Episode 245: Post Birth Control Syndrome
with Dr. Jolene Brighten
Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. Today we’ll be talking all about hormonal birth control and how to begin to repair the toll it takes on your hormones after years of use. Our guest today, Dr. Jolene Brighten is hosting an amazing and free online summit called Post Birth Control Syndrome Awareness Week. She is here to discuss it with us today.
You’ll hear about some of the issues the pill can cause that women often aren’t told about and if these issues can go away once a woman stops taking it. You’ll also hear what you can do right now if you’re on birth control currently or ever have been in the past. Before we get started, let me introduce our guest, Dr. Jolene.
Dr. Jolene Brighten is a functional medicine naturopathic medical doctor and the founder of Rubus Health, a women’s medical clinic that specializes in women’s hormones. She is recognized as a leading expert in post birth control syndrome and the long-term side effects associated with hormonal contraceptives. Dr. Brighten is the author of Ditch the Pill: A 30-Day Plan to Support Women on Birth Control, Help Them Transition Off, and Eliminate Symptoms of Post Birth Control Syndrome. Most of all, she is a mom, a speaker, and a women’s health advocate.
Dr. Pompa will be a guest during Dr. Brighten’s online summit. If you want to hear more about his theories on how diet, fasting, and lifestyle can be the keys to hormone repair, you’re invited to join him in a panel of amazing experts in the field of women’s health. This free event goes live this coming Monday, November 5th. Sign up now so you don’t miss a moment. If you or anyone you know has ever been or is currently on hormonal birth control, not only is this an episode you won’t want to miss, you also want to be sure to catch Dr. Jolene’s event next week. You’ll hear more details in this episode. You can also go to repairyourhormones.com for more information about this important event and to sign up.
Also, to the practitioners out there who cannot make it to our sold out Live It to Lead It event that starts today and goes through Sunday in Las Vegas, you can still join us by subscribing to our live stream and virtually attend our three-day workshop that will give you the latest in cutting edge treatments and strategies to build your practice. Please go to HCFEvents.com for live stream access, and you can use the code CHTV to take 10% off the price. That’s HCFEvents.com with the code CHTV. Hope you can join us. It’s not too late.
Let’s get started. Welcome, Dr. Pompa and Dr. Brighten to this show, dedicated to women’s health and post birth control syndrome. This is Cellular Healing TV.
Dr. Pompa:
Jolene, welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m so excited for our viewers and listeners to hear this because as I said at the top of the show when we spoke, I teach a lot of seminars, but I still have a lot of clients from all over the world that I coach. I can’t tell you how many have severe hormone disregulation and/or health issues related to it because of the topic today. With that said, I’ll open the can of worms.
I wonder how many women are taking birth control, have taken birth control. Let me just start with that. Answer that question because that’s how many should be tuning in. That’s how many should be listening. If your daughter’s family members, yourselves have ever encountered birth control, pay attention and listen to this show. What’s the number on that, Jolene?
Dr. Brighten:
It’s pretty shocking, about 100 million women worldwide are using hormonal contraceptives. Within the United States alone that number is about 11 million. The estimates today are expecting about 98% of women, so 98% of all women will at some point have used a hormonal contraceptive, which is pretty staggering when you hear what we’re about to talk about. You’re going to understand why that number is so staggering.
Dr. Pompa:
Let me start out like this; how did you get so into this? You wrote a book. You can give the name of your book and where to get it and all. This is something that you’re obviously really passionate about. You must have a story here. What is it?
Dr. Brighten:
What’s funny is that I didn’t realize until I went into clinical practice that I actually had developed post birth control syndrome myself. I had clockwork periods because I dreaded them like crazy, so I knew my period came about every 28 days. Once I started hormonal birth control, I thought it was my Savior. I will admit that. I spent ten years on the pill, and my heavy painful periods went away. No one asked me about the root cause, of course.
Once a ditched the pill, which is the name of my book, and I broke up with it for good, my face exploded with cystic acne. For the first time in my life I was struggling with acne. My period was completely gone, and I went to my gynecologist who told me you have PCOS. You’ve always had PCOS, and that’s the issue. I was in my second year of medical school and I’m like hold up. I just learned how to diagnose PCOS.
A woman who has regular cycles to begin with does not suddenly develop PCOS. That’s not the way it works. I leaned on my background in nutritional biochemistry and what I was learning in medical school. I got my period back. I cleared my skin, but I thought I was a freak.
My doctor was like you’re the only person this has ever happened to. Most of the time the conversation was what you’re experiencing isn’t really real, and you need to get back on hormonal birth control. Then fast forward to when I’m in clinical practice and I start to piece together that every single woman who comes off of hormonal birth control has some kind of symptom or side effect.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, let’s talk about that. What are some of the things that women aren’t being told? What are some of the health conditions that they may have that are linked in the science and the literature, yet they’re not being told because of what you just said. I’ve never had it one time where I said something, they go back to their doctor, and the doctor says that’s blah, blah, blah. Not one time has anybody come to me and said my doctor told me this is because of my birth control or contraceptive.
Dr. Brighten:
It’s almost taboo. It’s anti women’s movement to question hormonal birth control, which I really think is a huge disservice to society as a whole. It’s not just a women’s issue. These are our mothers. They bear the future generation of the human species.
With that, most women don’t even know how hormonal birth control works or that when you use hormonal birth control, your brain and your ovaries stop talking altogether. You basically induce menopause for as long as you’re on it. When we come off, there can be a hiccup there in reestablishing brain and ovarian connection. You’ve seen this clinically. I’ve seen this clinically.
Really any doctor who is paying attention has made this observation, but it goes so much deeper than that. We now understand with the explosion of microbiome research that gut flora is disrupted. Women are at higher risk of developing autoimmune disease. It induces leaky gut. It’s inflammatory.
Some of these contraceptives are even life threatening, so we’re talking breast cancer risk, stroke, heart attack. There isn’t a system that is not affected by hormonal birth control. How many clients or patients do you see that have thyroid disease and a history of hormonal birth control? The research is there showing there’s a correlation.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s the question; I have plenty of people who say I came off of that 20 years ago. Once they come off, do these symptoms go away? Does the brain reconnect with the ovaries, and do the problems go away?
Dr. Brighten:
In some cases, menstruation will be restored. It doesn’t always mean that you’ll be regularly ovulating again. What I’ve seen clinically is that if you haven’t undone the damage caused by hormonal birth control like replenishing all the nutrients it depletes like magnesium and B vitamins, if you don’t repair the gut, the gut is just not going to repair on its own. I wish it did, but unfortunately antibiotics, estrogens, and stress are kind of fighting against you. Then there’s the problem that hormonal birth control hits the liver big time.
What the research is showing is that it causes an elevation in sex hormone binding globulin that doesn’t just go away because you stop hormonal birth control, which is how women lose their libido for life and have a whole lot of other issues. If you’re binding testosterone, now we have bone loss. Now we have muscle atrophy. Now we’re gaining weight and we don’t know why. Our doctor is saying just eat right and exercise.
Dr. Pompa:
I was going to ask about the libido because I have found that. It’s in the history of women who end up even in their 40s let alone in their 50s without libido. There’s a history of birth control at some point, an obvious connection I found. I have to put out a warning too. Obviously, you said this affects multiple different systems indirectly and directly.
One of the things that women need to know is the birth control in the 70s, 80s, maybe before have mercury in it. It was another toxic form of mercury. There’s a lot here. We raised the concern. We raised the problem.
What’s the solution? Some women are taking it simply for birth control. Other women are taking it because it works in the beginning to balance their hormones. Start with birth control. What are some of your recommendations if you ditch the pill? That’s the name of the book.
Dr. Brighten:
It’s very important to me that women understand that I’m not anti birth control, but really that women deserve to have all the information they need to make the best decision for themselves. The consult should be individualized. All birth control should be individualized based on your family history, your genetics, and what your life currently looks like. For some women, they absolutely can’t be without hormonal birth control, and that’s what I’m so passionate about. If this is what you have to do, we need to safeguard that.
I think no matter where you’re at in that birth control conversation, investing in understanding your body through what’s called fertility awareness method, which is tracking temperature, tracking cervical positions, cervical mucus. You’re not going to see ovulation signs if your hormonal birth control is working. I don’t know how you were taught, but I was taught don’t teach women about the fertility awareness method. It’s not effective.
When you get into the research of typical use of the pill, it’s only about 91% effective whereas fertility awareness method done correctly, which most women don’t take a backseat to fertility awareness method. They’re very invested in doing this method correctly if they don’t want to become pregnant. It’s over 99% effective. That’s one thing I have women consider.
I think another avenue that women really need to be having conversations about with their doctor is using barrier protection. To pass a woman the pill or insert an IUD and not discuss things like HPV or other sexually transmitted infections, the pill, these IUDs, the patch, the ring, they’re not going to protect you against contracting what could be a serious or fatal illness. You’ve got the barrier methods as well. There’s spermicides, and there’s new technology being developed as we speak to actually alter cervical mucus to make it to where the sperm can’t travel. They’re touting it as the first side effect-free birth control. We shall see because I think all birth control comes with a side effect. Fertility awareness method, getting pregnant is the side effect of that method.
Dr. Pompa:
I like the first one, especially for a married couple. That’s what we did. Talk a little bit about that. What do you look for? You mentioned the viscosity of the mucus. We looked at those things, timing, etc., knowing where you are. Talk a little bit about that. I’m sure the whole formula is in the book. Talk a little bit about that for our viewers.
Dr. Brighten:
This is the thing, and I’m sure you’ve seen this too, that it isn’t until a woman wants to become pregnant that she’s taught what to look for and how to know she’s ovulating. Why are we not being taught this when we get our period the first time?
Dr. Pompa:
It’s like opposite.
Dr. Brighten:
When you’re using basal body temperature, what that means is that your eyes pop open and the first thing you do is you put a thermometer in your mouth. These days we have FDA approved technology, so natural cycles is the first FDA approved fertility awareness method app. It’s called Femtech, so we’ve got technology now where it is the thermometer. It does the calculation for you. Otherwise, you can chart it by hand.
Taking Charge of Your Fertility has been the number one bestselling book forever. This shows us how much women are invested in wanting to know about their body. One thing as we look for basal body temperature, when you’re going to ovulate, that’s going to spike. Estrogen and LH, which is luteinizing hormone, spike to trigger the release of an egg. Your temperature spikes and you know an egg should follow.
You can also look for changes in your cervical mucus. The viscosity, as you were talking about, is much like a raw egg white consistency. You know what’s surprising to me is that I have patients who have been on the pill 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. They’ve never seen fertile cervical mucus. They’ll actually call my office feeling very frightened that suddenly they’re seeing this thick discharge in their underwear. They’re like something’s wrong with me. I think I have an infection.
When we start to investigate, we’re like congratulations. You’re ovulating again. This is what we want. Without ovulation, we don’t have progesterone. Without progesterone, we are frazzled little beings. We do not love our life the way that we’re really designed to.
Dr. Pompa:
Great point. Now I’m the woman out there saying wait a minute. I’m on this stuff. Do I just stop? What do I do? How do I come off? What’s next? What is your recommendation?
Dr. Brighten:
Great question. The first thing is if you don’t want to have a baby, you better have a backup method. Even if you do want to have a baby, we want to give you a good six-month minimum to prep your body, if not a year or two being the ideal. There was just a study published just this fall talking about the increased risk of lymphoma if mama is on the pill and gets pregnant within six months. That’s something in increased risk in childhood cancer, but that risk was diminished if you went more than six months out.
This is very important to understand. You have to replenish your nutrients. You’ve got to build up that mitochondria. You’ve got to pass that DNA to your baby and your microbiome. Number one is have your backup method. I have a fear that keeps me up at night that everyone is going to jump off the pill and get pregnant and then that’s a generation of brain babies.
Dr. Pompa:
They’ll jump off and get pregnant is your point well taken.
Dr. Brighten:
Don’t stop mid pill pack. I don’t want to be freaking anybody out, but you hear these things and women will say I’m just not going to take it tomorrow. Then you’re going to get a double period. That’s a problem. You want to go ahead and finish that pill pack.
If you have an implant or an IUD, you need to see a doctor to have that removed. The patch, the rings, some of these other things can just be removed when it’s time. If it’s a depo shot, we’ve got to wait until that depo shot clears your body. No matter what you’re using, you can start supporting your liver right away. The liver is the main organ that’s detoxifying all of your estrogen. Support you liver, support you bowels, and that’s going to go a long way in helping your body naturally detoxify these hormones and then start to recalibrate the entire system. Just by doing that, you’re going to take stress off the adrenal glands in the thyroid, which then is going to make the ovaries want to work so much better.
Dr. Pompa:
Is there ever a time to take the pill?
Dr. Brighten:
That is a really excellent question. There are two times that I have used hormonal birth control in prescribing a patient. One is menorrhagia. I had a patient who was bleeding for 14 days straight, so 2 weeks out of the month. She lost so much blood she was at the point of needing a blood transfusion. That’s a situation where we have shut the whole system down while we work on the root cause. That could very much become life threatening. There’s always a plan.
The other time is with endometriosis when the pain is so debilitating, there’s such heavy bleeding that that woman cannot function. You and I are all about the root cause, but it takes energy and it takes you feeling to a certain level of health to be able to do that bigger work. Any time I’ve ever used the pill it is with a plan of having the woman come off and safeguarding her while she’s on it.
Dr. Pompa:
What about cancer? Women have been told that there’s no risk of cancer. Someone told them it actually helps them reduce the risk of cancer. Yet some people you hear say it actually increases the risk of certain cancers. Talk about that.
Dr. Brighten:
It certainly does lower the risk of some cancers, so endometrial cancer or ovarian cancer, which makes sense. You’re ovaries are down regulated. They’re not doing their job. They’re not getting the signal. I see doctors use it with PCOS women or women who don’t cycle regularly. They’re at higher risk for endometrial cancer.
Their doctor will then prescribe birth control because there is evidence to show it down regulates the receptors in the endometrial tissue, which is how it can lead to long-term fertility issues in women if those receptors don’t come back. You can have all the estrogen in the world but if your receptors aren’t there, the endometrium doesn’t grow, baby can’t implant. You become pregnant and have a miscarriage, which is pretty much the worst. Women who have to go through that, it is very heartbreaking.
When it comes to other cancers, there’s other cancers like breast cancer is always the big concern. We can’t say causation with so many of the birth control studies, but there is a correlation and there’s an increased risk. What troubles me about the way they reported this is they’ll say it’s very negligible. It’s such a small increased risk. As you and I know, this is one more drop in the bucket. If the bucket is already full, then what that means for the individual may very much you will develop breast cancer.
What does your environment look like? How are your genes functioning? What’s your family history? Are you eating vegetables? There’s individualized risk factors that aren’t being accounted for in a lot of these studies. I think it’s very important that women are given that information and being able to make that decision for themselves. Certainly as we know, there are better ways to prevent ovarian cancer or endometrial cancer than basically taking a hormone that is suppressing your entire system.
Dr. Pompa:
You mentioned a lot of different health conditions. What’s the number one that you see with taking birth control? Maybe it’s an answer of what happens shortly after and long term, so kind of answer it that way.
Dr. Brighten:
On hormonal birth control, number one side effect that I see that’s almost across the board is muted symptoms. Often a doctor is only looking for the depression correlation, which they’re also quick to dismiss, never mind that we have studies of over a million women showing that not only is there an increased risk of being prescribed an antidepressant when you start hormonal birth control. Teenage girls are actually at really high risk of suicide when they start that, which says a lot about disrupting hormones in a young woman. The other thing we can see is there’s mood swings. There’s panic attacks. They’re in anxiety. Women can develop OCD issues, and doctors are really quick to meet them with the next prescription.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s the irritating part to me. What about later in life? Let’s speed it up. Maybe they’ve even come off of it. What are we seeing later in life as the number one health condition?
Dr. Brighten:
The longer you’re on hormonal birth control, the more likely it’s going to be that you do not come back to being a regularly cycling female. There is research that’s been showing that the longer we suppress the brain and ovaries from talking and the earlier we do this, so we’re talking about putting a 14-year-old girl on hormonal birth control when her brain and ovaries just began to talk and then leaving her on it until she’s 34, 44. That’s a long time to go. We see issues with infertility. We certainly see issues with acne.
There’s something called an androgen rebound. Suddenly testosterone goes high. Now women have acne and they’re losing their hair. I actually see a lot of gastrointestinal issues come up when women come off of hormonal birth control. The way I like to say it is it’s the first time your body got an opportunity to talk to you.
You basically put a gag in your body’s mouth and said I don’t want to hear anything from you about my hormones. When you remove that, your body is going to start screaming and saying I really want to get some support here. That’s the tricky thing about post birth control syndrome. It can be the gut. It can be the mood. It can be things like inflammation, new onset autoimmune disease.
Dr. Pompa:
I see that all the time. It’s so disturbing. Why are they putting younger and younger girls on birth control? Why are we seeing that rise right now?
Dr. Brighten:
This is where it gets super scary in that estimates anywhere from 58% to 65% of women using hormonal birth control, their primary reason that prescription was written was for symptom management for something as benign as acne. Certainly if you have acne, I know it’s awful. No one wants to walk around with acne, but that’s not the kind of thing you’re going to die from. Yet you’re being put on a contraceptive that does carry the risk of death. There is the risk of mortality
I’ve had 19-year-old girls who come in post stroke because of being on the pill. Something as simple as if they had just screened her genetics before they started her on that and told her what to look for, there’s early signs that we have, but doctors aren’t expecting a 19-year-old to have a stroke. They’re not screening for it. They’re not doing their due diligence in the -inaudible- for it, which is the plan, the alternative, the recommendations and making sure the patient has all of her questions answered.
Dr. Pompa:
It absolutely is remarkable, and it irritates me. This has been probably a surge, I would say, in the last five years where I’m seeing these young girls put on birth control. What message does that send too? It’s almost like we’re putting you on it for your acne. However, now you can actually go have sex. There’s a dual problem in that just from a morality standpoint.
Dr. Brighten:
And the risk of HPV. You put a girl on the pill, and then you don’t tell her about human papillomavirus. She thinks I can’t get pregnant and that’s all I should worry about. Then she ends up with cervical cancer later in life. That is a very big problem, and we know that being on the pill actually puts you at higher risk of contracting HPV. Your defenses are down on that. The younger you are when you start to engage in sexual intercourse, the higher the probability is you will contract this. It’s the number one sexually transmitted infection that no one is talking enough about to these young girls.
Dr. Pompa:
Then they will just give them Gardasil and treat them with psychotropic drugs for the mood changes. Of course, then Gardasil, you want to talk about a controversy that’s being covered up. That’s a whole other topic for another show. I don’t want to open that can of worms because I might get really angry.
Talk about your book. Talk about Ditch the Pill. What’s in it? I think that if I were a woman listening to this, I would say I need further resources. Number one, it may be a young teenage girl that has to go to her mother, and she better have answers. I’m sure your book has them. Number two, it may be a nervous mother who’s going to her daughter who doesn’t want to get off because of acne. They need resources. Number three, someone needs a plan. Talk about the book.
Dr. Brighten:
My book really details what to do if you’re on hormonal birth control and how to transition off successfully and mitigate the symptoms of post birth control syndrome. I went a little further in my book in that I actually have an entire chapter dedicated to helping you navigate your period problems. What do those symptoms mean so that you don’t have to use hormonal birth control? I really wanted to go upstream to help women understand their body, be able to prevent them from getting on hormonal birth control.
Then once they’re on it, we have a chapter dedicated to liver health, to gut health, to getting your mood back. It has all of my protocols that I’ve been documenting in my clinical practice that my patients have been so amazing and helping me test out so we can really understand what does it take to heal your body from birth control and how can we keep you safe while you’re on it? I do address the libido issue that comes up, to get your libido back and get your body ready for baby. There’s an entire 30-day plan with meal plans, supplement guides, lifestyle, and we get really specific on helping you understand what your hormone imbalance is.
It’s not the same for everyone, as you know. Sometimes it’s cortisol driving the issue. Sometimes it’s estrogen driving the issue. I really made a choose your own adventure where there’s a quiz in there to understand which hormones do you need to address, and then this is exactly how to address it. You can customize and individualize the Brighten protocol.
Dr. Pompa:
I always say there’s a time and a place for bioidentical hormones period, leaning towards bioidentical hormones being a little bit better. I always say also it’s tough to win the hormone game. If you don’t have a tissue that creates it, it makes it a little bit easier. It’s really hard to win that game. When is there a time for some of the bioidenticals in this case?
Dr. Brighten:
I will say when we’re talking about bioidenticals to understand that thyroid hormone is nonnegotiable. I hear this from women all the time. I don’t want to take a thyroid medication. You also don’t want congestive heart failure at 40. This is a very essential hormone.
When it comes to estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, some of our sex hormones, these are things that we may use in a woman who has post pill amenorrhea. She’s lost her period, and it’s been a long period of time. We want to preserve her bone, her brain, her heart from aging. When it comes to our perimenopausal women, this is one of the areas I get heated is when a woman over 45 is given hormonal birth control. She’s given the pill to manage hot flashes, to manage night sweats, to manage these symptoms of perimenopause.
She’s at the highest risk of having a stroke or heart attack or developing diabetes. That discussion is not being had. I certainly think it’s an individualized situation. You’ve got to talk to your doctor about this. Using bioidentical hormones, estrogen always topical, never oral because that’s when we get ourselves in trouble, I think they have great benefit for women’s health.
We have to understand that it is really a new phenomenon in human history that women are living so far beyond menopause. It’s something that we have to recognize that once those hormones drop, our heart starts aging. Our brain starts aging. Women are at the highest risk of dementia. We start seeing our bones aging, and women can feel miserable, out of control, not in their body. What we know is that the amount of estrogen it takes topically to safeguard your bone, brain, and heart is so minimal compared to what we give women orally through the hormonal birth control pill.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s great. Where can women get the book and more information about you and whatever other information you think they need?
Dr. Brighten:
The book is available for presale. It will be out January of 2019. You can find it anywhere where books are sold, including Amazon, which I think is everyone’s favorite these days. As you know, we are raising awareness. We started the first-ever Post Birth Control Syndrome Awareness Week, which you’re going to be a part of as well. I want to say thank you. I am so grateful.
We have 50 experts in the industry who are really joining together to raise awareness about this important topic to help women understand these symptoms are not in their head. They are absolutely real. Your body is not betraying you. There are better ways to manage your symptoms and to stay safe in this world. What I’m really excited about is through this event, we’re going to reach so many women. We’re going to have the ability to transform women’s medicine for the better.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s needed. Most of my clients are women who are hormonally dysregulated. Then it leads to autoimmune and unexplainable illnesses, thyroid, diabetes. We can just keep going down the list. It’s really misunderstood, and it’s being mistreated. I’m really glad to team up on this and bring the message out.
Thank you, Dr. Jolene Brighten, for being on the show. You’re doing great work. You’re a wealth of knowledge, and you stand out in what you’re doing, especially in the world you’re in. Thank you for doing that.
Dr. Brighten:
I so appreciate you. Thank you for having me here. Thank you for joining us and raising awareness and for being a fearless advocate for women’s health.
Dr. Pompa:
Look for the book and give your website if you need to there. We’ll put it in the show notes as well.
Dr. Brighten:
You can find me at DrBrighten.com. I have a tricky last name. It’s DrBrighten.com. I have a ton of free resources there and information that covers the whole gamut of hormonal birth control, going beyond the pill, and can help fast track your healing with some of the information I’m sharing there.
Dr. Pompa:
Thanks, Dr. Jolene. I appreciate you being on the show.
Dr. Brighten:
Thank you.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. To join Dr. Brighten, Dr. Pompa, and a panel of amazing experts on the topic of hormonal birth control and hormonal repair, please sign up for this free online event. Go to repairyourhormones.com.
Practitioners, just a reminder that it’s not too late to join us in Vegas today through Sunday the 4th, and you don’t even have to travel. We are offering tickets to the live stream to our Live It to Lead It event. You can go to HCFevents.com for more information, and you can use the promo code CHTV to take 10% off. We would love to have you join us.
We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10:00 am Eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at podcast.DrPompa.com. Please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review, and sharing the show with anyone you think may benefit from the information heard here. As always, thanks for listening.
