Science Vs - The Pill: Is It Messing Up Our Brain and Body?

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

For decades, taking the birth control pill to prevent pregnancy was seen as a no-brainer. But lately, people are saying that it’s actually a brain-changer. They say that the pill can affect who you���re attracted to, that it can tank your libido, and that it can make you depressed. Instead, some influencers are telling us to try an amazing, hormone-free method — where all you have to do is listen to your body. So … are they right?? We’re tackling these birth control claims and more, with psychologist Dr. Julia Stern, biologist Madita Zetzsche, neuroscientist Dr. Caitlin Taylor, and ob-gyn Dr. Jasmine Patel.  This episode does mention depression. Here are some crisis hotlines:  United States: US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Dial 988 (Online chat available); US Crisis Text Line Text “HOME” to 741741 Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14 (Online chat available) Canada: Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention (See link for phone numbers listed by province) United Kingdom: Samaritans 116 123 (UK and ROI) Full list of international hotlines here  Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsThePill In this episode, we cover: (00:00) The Pill Under Fire (04:08) Does The Pill change who you’re attracted to? (13:00) Could The Pill turn off your ovulation scent? (18:59) How bad is The Pill for our sex drive and mental health?  (21:10) Does The Pill really change your brain? (24:40) Does The Pill make you gain weight?  (26:16) So how dangerous is The Pill — really?  (27:10) Fertility Awareness Methods — are they too good to be true?? (31:32) Can pre-cum get you pregnant? Credits:  This episode was produced by Rose Rimler, with help from Wendy Zukerman, along with Michelle Dang, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, and Meryl Horn. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Eva Dasher. Recording assistance from Emile B Klein. Mix and sound design by Sam Bair. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, and Emma Munger. Thanks to all the researchers we spoke with for this episode, including Dr. Adriene Beltz, Prof. Alison Edelman, Dr. Emily Pfender, Prof. Jayashri Kulkarni, Dr. Jill Krapf, Dr. Rachel Urrutia, and Dr. Therese Johansson. Special thanks to Miah Foster.  Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. This is the show that pits facts against fallopian tubes. Today, we are tackling The Pill. The Pill burst onto the scene in the 1960s and for tons of folks, it was seen as this wonderful thing. Country singer Loretta Lynn even wrote a song about how the pill was gonna open up all of these possibilities for women.

But all I've seen of this old world is a bed and a doctor bill. I'm tearing down your brooder house cause now I've got the pill. This song was a hit. And the freedom that she's singing about, about choosing when to get pregnant and how many babies you're going to have, it just resonated with loads of women. In fact, since the pill came out, women are more likely to go to college, become lawyers,

judges and doctors. Plus, the wage gap between men and women has narrowed by 30%. And some economists say that this is a direct result of the pill. But you fast forward to today, and for many, the pill has gone from hero to zero. People say that pumping ourselves with these hormones can be harmful. Birth control is one of the most damaging things you can put in your bodies. And that it can even change parts of our personality, like who you're attracted to, and also who is attracted to you.

Birth control can actually affect a woman's taste in men. We actually choose mates that are less compatible when we're on hormonal birth control. Is birth control ruining relationships and people don't even realize it? We're hearing the pill can tank your mental health. I was the most depressed I've ever been. I didn't feel like me. I had no energy. Every morning I wake up and I just like struggle to get out of bed.

And I couldn't get myself to not be mad. I was like not even in control of my own emotions, you know? Folks are even worried that the pill will mess with your brain. We're talking significant structural changes in the brain in regions involving memory and emotional processing. And these ideas are huge right now. Even Elon Musk is worried about this. I think hormonal birth control is making... It's making a lot of women sad and depressed.

Yes. And they don't realise it. Here he is talking to feminist icon Tucker Carlson. hormonal birth control is making a lot of women sad and depressed. Yes. And they don't realise it. Here he is talking to feminist icon Tucker Carlson in a video that's been watched millions of times, saying that women just don't understand how dangerous the pill is. Significant risk of depression, significant increase in suicide, and will make you want to go out with people that you don't actually like. That's actually true, by the way.

And with all these concerns, some people are saying bye-bye to the pill for good. It's time for me to come off the pill. A lot of my friends have gotten off of it, my sister's gotten off of it. I really don't know many people on it anymore. Now that I'm off it, literally it is like night and day difference. Best decision I've ever made in my life. Today on the show, could the pill be changing us in these weird and even dangerous ways?

And if you don't want to get knocked up, should you switch to something better? There's a lot of buzz about this exciting, hormone-free, natural method that's out there. We're also gonna get to the bottom of a question that we at Science Versus have had for half a decade, which is, can you really get pregnant from pre-cum? When it comes to the pill,

there's at least one billionaire saying it all. Make you want to go out with people that you don't actually like. But then, there's science. Science Vs. The Pill is coming up, just after the break. The scorebed app here with trusted stats and real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking... Nah, no more statistically speaking.

I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions. That's not really what I do. Is that because you don't have any knees? Or... The ScoreBet. Trusted sports content, seamless sports betting. Download today. 19+, Ontario only. If you have questions or concerns about your

gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to ConnixOntario.ca At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner. However you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running is all about. Run your way at newbalance.com slash running. Welcome back. Today we're here to talk about the pill and we are going to do it with a real pill.

Senior producer Rose Rimler. Hi Wendy. Hello. What made you want to do this episode? Well, I've just been seeing a lot of stuff online about how the pill isn't as safe as we thought it was and how it might be changing us. And those are very interesting claims to dig into. And they're also very relevant right now, with all this uncertainty about access to

contraception and abortion in the US. And, you know, that's not the only reason people take the pill, but it still just seems like a really good time to dive into this. Yeah, for sure. I do think for a long time there's just been this assumption that women are gonna go on the pill. We'll go on the pill, right? And so I think really questioning what is it doing to us,

I think is really important. Yeah. Okay, let's start with something that I've been saying a lot of recently, but it's sort of been rolling around for years now, and it's this idea that the pill will change who you're attracted to, which is all part of this sort of larger idea that the pill, because of the way it affects hormones, it like fundamentally changes who you are. So what do we know about this?

I really enjoyed looking into this. So let's dive in. It's very interesting. So this all comes from the fact that the combined pill, which is the typical birth control pill, stops you from ovulating. And that's how it works. That's how it keeps you from getting pregnant. Yeah, yeah. But, ovulating is thought to be important for things like sexual attraction. So there's this theory out there that when you're ovulating, as in you're ready to make a baby,

you're attracted to a different kind of guy than you are the rest of the month. Hmm? This theory predicts that if you're into guys, you would go for a more masculine kind of guy around that time. That's basically the idea. So I talked about this with Julia Stern. She's a psychologist at the University of Bremen in Germany.

If you're fertile, you might be interested in a very masculine guy, and when you're not fertile anymore, you might be more interested in the good guy. So when you're in your fertile window, you are attracted to someone like Dwayne the Rock Johnson. But then when you're outside the fertile window, you're more like a Timothee Chalamet kind of girl. Is that what's going on here? More or less, yes. So of course, Dwayne The Rock Johnson is like extremely muscular and has a very deep voice.

Do you think those are appropriate celebrities to pick? I mean, Dwayne The Rock Johnson is pretty accurate maybe, but what about Kevin James, for example, for The Good Guy? Oh! Wasn't he the King of Queens actor? There's a meme that went around of him like shrugging, like shyly shrugging. Oh yeah, but I know that meme. What are you seeing in this picture that makes you say, oh yeah, that's it? Well, it's a smile maybe, like this rather shy smile.

He doesn't look dominant at all. It's more like, come home, I give you a hug. Uh-huh, it's like I'm not here to vanquish your enemies. I'm here to like give you a nice hug and hand you a cup of tea at the end of the day. Yes. And then play with the children after coming home from work. Yeah. So, Wendie, I know that sounds like something totally made up on like a dumb podcast. Not this one, not this one. Like a dumb podcast. Yeah, yeah. But, uh, scientists are like into this idea. This idea that when you are ovulating, you're attracted to different kinds of men.

Yeah, this is a real concept in the scientific literature. And the concern is that if you never ovulate, you never have that natural shift towards the rock. You're always going to be permanently stuck in the Kevin James portion of your cycle. I do have a bugbear with these evolutionary psychology theories though. I know, you hate this stuff. I mean we know that these theories are based on these biases around what men and women are supposed

to do and these theorists could just say whatever they want. Has anyone actually tested this? Yeah. They show women pictures of men and they've altered the men's faces to be either more masculine or more feminine. That's pretty subtle. I can show you some of these manipulated faces. So this is two different people.

The image on the right has been masculinized. The image on the left has been feminized. I'm very good at playing, you know, that kids' game spot the difference. So this is really harnessing some of that power. The nose looks a little more pinched in the quote unquote feminized version. The brow looks a little more pinched in the quote unquote feminized version. The brow looks a little lower. The eyes look a little bigger in the feminized version.

Okay, so they give people these and they say, who are you more attracted to? Yeah, and a number of studies have actually found that women prefer a more masculine face around the time they ovulate and a less masculine face the rest of the month. Really? And women who are on the pill, studies have found that they always prefer the less masculine face. No. So these studies are all done in presumably straight cis women, by the way, and that's true for all this research.

So yeah, that's what a lot of studies have reported and actually a review paper that came out in 2014 said that the effect of birth control on mate choice is, quote, relatively robust. Relatively robust. That's what they said. And when I read that I was like, oh, like, okay. And, you know, the stakes are kind of big here because what this suggests is that if you're on birth control when you meet someone and then you go off it

after you're married or vice versa, maybe you end up with someone who is not the partner you would have otherwise chosen. And that is freaky. In fact, some data suggests that people who use hormonal birth control had 50% higher odds of getting divorced. Do you feel like who you're attracted to changes

depending on where you are in your cycle? On the day? No. Julia does it either, actually, and that's one reason she wanted to get into this. I never experienced that. None of my friends have ever told me about that. But at the same time, sometimes in science, effects are really small and we are not really able to perceive them, but that kind of still happens unconsciously.

So Julia looked at these studies more closely and she realized something kind of odd in these studies. And that is that in a lot of them, we really can't be sure that the women were definitely ovulating when they were tested. What? So most of these studies just estimated where people were in their cycle based on the date of their last period. So they just assume like, okay, if you're on day 14, you're probably in your fertile window. But the reality is, cycles vary a lot in length between women and also within women. It sounds like you're saying these studies were trying to figure out if women had a different preference when they were ovulating, but they didn't actually double-check that women were actually ovulating. Is that true?

Yeah, that's basically the point, yes. Sounds pretty bad. That is bad. Also, because it's so easy to check. I mean, now you can pay on a stick. Probably when these studies were done, you do a blood test. Yeah, I know. And so over the past decade or so, there have been all these studies that do actually check

people's hormones and find out, OK, are you for sure ovulating? And then they get them to look at faces. And guess what, Wendy? These studies, they don't see this effect. Right. No. No, they don't. Of course, they don't. I mean, you think about how many bullsh** studies came out that didn't actually test if women were ovulating, how many think pieces have been written about this evolutionary theory around masculine virile men and who's attracted to them, oh my god. But then what about the research that shows that people on the pill are always in the Kevin James portion of their cycle?

That doesn't hold up either in newer studies, bigger studies. So there's this one big study that came out pretty recently. It was almost 6,500 people. They showed these faces to women on the pill versus not on the pill. No difference. No difference. Okay.

So if you are on the pill and you are worried about this, you do not need to be worried about this. Based on all of your research, Rose, there is not good evidence that the pill changes who you're attracted to. That's what I would say, yeah. And can we just talk about the smell thing? The smell thing? Wendy, there is this idea that men can sniff out ovulating women and that they find them

more attractive. And so therefore, men won't find you as attractive while you're on the pill. Okay. Um, had not heard this theory, but from an evolutionary perspective, I would actually buy it more than that masculine, feminine garbage we just talked about. Why is that? Because it makes sense that for animals like humans who ovulate on a cycle every month,

that there is some evolutionary pressure that has allowed males to sense when they might be fertile. Because it does take energy to blow your load. So you want to make sure you're putting it in the right place. So smell, sure. Yeah. Sure. I mean, that's interesting you bring that up because a lot of the idea here is that

a lot of animals display when they're ovulating, including other primates. So some of them have this like huge swelling of their anus and vulva when they're ovulating to be like, I am ovulating. Come and get me. I just clenched. But then humans, we don't seem to. So we have what researchers call concealed ovulation.

But then other researchers have been like, wait, maybe it's not really concealed. Maybe it's just very subtle. And so they have actually done these studies to try to figure out, are there subtle little cues that men can pick up on that women don't even know they're giving off? And that the pill is interfering with, ultimately.

And yes, and if that's so, then the pill could interfere with it. Okay. And there's some very modern research on this. I spoke to someone who wanted to get to the bottom of that. Yes, so I'm Madita and I work at the University of Leipzig. I wanted to assess whether there is something in women's body odor that changes during the menstrual cycle.

Medita Setcha, she wanted to actually do a chemical analysis of armpit odor over the course of the cycle. The idea is to find out if the smell changes, and if so, can men tell? And then do they like it? This is great, this is great. So they recruited about 30 young women to come into the lab a bunch of times

over the course of their menstrual cycle. And every time they came in, Medita's team sucked up a little bit of their bio with this special equipment. We have little metal tubes, basically like a straw. What did that look like? When you said straw, I'm imagining like you're on the other end sucking it up. I'm sure that wasn't what it was.

No, it was not the case, although it would have been exceptionally funny. No, but, um, no, we used a little pump. A little pump? So they're pumping out the sweat. It's not the sweat, it's the odor emitting from the armpits. Yes. This little machine would suck out the odor. And they knew where the women were in their cycle. They gave them a pee test and a saliva test.

This is a good study. Okay, so are we emitting some different odor when we're ovulating? Well, here's how Medida put it. There was no compound or a combination of compound which was indicative of, let's say, ovulation or the fertile window. That's a nerdy way of saying she couldn't find a smell. No, there's no ovulation scent.

Oh, the ovulation is not a thing. No, I don't think that there is an ovulation scent in women so far. On top of that, Medida got guys to come into the lab as well and sniff bio samples from the armpits of the women throughout their cycle. To see if the men's noses were more sensitive than her very sensitive chemical analysis. I guess so, yeah. They couldn't tell. They didn't find the ovulation sweat any more attractive.

Based on this idea that people blame the pill for covertly changing how you smell over your menstrual cycle and therefore men will find you less attractive. The fact that our scent does not change over our menstrual cycle suggests to me it's garbage. Like, the pill doesn't change your scent and therefore wouldn't make men more or less attracted to you because of that. Yeah, I think that's right. I agree with that. And so just to take it back to something we heard at the start of the show, I asked Julia

about that Elon Musk line saying like, this is true, if you take the pill, you end up with the wrong person. Right. And he said it will quote, make you go out with people you don't actually like. So what is your response to that? No one has ever provided any compelling evidence that this really happens. Even going back to that study that found that people who used hormonal birth control had 50% higher odds of getting divorced.

Well, the same study found that you had 60% higher odds of getting divorced if you'd ever use condoms. Oh. So, just using contraception makes it more likely you'll get a divorce? I mean, when you first said that stat, I didn't find it entirely convincing to be blaming the divorces on the pill. Something else is going on there. Yeah, I think what we could say from that study is like, whatever is driving people to divorce,

it's not hormones, you know, in their contraception. Yeah, yeah. So Wendy, we've had ourselves a real nice little debunk fest. We have. But the pill is not totally innocent. So let's look at some of the stuff that does seem to happen. And let's start with libido. Because another potential consequence of not ovulating is that you could be less horny.

Yes, right. And we know based on science, real actual science, that when you're ovulating, on average, you do get a little more horny, right? Which makes sense. Yeah. And so, you know, if you take that away, maybe that could tank your sex drive. Mm-hmm. And so to figure this out, there were researchers in Sweden that enrolled almost 350 women into a study and gave them either birth control pills or a placebo.

Mm, that sounds dangerous. They were told to use condoms or some other backup. So they didn't know if they were on the pill or not. And they got this survey about their sexual function, essentially, before they went on the pill and after they went on the pill or placebo. And it turned out that on average, people's sexual desire, arousal, and pleasure went down over the course of the study, so over three months.

And this is a weird way to think about something like desire, but the amount of the decrease was like seven or eight percent of a decrease. So it's not necessarily going to tank your sex drive, but still, I mean, that is something to think about because this was an average ride, so it would have affected some folks more than others. Yeah, of course. Yeah, for sure. And we don't know exactly why this happens. It could be the ovulating thing,

but also bigger picture. There is this sort of package of mental health effects that a lot of people say they experience when they take the pill. They say that the pill has actually been harmful to their mental health. And the same research actually gives us some clues about that, because these women were also given surveys about their mood. So what did they find?

So these women also scored worse on stuff like feelings of well-being, vitality, and self-control, interestingly. And other studies that track people who take the pill do find an increase in depression. And in clinical trials, four to 10% of people who went on the pill developed symptoms of depression. And what do we know about the mechanism here? Because on TikTok videos, you see people sort of combining this fact that the pill can increase your risk of depression with these headlines.

You also see that the pill changes your brain. So there are studies that have found structural changes in the brain in people who are on hormonal birth control. And these are studies where they put someone in an MRI. They'll see sometimes that on the pill, areas of the brain are smaller or thinner. One study actually found that a person's cerebral cortex shrank after being on the pill. So you could see why people, you know, link this kind of stuff to what's causing depression. But Caitlin Taylor, who's a neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she says that this is not the right interpretation here.

And she pointed out that changes to the brain are not necessarily bad. You learn a new skill, it affects your brain. You live in an urban versus a rural environment, it affects your brain. Like, that's why we're so successful. Our brain is malleable. Even studies that find a shrinking of the brain are not necessarily a concern because we know that the brain often shrinks in order to re-sculpt itself. Especially when we're younger. So, for example, kids, studies have found that they actually lose gray matter as they learn.

And in fact, more gray matter loss is associated with better test scores and even higher IQs. Even putting that aside, not every study finds brain shrinkage happens on the pill. There are some studies that have showed the opposite, that women had increased great matter on the pill compared with women not on the pill. So I think we have enough compelling evidence that it is having an effect on your body and your brain,

but the nature of that effect, I think we're still wrapping our heads around. We're kind of the scientists in the dark trying to feel the elephant, or it's like, it's a trunk, no, it's a snake. We're kind of coming together to try and be like, what is it that we're figuring out here? So it sounds like pinning the depression mechanism on changes in the brain is not a good idea

because we're still working out what these changes mean at all. Yeah. And what's maybe surprising is that some people's mental health gets better on the pill. So it's a mixed bag. We think the mechanism probably has more to do with… Well, we know there's tons of receptors for these hormones in the brain that they interact with neurotransmitters like serotonin. So when you take these hormones in the pill, estrogen, progestin,

it can interact with these neurotransmitters in our brain. Yeah. And it's more likely that's to blame for increasing our risk of depression than the pill changing your brain. Yeah. After the break, does the pill make you put on weight? Plus get excited because we are going to go on a magical journey into the world of pre-cum.

That's pre coming up. At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner. However you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running's all about. Run your way at newbalance.com slash running. Your team requested a ride, but time not from you it's through their uber

teen account it's an uber account that allows your team to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers add your team to your uber account today A&W is now serving pre-organic coffee, and you can get a $1 small coffee, a $2 small latte, or like me, a $1 small coffee and a $2 small latte. Available now until November 24th in Ontario only. Woohoo! The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever.

Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or have out more ways to customize your Casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs. And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with Bandula Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connexontario.ca. Welcome back today on the show The Pill. So far we've learnt that you should not trust Elon Musk when he tells you that

birth control is going to make you attracted to people that you otherwise would not be attracted to. And now let's talk about weight gain. Yeah, and belief that the pill makes you gain weight is, this is important to talk about because it's a very common reason that people avoid taking the pill or stop taking it. And there are, you know, potential mechanisms here,

like why this might be happening. So one idea here is that maybe the pill, something about the hormones in the pill, cause your metabolism to slow down. And so researchers have actually tested this in monkeys. They gave monkeys in a lab a birth control pill every day for eight months. They also measured their metabolism before going on the pill and after. And these, because these were monkeys in a lab, they were able to keep their food the same. So if there was any weight gain, they could be confident it was because of a change in

their metabolism. So what did they find? They actually lost weight. The monkeys lost weight. They didn't gain weight. They lost weight. Which suggests that their metabolism increased slightly. Yeah. And we know that they lost increased slightly. Yeah.

And we know that they lost fat, not muscle. And then from the studies that we have in people, while they don't find that people lose weight on the pill, they also don't find that they gain weight either in comparison to, you know, like, some kind of control group. Interesting. So another pill myth busted. The pill does not cause weight gain. That's right.

And let me just bring up another thing that drives me kind of crazy, which is all this chatter about how dangerous the pill is and how many side effects it has. You know, a lot of what people point to is stuff that's either really rare or it's not even confirmed to be linked to the pill. In reality, most researchers in this space agree that there's basically two major risks from the pill the average person should know about. Okay.

And again, we're talking about the combined pill. Okay. So one is blood clots. Your risk will go from maybe three in 10,000 to maybe six in 10,000 once you're on the pill. And the other is breast cancer. And the risk for that goes from like five or six in 10,000 to maybe 6 in 10,000 once you're on the pill. And the other is breast cancer. And the risk for that goes from like 5 or 6 in 10,000 to about 7 in 10,000. So small increases we're talking.

Yeah. And also, you know, the pill will actually reduce your risk of some other cancers. So namely endometrial cancer and ovarian cancer. So Rose, we've gone deep on some myths and not so myths around the pill. But the pill is not the only game in town here. If you are a vagina and you're looking to have sex with a penis and you don't want to get pregnant, yeah, of course there are other options. But there's one in particular that I want to zoom in on because it's gotten a lot of

attention online. And people are saying it's this great alternative, it's a revolutionary new way to manage your fertility. Oh. This is called the fertility awareness method and all it requires of you is to take time to listen to your body. Zero hormones that is also 99, over 99% effective when used perfectly. Fertility awareness?

Listen to your body? This isn't new. It's kind of the oldest game in town, actually. So for those unfamiliar, break it down for us. So in a nutshell, this idea is that if you have a 28-day cycle, day one being your period, then day 14 is roughly when you ovulate. And so you would avoid having unprotected sex in the days just right around that time. And if you're just looking at a calendar to do this,

studies have shown that the failure rate here can be as high as 25%. Oh, if you don't want to get pregnant, that is not a success at all. That's not good at all. Not great. And this could be because it's just not a great way to pick up ovulation. Like we talked about with the study on masculine and feminine faces, there's too much variation in the average person's cycle. Yeah, that's why those studies were so bad, right?

Exactly. But to be fair to the TikTokers, they're often talking about adding other observations to make this method more successful. Things like looking at your cervical mucus, as I like to call it, the gunk in your underwear. I talked about this with Jasmine Patel. She's an OBGYN at the University of California Irvine. The day before and the day of ovulation,

your cervical mucus becomes very slippery, kind of acting as additional lubricant. Your body's trying to have you have sex so that you get pregnant. So if you're like looking down and you're producing your own lube, that's an indication that you might be ovulating? Exactly. It's a little bit more involved than just looking at your dirty panties. A lot of experts recommend putting a couple fingers in your vagina and then checking the texture of what comes out. When you're ovulating it's kind of like egg whites.

Okay. You could also use those pea strips that we mentioned earlier that check hormones to see if you're ovulating. There's another method where you track your temperature by taking it first thing in the morning with a very sensitive thermometer. When you ovulate, it goes about four tenths of a degree up compared to baseline, very specific.

There are all these different formulas and apps for putting this data together in order to guess when you're about to ovulate, which means like, this is the time when you can get pregnant. Yeah. And so if you do this perfectly, these methods can be up to 99.6% effective. Wow. 99.6% effective. Wow.

99.6, that puts it up with the pill, right? That's about the same as perfect use of the pill. Yeah. Huh. So would you use this? You know, I was really surprised that this could be so effective and that the TikTokers are kind of right here,

like, oh, there is a fertility awareness method that can be 99% effective. Yeah. That's really cool. But I'm still kind of like uncomfortable with how this gets tossed around on TikTok because, you know, we only have a few studies, really, on these methods. Well, for the pill, we have tons of studies and many thousands of people and all these different circumstances so we can just be much more confident about the effectiveness there.

And then also, you know, these methods take a lot of work and a lot of careful planning. You got to think about this, track it every day. And Jasmine says, it's not always smooth sailing. It also entails like knowing your body really well and having your body not change because of stress or because of a fever or because of a vaginal infection. So fertility awareness methods, they are an option and they're not a bad option, but be aware that just like condoms, they can have holes in them.

Yes. Okay. So while we're talking about condoms, let's talk about the penis in this equation here. Yes. We don't have hormonal birth control for them yet, but there are non-hormonal options. Obviously, they can wear condoms. Yes.

They can get vasectomies. They can also not ejaculate in the vagina, right? They could pull out. Pull out method. But I guess there has always been this question of, can you get pregnant from pre-cum? A classic, which we have been tantalizing the audience with the answer of this question for probably half an hour now.

All right. If it's not obvious, the scientific question around the pullout method, which has been circling around the science versus office for some time, is that if you're having sex, you're the penis and a little bit of pre-cum is coming out into the vagina, but yet then when you're about to truly blow your load, you pull out, out it goes.

Yeah, that's how it works. And you know, you watch American Pie and movies of that vintage, they'll talk about this fear of pre-cum. But scientifically, we didn't know if there was enough sperm, good sperm, in pre-cum to make someone pregnant. Yeah. So what do we know now, Rose? We have new research on this. It just came out.

Wow. Hot off the pre-cum press. Yes, and it's from Jasmine. So she did this great study about looking for swimmers in pre-cum. She got men to come to a clinic. I thought she just got men to come. They came into the clinic, leaving no pods at all, and to masturbate, kind of to give a sperm sample, but doing it a little differently than how you might otherwise give a sperm sample. Right.

So to collect the pre-cum, she basically had the guys masturbate into a petri dish, so the guys had to press the tip of their penis onto the petri dish as they jerked off. They'd have to be experienced jerkers for that. I think we can assume they were experienced jerkers. That's a fair assumption. So then the dribble or whatever was coming off the penis before ejaculation could kind of just spread across the dish without losing a drop.

Yeah, and so it just depends on how much that person was producing, right? So some people will produce a larger volume and so it'll come out in a larger quantity and therefore have more propulsion and you know actually get onto the dish. And for others that only produce a few drops in order to transfer it, like you need to kind of push it onto a container. And so that's when they had to push their penis against the dish to be able to transfer it, so we're not losing any specimen. So what happened next?

Well, what happens next is the men come, but they pull their penis off the dish and into a cup. So what she was looking for was, do the men have at least a million healthy swimmers per milliliter? That's what scientists think that you need to get someone pregnant. Okay. What we found was that there were very, very few samples that had motile sperm greater than one million sperm per milliliter. Mm-hmm. The majority of people had no sperm in their pre-ejaculate whatsoever.

Interesting, right? Very. But here's the catch. It wasn't consistent. So the same person could sometimes have sperm of high quantities in their pre-ejaculate and sometimes not have it. Meaning that sometimes they're at higher risk of pregnancy and sometimes they're not. Oh, that's annoying.

Because if you're having sex with a penis, or if you are the penis, you don't know if you're a sperm-filled pre-cum-haver or not. Yeah. Ultimately, out of 24 people in Jasmine's study, five sometimes had enough sperm in their pre-cum to get someone pregnant. Uh-huh. Five out of 24. I mean, that's enough to make me a little worried, I've got to say.

Yeah. I don't know, but it depends. Like, I think some people see the pre-comers half full and some people see the pre-comers half empty. Yeah. You mean, you can look at it, it's, you know, the thing with birth control, and here's something that has, like, really been driven home to me as I've been working on this episode, is, like, everybody's risk tolerance is different.

Yeah, that's, of course, of course. And I think, I mean, what I do really like, I guess, about this new conversation around the pill is because for so long, there really has been this just assumption that women and folks with vaginas are going to be taking it. And for some people, as you've talked about, there are side effects. It does affect their mental health. It may lower their libido,

and there are those very rare risks around breast cancer and blood clots. And so it is right to ask yourself, if you're starting to have PNV sex, is this right for you? And if not, what else is out there? And can we start putting a little pressure and responsibility on the penis in the equation? So for that reason, it's great. Yeah, I agree. But I do think that they can go overboard with that messaging.

Because what online creators are trying to do is to get your attention. And so saying that the pill is dangerous, there's a marvelous new method that's perfect, saying all that stuff gets eyeballs. It's not about responsible communication about reproductive health, but that's what you come to Science V Versus 4. Responsible communication about reproductive health and the real science on pre-com. We always find the important and meaningful stories to bring to you, our beloved audience. And that is Science Versus. Rose, how many citations are in this week's episode? This week we have 75 citations.

75. And if people want to see more, learn more about the pill, where do they find these citations? They can check the transcript, and there is a link to the transcript in our show notes. And on social media this week, anything fun? We're going to put some pictures of the masculine or feminized male faces so the listeners can play spot the difference too. And we could throw in a picture of a chimpanzee in heat. Please. Yeah. Okay.

All right. I'll make that happen. Our Instagram is science underscore BS and my TikTok is at wendyzookerman, so come say hello. All right, thanks so much, Rose. Thanks, Wendy. ["Science Underscore B-S"] ["Science Underscore B-S"] This episode was produced by Rose Rimler

with help from me, Wendy Zookerman, along with Michelle Dang, Aketti Foster-Keys, and Meryl Horne. We're edited by Blythe Turrell. Fact checking by Eva Dasher. Recording assistance from Emile B. Klein. Mix and sound design by Sam Bear. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka,

Peter Lennett and Emma Munger. Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Dr. Adrian Beltz, Professor Alison Edelman, Dr. Emily Fender, Professor Jaishree Kulkarni, Dr. Jill Krapf, Dr. Rachel Urrutia, and Dr. Therese Johansen. Special thanks to Maya Foster. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you

get your podcasts. We are everywhere. But if you are listening on Spotify, then tap the bell icon so you get notifications when new episodes come up. And also, if you like the show, please, Raetis, give us a five-star review that helps people find the show. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Fact-you next time. You