Dr. Hotze on the Dangers of Birth Control Pills
Do you suffer from painful PMS symptoms each month? Has your doctor recommended birth control pills as the best option? Dr. Hotze reveals the truth about birth control pills and how they suppress the production of natural hormones, causing many problems. Discover the dangers of birth control pills and what you can do naturally to relieve your symptoms.
Podcast Transcription
Stacey: Welcome to Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. I’m Stacey Bandfield here with Dr. Steven Hotze, founder of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center. We believe that everybody needs a health coach. We have such good information online. All you have to do to download our podcast is go to hotzepodcast.com. That’s H-O-T-Z-E podcast.com.
Now, we have been actually running into this recently with some of our new guests, Dr. Hotze, with ladies who overall say that they’re being pretty healthy, but then you dig a little bit deeper and you find out, well maybe they’re not on any pharmaceutical drugs, except, oh, wait a minute. They’re on birth control. So maybe you could speak to that, to our audience, and why that might not be the best idea.
Dr. Hotze: Right. Birth control pills are counterfeit hormones. They contain an estrogenic counterfeit hormone that mimics the estrogen a woman produces in her body normally, in the ovaries, and it also contains a progestin. Progestin. Not progesterone, progestin, a chemical counterfeit drug that mimics the progesterone hormone. And what happens is that the birth control pills, because they’re counterfeit hormones, they suppress the production of the natural hormones that occur during a woman’s menstrual cycle, which includes ovulation in the middle of the cycle.
So in a perfect 28 day cycle, a woman is going to make, starting after her period’s over, she’s going to start making estrogen hormones proliferating the inner lining of the uterus. Mid-cycle, she will ovulate and give off an ovum, which is the egg, which lives about a day. But that area in her ovary where she produces the ovum is called the corpus luteum, and she produces from that area of her ovary progesterone to balance the estrogen out, and that’s the normal cycle. There’s no pregnancy. The ovaries quit making their hormones, let’s say in a perfect world on day 28, and then sloughs the inner lining of the womb, has a period and menstrual cycle, and then starts all over. So it’s cyclical in nature.
Oftentimes, ever since the early ’60s when they came out with birth control pills, OB/GYN doctors give birth control pills not only to prevent birth or conception, but also to treat a host of other problems such as irregular periods, mood swings, you name it. They’re going to give those birth control pills to these young girls to help them-
Stacey: Acne is a common-
Dr. Hotze: Acne’s another one. Give them for acne. But remember, when you give these birth control pills, or when you take those, ladies, you are taking chemical substances that never existed before in nature. And so women commonly take these to prevent pregnancy. They have PMS. They have heavy bleeding. They have endometriosis, hot flashes, menstrual migraines, and irregular periods. Doctors will put them on birth control pills.
Now, the birth control pills, as we mentioned, suppress the normal production of the hormones in the ovaries. The hormone, counterfeit hormone, in the birth control pill that mimics progesterone is progestin, but it’s not progesterone. It’s interesting. Conventional doctors, OB/GYN doctors don’t understand that a progestin in the birth control pills are in pills for women after they go through the change of life when they take Provera which is a combination, or Prempro, which is a combination of Premarin and Provera, which is a progestin. It’s not progesterone.
Progesterone vs. Progestin
I’ve mentioned to OB/GYN doctors, “Why? Why would you give a progestin instead of progesterone? Why would you give Provera instead of progesterone?” They went, “Well, there’s no difference.” I met with, several years ago, one of the leading OB/GYN doctors in Houston, and really in the country. He heads up the OB/GYN department, or did it that time, of one of the major medical schools in Houston. There are two of them, so it was either Baylor or UT. And I’m not going to out him, but I met with him for lunch with another OB/GYN that wanted me to meet with him, and we talked about the importance of progesterone. My doctor friend and I talked about the importance of progesterone. He said, “Well, there’s no difference in progestin to progesterone. There’s no difference.”
I said, “Well, let me ask you a question, doctor. Can you give a progestin, like Provera, to a woman who’s pregnant?” And he went, “Oh, my. No, no, you can’t.” Well you can’t because it prevents pregnancy, of course, and it causes abortions. And he goes, “No, you can’t.” I said, “Hmm. So you think – so let me ask you this. If a woman’s having recurrent miscarriages, what do you give her?” “Oh, we give them progesterone.” “Oh, so if a woman’s having a problem with miscarriages, you give them progesterone, but you can’t give them Provera because it can cause them to have a miscarriage?” He goes, “Yeah, I guess they’re not the same.”
He guesses they’re not the same and he’s the chairman of the OB/GYN department, and he doesn’t know the difference. He doesn’t know the chemistry. He’s been taught by his predecessors and by the pharmaceutical company that there’s no difference, and there’s a huge difference. That’s why – and this is what happens. So when you don’t have progesterone balancing out estrogen hormones, and you have some Progestin, which doesn’t do that, it suppresses the ability of your ovaries to produce progesterone, ladies. And so you’re not producing any progesterone. Oh, so what happens?
Estrogen Dominance
So you get estrogen dominance. You ended up having fatigue. You’d have difficulty with weight. You’ll have mood swings. You won’t think clearly. You’ll have poor sleep, maybe have joint and muscle aches and pains. You’ll feel unhealthy. You don’t feel right. I’ve had so many women say, “I started taking the birth control pills. I felt terrible. I had headaches. I had had mood swings. I have fluid retention. I gained weight. I just didn’t feel right.” Well, of course you’re not going to feel right if you put a foreign chemical in your body that never existed before in your body and your body wasn’t meant to have, and it’s going to turn off the natural production of your hormones, which is natural. How would you feel better? You’re going to feel worse.
Birth Control Pills Negatively Affect Thyroid Function
So the birth control pills also adversely affect the body’s ability to utilize thyroid hormone. Why? Because the estrogenic counterfeit hormones that are in the birth control pills cause the liver to produce high…it gives a woman estrogen dominance and causes her body, her liver, to produce high levels of thyroid binding globulin, which bind thyroid hormone, which means they can’t get enough thyroid into the cell, and the thyroid hormone is what enables the cells to produce and use energy. They don’t produce enough and use enough energy, their metabolism, now they feel sluggish. They don’t do well. That’s because they’re taking birth control pills.
So I highly recommend the not using birth control pills. You might say, “Well, how am I going to keep from getting pregnant?” Well, this is not rocket science. Okay? First, you can only get pregnant one day out of the month. “I know, but I don’t know when it is.” Well learn the cycle. A woman, if you’re on a…if your periods are normal every 28 days, you’re going to ovulate on day 14, the egg lives for a day. You can restrain yourself for crying out loud, but all of a sudden, unfortunately, when you…or fortunately for the human race, when a woman ovulates, she also excretes a little testosterone, which means she has stronger desires. All of a sudden that old, ugly husband who’s been mean to her all of a sudden looks like a pretty good looking man. All of a sudden she has the desire to reproduce the species, and he always does.
So there you have it. But there’s other…you all are grown women, and you know there are other ways that you can protect yourself if you don’t want to get pregnant. There’s other means to do that. So you can learn how to do that, but you don’t – there’s no reason to poison your body every day of your life to keep from getting pregnant. That just doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t make sense to me. So here’s some adverse side effects of birth control pills. I’m going to read down this list.
Adverse Side Effects of Birth Control Pills
- There’s a dramatically greater increase of blood clots in the blood vessels, thrombosis.
- There’s a four times greater increase of dying of a stroke from a blood clot.
- Four times the risk of heart attacks.
- Double the risk of migraine headaches.
- Increased risk of high blood pressure.
- Increased risk of dying from cancer, particularly cervical cancer, breast cancer, endometrial cancer. Increased risk of ovarian cancer or thyroid and liver cancers.
- Altered immune function.
- A higher rate of birth defects and birthmarks in children who were conceived when a woman’s on birth control pills.
- A higher rate of anti-anxiety and antidepressant used by women are on birth control pills.
Natural Solution for PMS Symptoms
So I’d highly recommend that you not use these counterfeit drugs that mimic hormones in your body and use natural hormones. So, if you’re having premenstrual symptoms, I don’t care what age you are. If you’re a teenager, 20, 30, 40, and you’re still menstruating and you’re having premenstrual symptoms of fluid retention, weight gain, breast tenderness, headaches, mood swings, and those happen prior to your period, that’s a sign of low progesterone, a sign of estrogen dominance. Two sides of the same coin. And what you do is take a little bit of progesterone day 15 through 28 of your cycle and that will take care of all those premenstrual symptoms, and you’ll feel really, really well. That’s what I’d recommend you do.
So that’s the story on birth control pills. They’re dangerous, but they’re used ubiquitously, and one of the reasons we have a host of health problems in America today is because of the use of these drugs that are counterfeit hormones and that mimic hormones in our body.
Stacey: Absolutely. It’s very clear that there are more downsides than upsides to using birth control pills, and like Dr. Hotze said, it can happen at all different ages. Some people think about natural hormones, bioidentical hormones, and they think middle age. We see plenty of people in our practice who come in at much younger ages, as teenagers. Their hormones just never got balanced. So if you have any of those symptoms or signs, then definitely go to our website. We’ve got a symptom checker you can go to at hotzehwc.com. It’s H-O-T-Z-E-H-W-C dot com. You can always give us a call for a complimentary consultation. 281-698-8698. That’s 281-698-8698. Thank you so much for joining us here today at Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution.
