PCOS and birth control often come hand-in-hand. Maybe you’ve had this experience: First, your doctor diagnoses you with PCOS, and then you’re immediately recommended birth control pills as your first or even only line of treatment.
Or maybe you’ve had the reverse experience: You’ve been on birth control since your teen years. When you come off of it later in life, you suddenly notice strange and unpleasant changes in your body, like irregular periods, weight gain, acne, or unwanted hair growth in strange new places.
In today’s post, I’ll explain why birth control is so frequently recommended for PCOS, what naturopaths think about it, and give you my recommendations.
How Birth Control Can Help PCOS
Does birth control help PCOS? In mainstream medicine, birth control is the most frequently-recommended treatment for PCOS. PCOS stands for Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, a condition that is often diagnosed based on increased male sex hormones and irregular menstruation (although there’s more to diagnosing PCOS).
Most birth control pills on the market today utilize a combination of estrogen and progestin. Estrogen artificially reduces the level of androgens in the body, while progestin helps regulate the menstrual cycle. The combination also prevents pregnancy, which can be a bonus for those who don’t want to get pregnant.
Birth control is considered a “first-line treatment.” This means that once you’re diagnosed, your doctor will immediately prescribe birth control, often in lieu of additional investigation of your overall hormonal and metabolic health. The idea behind this is that the simple solution is best. It doesn’t require spending resources on additional PCOS tests or investigations into the patient’s lifestyle.
This is quite emblematic of the mainstream approach to medicine, which diagnoses based on limited criteria and then prescribes the same go-to treatments. If those treatments don’t work, the doctor will just move on to the next medication on the list. This approach can be very demoralizing, and patients don’t realize that there’s a more holistic alternative out there.
Naturopathic View on PCOS and Birth Control
The naturopathic approach to treating PCOS starts in a very different place than the mainstream approach. Instead of treating conditions and symptoms, we treat the patient as a whole person.
This starts with thorough and meticulous PCOS tests. Yes, PCOS can be characterized by increased androgens, but sometimes it’s more closely related to adrenal fatigue, hypothyroidism, or lack of balance between progesterone and estrogen. Birth control isn’t always the right solution in these instances, and risking its side effects often isn’t worth it.
That’s why we don’t just look at your sex hormones, but also at your thyroid and adrenal hormones. We also analyze your overall health and look for nutritional deficiencies, not to mention that we seek to understand exactly what’s going on in your life, from your diet to your stressors to your exposure to environmental toxins.
It’s only once we have that complete understanding that we start formulating a treatment plan. Just like the testing, a functional approach to treating your PCOS is holistic and comprehensive as well. Herbs and supplements can be useful for naturally addressing your precise hormonal imbalance, but tailored lifestyle changes will often have the most dramatic and beneficial outcomes.
Additionally, many PCOS patients come in because they struggle with fertility, often after having been on birth control for many years. That’s why we also take your personal health family goals into account, in a treatment approach that gives a lot of control.
What’s the Best Birth Control for PCOS?
If you do have PCOS and you’re interested in birth control for its primary purpose – to prevent unwanted pregnancy, I always recommend taking the least hormone-disrupting approach.
The best birth control for PCOS, from a naturopathic perspective, is choosing a barrier method like condoms. If you’ve managed to regulate your menstrual cycle through holistic means, then it’s also possible to rely on fertility tracking methods, although you should be well aware of their potentially high failure rates.
Finally, the copper IUD can be a great, non-hormonal contraceptive. It’s very reliable, and doesn’t require the same level of diligence as barrier methods or fertility tracking. However, it can have its own complications and unpleasant side effects, like heavier periods and cramping.
Can Birth Control Cause PCOS?
There is something we often refer to as “post-pill PCOS.” Many consider it a type of PCOS. As we touched on already, birth control pills are recommended for PCOS because of how they impact androgens and the menstrual cycle.
Often, I see patients who develop PCOS symptoms after having been on birth control for years. It can be a temporary reaction to suddenly experiencing a major hormonal shift. In other cases, it might be that your birth control has been concealing the PCOS. However, I do believe that artificially altering the body’s hormonal balance could in itself be a PCOS trigger that may require comprehensive treatment.
Treat Your PCOS Holistically
Your PCOS doesn’t define you – you’re a whole and unique individual. Your body, and especially your endocrine system, are complex. Your lifestyle and mental health impact those systems significantly. You deserve more than a “one-size-fits-all” treatment that comes with its own range of side effects.
If you would like to understand what’s behind your PCOS and how to treat it holistically, give the naturopathic approach a try by booking your first consultation.