Birth Control
In August 2021, Emilie Skoog lay on the couch in her parents’ living room, thinking that not a single thing in the world sparked joy. For weeks, the 25-year-old MIT graduate student had been unable to muster enough appetite to eat properly. Instead, she’d spend full days lying in bed,…
Jillian Amodio got her period at 14. When she told her pediatrician that she was experiencing pain so severe she could hardly walk and was frequently vomiting during menstruation, the doctor told her that it might take a few years for her body to “adjust” to having a period. Two…
Alice Queen used oral contraceptives for years, but they caused her “intense pain and swollen breasts all the time,” she says. Eventually, she switched to non-hormonal birth control options. Hormonal birth control like oral contraceptives, the NuvaRing (a vaginal ring) and hormonal intrauterine devices (IUD) work to avert pregnancy by…
Earlier this week, the United States paused the use of Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine to investigate six cases of blood clots, one fatal, that occurred in women within two weeks of receiving the shot. MedShadow reported this in our vaccine side effect tracker article. In a rush to…
Shortly after she was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, Sarah Lawrence was prescribed Otezla (apremilast). In less than two months after beginning the drug treatment, she says, she started experiencing suicidal ideation. “The thoughts were so intense and so different from my normal thought process, I knew something was horribly wrong.” …
Learn about the side effects of “The Pill”, and other hormonal birth control methods.
Bayer will stop selling Essure, a permanent birth control device, by the end of the year. Why? Because of patients reporting dangerous adverse events. At MedShadow, we not only encourage researching the side effects of medicines, but also reporting them, whether to your doctor, pharmacist and/or the FDA. Only when…
The FDA will restrict sales of Bayer’s Essure birth control device. This new safety measure is being enforced because the agency discovered that some women were getting the birth control device implanted, but weren’t adequately informed about the risks. “We’ve been closely evaluating new information on the use of Essure,…
Women using hormonal contraceptives –- such as the birth control pill, vaginal rings and hormonal IUDs –- have double the risk of attempting suicide compared to those who never took any type of hormonal birth control, according to a new study. But the risk is both small and short-term. Researchers…
Though birth control pills, also known as oral contraceptives or “the pill,” are commonly prescribed, understanding all the facts about this medication can help you make informed decisions about the type of birth control you use. Common Names of Birth Control Pills Ortho-Cept (desogestrel/ethinyl estradiol), Natazia (estradiol/dienogest), Yasmin (drospirenone/ethinyl estradiol),…
The new health care bill going through Congress will likely cut birth control from health plan coverage. What are the economic consequences for women? The House passed the American Health Care Act, the “replacement” of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), in May. At any moment and with little notice,…
While it is common knowledge that tracking one’s body temperature daily can help a woman predict when she is ovulating new research has found that inputting that information into an app is as effective for preventing pregnancy as the birth control pill. A recent study carried out by researchers at Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska…
The The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has mandated Bayer add a black box warning to Essure, a permanent form of birth control that involves the insertion of flexible coils into the fallopian tubes. The new black box warning must warn about the adverse events associated with Essure, including the heightened…
According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, women implanted with Bayer AG’s Essure permanent contraception device were more than 10 times more likely to require post-procedure surgery than those who underwent laparoscopic sterilization. Via Reuters. Posted October 14, 2015. –Alanna McCatty
By Naomi Mannino When the birth-control method NuvaRing hit the market in 2001, it offered an alternative to women who didn’t want to take a pill every day while still offering the same level of effectiveness — 99%. Almost 5 million NuvaRing prescriptions were written from April 2014 through March…
I had only vaguely known of Essure as a permanent birth control device. It’s essentially 2 tiny copper wires that are screwed into the entry way of the fallopian tubes causing inflammation that blocks sperm from entering the uterus. The first 90 seconds of this video from Bayer, the manufacturer,…
