What is birth control?
Birth control is the act of preventing pregnancy. Birth control methods include; shots, oral pills, a patch, a ring, an IUD, and several others, each with different levels of effectiveness. Many women use birth control as a means to regulate or stop their cycles and to prevent any unwanted pregnancies.
However, did you know birth control can help women with other health issues?
Health Benefits of Birth Control
Starting with the most obvious benefit, birth control can help regulate menstrual cycles. Birth control pills come in packs with 3 weeks of hormonal pills and 1 week of sugar pills in which your menstrual cycle may commence.
Another big plus is birth control can help with PMS! So those painful cramps can become tolerable, depending on the type of birth control being used and how your body may react to it. Normally, a side effect of birth control is acne, but if you have acne-prone skin, birth control can help by reducing the levels of male hormones.
Now onto some more health benefits that are not talked about enough. For example, although the long-term effects of birth control include a higher risk of some cancers, birth control can also decrease the chances of getting ovarian or endometrial cancers, both of these cancers severely impact women’s reproductive health.
Another health benefit l is elevating heavy bleeding which in turn can help prevent anemia. Anemia is an iron deficiency that can be impacted drastically if someone’s menstrual cycle flow is too heavy. Birth control can help lighten someone’s flow and lower the risks of developing anemia.
These are just some of the benefits provided by taking birth control. Often overlooked and barely even spoken about, birth control does more than just protect us from unwanted pregnancies, it also protects our reproductive health in many ways.
Have any thoughts about birth control health benefits? Share it with us @HerCampusSJSU!