Birth control pills have adverse effect on your emotional life: Study

Popping pills without prescription is always harmful. Then may it be a general pill or birth control pills. Do you know that birth control pills have major side effects that can wreck your physical as well as emotional health?

According to Dr Gandhali Deorukhkar Pillai, consultant obstetrics gynaecologist at Wockhardt Hospital, Mumbai, many patients dwells on suicidal tendencies, anger, mood swings, and headaches due to the regular consumption of birth control pills.

And now there is another study which suggests that popping birth control pills can also lead to emotional turbulence.

This is what the study has to say
The current study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, helps understand why birth control pills affect emotional life.

“Oxytocin is a hormone found naturally in the body and is secreted during social cues and bonding, reinforcing social behaviour,” said study researcher Michael Winterdahl from Aarhus University in Denmark.

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Winterdahl added:

Now you know why you go through an emotional turmoil when you consume a birth control pill. This may also explain why feelings such as closeness, attachment, and love appear to be altered in some women who use birth control pills.

For the findings, the research team collected and analysed blood samples from 185 young women in the US. Participants also answered a variety of questions about their mental well-being.

Oxytocin response to these pills leads to emotional imbalance
Most of us take birth control pills at some point in our lives. The study presents evidence for changes in the levels of oxytocin in response to birth control, providing a mechanism by which some women experience an altered mood.

This study also suggests that there may be changes in the behaviour of women who would not otherwise experience more traditional side effects.

“Humans are super social beings, we are able to put ourselves in the place of others, show empathy, fear loneliness and seek community – all driven by the brain’s secretion of oxytocin,” Winterdahl said.

“Even very small changes in brain oxytocin levels will affect the way we process emotions and thus how we interact with each other,” he concluded.

So, before you pop that pill please be double sure of its side effects.

(With inputs from IANS)