots of different stuff today. I’ve got all sorts of different questions from people as per usual. So let’s just start off with, should I stop taking birth control pills while recovering from leaky gut? So let’s talk about that.

I’ve never been a big fan of birth control pills to be honest. In my opinion, it causes more problem than it solves. So you may be sitting there thinking, this guy’s crazy, but we need birth control or we’re going to have all these unplanned pregnancies but, it takes two to tango. If you’ve got a gut problem or any kind of health problem and you’re on birth control and you want to recover from the problem, you need to get off the birth control. Now it’s easy me saying that being a guy, but there are many, many reasons why these kind of medications, because they’re basically just drugs.

They’re kinds of drugs, no different from headache pills or pain pills, they’re just pills. They mess you up in many different ways, but birth control pills have been linked, in many instances for example, with dysbiosis, with stimulating or creating an inflammatory condition in the gut, they alter the estrogen metabolism and that can have massive effects on the gut itself, even can affect serotonin production and regulation. So serotonin is a hormone you probably may have heard of, the feel good hormone, which we thought was mainly produced in the brain. But now we know that the bulk of this hormone is produced, in fact, that’s right, in the small bowel.

So when you start taking birth control pills, you’re going to alter the ability for the body to make and regulate and use serotonin as well. So birth control pills link with anxiety and depression, is it any wonder? It’s also linked with chronic low level inflammation in the gut. And once we start getting that, we start developing a whole cascade of problems. But the big thing I’ve discovered through a research and through looking at various studies, is how the birth control pill alters the human microbiome. So it changes the nature of the relationship of the bacteria in the gut. And that’s going to push you into all kinds of gut problems.

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I can’t tell you how many women I’ve seen over the years with complications due to birth control pills, including some very rare and unusual cases I saw several years ago. One in particular that always blew my mind, was a lady who was taking a combined birth control pill and there was another drug put in there as well, an androgen blocking drug, so a male hormone producing drug. They lay that on top of this birth control pill because you can get very powerful birth control pills.

Now this woman developed a very rare type of a tumor and I think the tumor, from memory, was on her adrenal gland. Could have been on the adrenal gland, one of the glands developed a tumor, and it was a rare tumor. Now the interesting thing with research, when I spent a few hours really looking at this online, I found two cases similar in United States and guess what? Both these ladies were on the same medication that the patient here in New Zealand was who developed a tumor. So this tumor was linked to that particular birth control pill. Now, of course her doctor laughed it off, but the doctor basically didn’t want to contact me, you have no contact with me or the patient after I gave the patient a printout of the study showing how the drug was linked with the rare tumor. The doctor laughed it off. Yeah, right.

Well, it’s your call, but if I was sitting in your chair and even if I were female, male or whatever, I just don’t think birth control is the right kind of thing to keep on taking if you’re trying to recover from a gut condition. You’ll be surprised how quickly the gut responds when you stop these kind of drugs. And then you’re going to say, but hang on, Mr. Beck, you’re an idiot. I mean, if I get off birth control pill, I’m going to have an unwanted pregnancy. You’re not, because you’re in control. You talk to the person, your partner and say, this ain’t gonna happen, unless we’re going to look at alternative means of protection. And you’ll be surprised how quickly the condoms get whipped out on the table when you talk like that. So recovery from a gut problem is not that hard if you’re not taking medication, but when you take drugs, any kind of drugs, particularly drugs like this on a daily basis, you’re going to really be behind, and behind the ball park. Okay?

It’s going to really take you a long time to try and get that gut in top shape. So that’s my 20 cents worth. I just don’t think it’s the right approach. In my opinion, you’re best off really just to pack the birth control pills for a few months, look at alternative means of contraception, and there’s various other means, and then maybe eventually if you want to, you can go back in. But I can tell you now, if you go off the birth control pill for three to six months and you’ve been on it for several years, you’ll likely not want to go back on it again because you’ll start noticing how much better you feel. And I’ve heard that from hundreds of women.