This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Description

An eye-opening book that reveals crucial information every woman taking hormonal birth control should know This groundbreaking book sheds light on how hormonal birth control affects women--and the world around them--in ways we are just now beginning to understand. By allowing women to control their fertility, the birth control pill has revolutionized women's lives. Women are going to college, graduating, and entering the workforce in greater numbers than ever before, and there's good reason to believe that the birth control pill has a lot to do with this. But there's a lot more to the pill than meets the eye. Although women go on the pill for a small handful of targeted effects (pregnancy prevention and clearer skin, yay!), sex hormones can't work that way. Sex hormones impact the activities of billions of cells in the body at once, many of which are in the brain. There, they play a role in influencing attraction, sexual motivation, stress, hunger, eating patterns, emotion regulation, friendships, aggression, mood, learning, and more. This means that being on the birth control pill makes women a different version of themselves than when they are off of it. And this is a big deal. For instance, women on the pill have a dampened cortisol spike in response to stress. While this might sound great (no stress!), it can have negative implications for learning, memory, and mood. Additionally, because the pill influences who women are attracted to, being on the pill may inadvertently influence who women choose as partners, which can have important implications for their relationships once they go off it. Sometimes these changes are for the better . . . but other times, they're for the worse. By changing what women's brains do, the pill also has the ability to have cascading effects on everything and everyone that a woman encounters. This means that the reach of the pill extends far beyond women's own bodies, having a major impact on society and the world. This paradigm-shattering book provides an even-handed, science-based understanding of who women are, both on and off the pill. It will change the way that women think about their hormones and how they view themselves. It also serves as a rallying cry for women to demand more information from science about how their bodies and brains work and to advocate for better research. This book will help women make more informed decisions about their health, whether they're on the pill or off of it.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: The Surprising Science...

  • 2019-10-01
  • 320 pages
  • Ebook
  • Penguin

Similar books

• 

  ADHD is Not a Four Letter Word: Drug Free Strategies for Managing the Gift that is ADHD

  By Karen Ryan

  ... John F. Kennedy Justin Timberlake Karina Smirnoff Kurt Cobain Liv Tyler Magic Johnson Malcolm Forbes Melissa Joan Hart Michael Phelps Michelle Rodriguez ...

• 

  Breastfeeding and Human Lactation

  By Karen Wambach, Becky Spencer

  Although the gifts might be smaller, these practices are still in use by formula companies today ( Fortin, 2007; Tanovic, 2014). In the United States, ...

• 

  Freedom from Obesity: Unlock Your Combination to a Healthy Weight

  By Karen Warren Locklear

  If you've lost sight of the dream of ultimate health and wellness, and you never again want to experience the dieting roller coaster, this book will empower you to understand that being lean and fit starts from the beauty within your mind.

• 

  Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine

  By Andrew Chevallier

  With its jargon-free text, fantastic photography, and focus on safety, this guide enables ease of understanding no matter what your level of herbal expertise.

• 

  Clean House Clean Planet

  By Karen Logan

  Casey Kitty's Litter Box Deodorizer Casey the Kitty is my daughter Sophie's favorite cat; she belongs to our neighbor, Laurie. We can't have cats because Sophie's daddy is allergic to them. Casey is a most friendly cat and willingly ...

• 

  Nutrition Research: Concepts & Applications

  By Karen Eich Drummond, Alison Murphy-Reyes

  by S.M. Robson, S.C. Couch, J.L. Peugh, K. Glanz, C. Zhou, J.F. Sallis, and B.E. Saelens, 2016, Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 116,988. Reprinted with permission of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 6.

• 

  Therapy and the Postpartum Woman: Notes on Healing Postpartum Depression for Clinicians and the Women Who Seek Their Help

  By Karen Kleiman

  At least 10–20% of mothers will suf- fer from postpartum depression (Kumar & Robson, 1984), defined officially as a major depressive episode that has an onset within 4 weeks postpartum, according to the fourth edition of the Diagnos- ...

• 

  Nutrition for Brain Health: Fighting Dementia, Second Edition

  By Laura Town, Karen Hoffman

  ... L., Smith, M., & Segal, R. (2020). Stress management. HelpGuide. Retrieved from https://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/stress-management.htm Robson, D. (2015). Dos and don'ts to preserve your brainpower. BBC Future.

• 

  Breastfeeding and Human Lactation

  By Karen Wambach, Becky Spencer

  Another group of studies report that breastfeeding does not appear to influence resumption of coitus, coital frequency, and other indices of sexuality (Grudzinskas & Atkinson, 1984; Knodel & Chayovan, 1991; Robson et al., 1981) What do ...

• 

  Backbone: Living with Chronic Pain without Turning into One

  By Karen Duffy

  Buff's dog Gibson was a Golden Labrador Retriever puppy, a hair-raising furball of energy who was inflicted on our family for a year. Gibson went through a chewing phase that lasted ...