2023-07-17 07:22:34
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Contraception: more easily stressed on the pill?
American researchers have just discovered that the hormonal changes induced by the contraceptive pill might reduce the ability of women to adopt a calm response to sudden stress.
A study, conducted by researchers at the University of Aarhus in the United States on 131 young women with an average age of 20.5 years, compared the blood levels of stress-related hormones of women who took the pill with others who did not take it.
The role of the ACTH hormone is to stimulate the adrenal glands to secrete cortisol (the stress hormone). By comparing the ACTH levels of these women following fifteen minutes of pleasant activity (playing board games and singing together), the researchers observed that the cortisol levels of the women who did not take the pill decreased, while the women on the birth control pill suffered no reduction in the ACTH hormone level. In common parlance this means thata woman on the pill may potentially have less ability to cope with immediate stress because it struggles to produce hormones that are normally secreted to help it.
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Women on the pill, as “blocked” in the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle?
According to the researchers, there are several hypotheses that can explain this phenomenon. But the team leans mainly for the hypothesis according to which the pill might « suppress the body’s production of progesterone », a hormone involved in a range of calming effects and the stress response. Thus, women on the pill would have a answer ” disconnected » au stressthat is to say not always adapted to a given situation.
The women in the study who were not taking the pill had a similar type of reaction during the first phase of their menstrual cycle (the so-called “follicular” phase, that is to say following menstruation and until ovulation, when estrogen levels are high and progesterone levels are low). Since cortisol itself is produced from progesterone, this makes sense.
Although further research is needed to clarify these mechanisms, this information helps to better understand how oral contraception sometimes affects the physical and psychological lives of women who take it.
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