Wellness

Choosing a birth control pill

posted by Chris Valentine

It has never been an easy task to decide on which birth control pill to use. Birth control pill is an effective form of contraception with numerous benefits as well as side effects. These pills come in different categories for you to use the one that suits your body. The most commonly used birth control pills involve the combination of estrogen and progestin.

Here are the different kinds of birth control pills.

Estrogen and progestin are a mixture of birth control pills apart from the minipill, which has progestin. The number of times you want to receive periods will depend on whether the medicine is active or inactive.

  • Conventional – This form of birth control drug involve 21 packets of active pills. Traditional birth control has seven inactive tablets, 24 active capsules and lastly four inactive tablets. The difference is that when you take inactive drugs, you will bleed each month.

  • Constant dosing or lengthy cycle- These packages have 84 active pills as well as seven inactive ones. When you take the inactive medicine, you will bleed four times in a year. The category of mixed tablets is determined by the level of hormones that remain the same or changes.

  • Monophasic – Here, every active pill has equal progestin and estrogen quantity.

  • Multiphasic – In multiphasic, the number of hormones that are in the active pills vary. A mixture of birth control tablets which do not exceed 50 micrograms can be termed as low-dose birth control pills. Go for lower dose pills if you are sensitive to hormones, but the upside of it is that you may end up spotting or experiencing frequent breakthrough bleeding.

How birth control pills work

If you want to suppress ovulation, then go for the mixed pills to stop the release of eggs from your ovaries. Combination pills work by thickening your cervical mucus. It also thins your uterine lining thus preventing the sperm from joining the egg. So the work of the minipill is to make the cervical mucus thick and the uterus lining thin so that the sperm won’t make it to the egg. Likewise, you can use the minipill if you want to suppress ovulation. Minipill lacks estrogen, and the progestin dose is lower.

Are birth control pills ideal anyone?

There are many reasons as to why not everybody is fit to use birth control pills. Ensure you discuss with your doctor about the pills, their side effects, and benefits. After your doctor ascertains your health condition, he or she will know the right medicine to give you. Conditions like cancer, heart disease, or stroke, among others, are some of the reasons your healthcare provider might discourage you from taking mixed birth control pills. Breastfeeding mothers too shouldn’t take the combination pills.

The bottom line

Before using a birth control pill, you should visit your doctor to get proper guidance on whether the medicine is right for you. For instance, if you are suffering from hormonal sensitivity, your healthcare provider might advise you to use low-dose birth control pills.

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