Tea at Four - Ep 47: Debunking wild contraception myths, where we're at with the male pill and is taking the morning after pill harmful to your health

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

This month, our episodes are all about GIRL LITERACY which is all about getting to know our bodies. This week, Christie and Lauren meet Alice Pelton, founder of The Lowdown - a contraception reviewing platform, which she describes is ‘basically Tripadvisor for your vagina.’ Alice talks to the girls about the reasons WHY women need more education on different contraceptives, myth busts all of the rumours they’ve heard and discusses the hold up on the male pill! As part of our New Year’s Revolution campaign, Girl Literacy challenges our knowledge on our bodies and the effect it can have on our mental wellbeing and life choices. Through our content we aim to raise awareness of unspoken issues surrounding women’s health and bring them firmly into the group chat.

pretty much every woman i've spoken to is like at the age of 16 i was put on the pill it's never like you know i chose to go on the pill it's always the language is i was put on the pill there's lots of myths and misinformation about the morning after pill that is like mind-blowing for so many people why can't men just take the pill yes why can't they why can't they because um it's taken so long to make male pill um but why hi guys welcome back to tia4 i'm christy and i'm lauren this week as part of our body literacy series we're talking all things contraception so this week we spoke to alice pelton who is the founder of the website the lowdown and it's actually been described as the trip advisor for your vagina wow so where we might usually have these conversations about

contraception in our group chats with our girlfriends but this website is basically a forum where women can share their experiences talk about the side effects they've gone through yeah all in one place but not just women men too seeking advice with their sisters friends cousins like you name it i feel like what is the case for a lot of women is that we were kind of put on the pill when we were 16 didn't really understand how it worked not much autonomy there and i didn't haven't really had a refresher until now so it was very good in that respect we also debunked some crazy myths and also spoke about the male pill does it exist when is it coming out and will they take it i've got to know you've got to know carol watching the episode enjoy hi alice how are you hi i'm good thanks how are you guys amazing excited so excited to have you here because

we're going to talk about a very important topic called contraception christy did you look at me because you forgot oh no i just wanted to say it um and i'm very much excited because there's like so much misconceptions out there and it's just good to have these kind of honest, open conversations to like build awareness and continue talking about it in our group chats, friends and family and for the whole world to hear and to listen. A hundred percent. So you're probably wondering, so Alice, what do you do and why is this relevant to contraception or are you just here for the ride? Yeah, so I basically have made a career out of being hormonal um I started taking the pill when I was about 16 and it made me really depressed and emotional and um over the next 10 years I went on this huge journey to try and find the right contraception for me and realize what an absolute minefield it is for millions of women around the

world um and I wanted to do something to try and change that so I set up a company called the lowdown and we've collected the largest data set in the world of women's experiences with every brand and method of contraception and we've become this vital resource that is used by almost two million women a year to help them navigate which method is right for them and we've recently launched an area for women to share experiences with endometriosis pcos and trying to conceive as well my god i wish i had that when i was 16 and i was just going to like my gp on the isle of wight and i felt like I was rushed through like an appointment where I was understanding like what was best for me I just have a forum of other women being like I'm

it's right people give their ages they give their experience of going on it and then if they came off it yeah they'll say that too yeah so why was that so important for you to share like now is our generation becoming more aware of maybe the side effects or the long-term effects of contraception yeah what was the purpose yeah so I guess as a woman like you really short GP appointment frustrated couldn't get my my questions answered and felt like there was this massive lack of data um if you google it there wasn't really helpful like tangible stats on side effects nothing that could really like help me okay if i didn't get on with this pill would this pill be better um so the lack of kind of quality data that's packaged in a like easy to understand insightful way um really kind of led me to have the vision for the initial platform which was a very sort of

yeah easy to understand speaks in about these things in your land in the language that you understand and helps you make the right decision for you independently of maybe what a gp may jump to prescribe to you or what your smaller group of friends are saying i thought it'd be really interesting to see instead of just just asking my three best mates, what if we asked thousands of women, how did you find it? Did it work? Did it not?

Did you lose your sex drive? What would that tell us? So I just set it up initially to kind of, as an experiment to see if it would be interesting. I think it's quite interesting because when you think about going to the GP, more commonly, a lot of my GPs have always been male. So to sit in that room talk about yeah i want to jump on contraception what's out there and then it's being comfortable enough to kind of ask those kind of questions is

okay for me but i go through this how can that person relate with me so the fact that you've got like this forum of like a site that has literally everything and anything that you need me right now i'm not on contraception um just because i feel like there's just so much scare mongering out there and it's like i don't know what what will work for me and what's what's the best way to go about it i can't speak to my parents about it because they're in a generation where they didn't use it or it's one of them ones where they don't have enough information to kind of pass it on to me so it's always been like a no-go zone with me and my mom it's just very nice to know that you've built a platform that just brings everybody together

did you have like a general interest in i guess like contraception before like the site like biology science reproduction all that shit my mum's a doctor so i always i guess was like talking to her a lot about these issues and i just get pissed off about stuff and i was just angry really throughout my 20s i was like this is ridiculous like is this really the best way you know we talk about gp appointments they're so short there's no way they could go through everything they need to go through in that appointment it's very difficult to do that in the time and then so yeah i guess i just saw a gap and um i worked in technology before so i was like building apps and websites and things for other companies so that kind of my personal experience combined

with my like business experience combined i find it funny because like when i think even about reading the pill packets and you know when you'd open the thing and it's got the side effects that opens out about 16 times yeah it's like it's kind of and you described like a trip advisor for your vagina i like that compared to like i'm not gonna sit and read that yeah and who would who would but they tell you when you go home just sit down i'm like no no i don't want to take it out and be like people don't what are you reading like oh my god she's on that what's that all about that's problematic though because i i feel like i've been taking i did take the contraceptive pill for i think i took about seven different pills over the space of like 11 years and i knew the side effects and i obviously what it was doing

to stop me getting pregnant stop me having painful periods and things like that but i didn't actually ever know how it worked and that sounds quite bad to admit but like i don't know the science how do you think the morning after pill works yeah exactly i not actually question you're asking us yeah i think it's interesting right take it and then it attacks the sperm and then they go into a fight and then the sperm dies right you watch the youtube video um before this works that's how it works right it's really interesting so the morning after pool stop like it stops you from ovulating yeah so um it's you know it's there to stop you from releasing an egg so if there are some sperm hanging around in there

they're gonna meet up but if you've already ovulated um it's still a point of taking it but that egg's already set sail you know it's it's on its little adventure down to the womb and not enough people know actually how it works and same with many contraceptives right it's bad isn't it i don't think it's bad it's just a reflection of how bad the information and advice is around this topic and it's such an essential drug or thing that billion people use around the world but loads of us don't actually know that much about it yeah i think it's interesting what you were saying about having that reference of three friends or like a group chat to think about i personally remember when i first went on the pill and i had spots and then i must have overheard some girls in

the year above saying oh i'm on the yasmin pill and that's cleared my skin up so there i was trotting down to the the little sexual health clinic and i was like i want to go on the Yasmin pill and that's cleared my skin up. So there I was trotting down to the little sexual health clinic and I was like, I want to go on Yasmin because my friends have had their acne cleared up. And then they were like, no, that's not going to really work for you. And it's just like, it's not a one size fits all kind of thing. So have you found, what have the benefits been from, I guess, women sharing their opinion on this forum?

Well, exactly. Finding out the differences for different brands and and working out which ones like yasmin may um be better for your skin yeah um i think also we've built a like a recommender tool um which can help people work out which contraception might be right for them and learning from women like all of their preferences what they really care about it's not all just about effectiveness they all are broadly quite effective at preventing pregnancy but the most effective contraception is the one that you use properly because you like it you know and i think

a lot of people miss that point yeah so if you can get a woman to find the right thing for her that she likes um and that she feels you know reduces her side effects then she'll just be happier and take it properly yeah or use it properly so we learn everything from you know some women love having periods some women really don't want periods really some women really you know and everyone's so different it's fascinating kind of listening and I've spoken to hundreds of women over the last five years about all these issues and I've loved learning and listening and understanding how different everyone is I think yeah it's incredibly empowering is there a sense of I think personally when I was looking through like some of the responses it can also feel a bit sad I think there's the general consensus

that it's an amazing thing that we have contraception but to see all these different side effects and for it to really be like a trial and error thing for so much of your life um I don't know I read through and I think it's an amazing thing but there's so much like I've been through like weight gain acne back knee like mood swings low libido all these things and again the conversation is quite woman-centric do you ever have men on the platform like or people say that they've gone onto the low down and like so what's going on on there i have a lot of men say oh i didn't realize how bad it is you know really yeah like and especially male investors who i pitch to a lot i'd be like this is really a problem yeah you don't understand and it's like this undercurrent of stuff on our list

of stuff as women that we just sort of deal with you know and i have a lot of men who said i had no idea it was this bad you know looking at the reviews and seeing the traction that the website has got in itself is proof right this is a massive problem you know millions of women are googling these things every day like which pill what pill how do i not lose my sex drive on this pill so i love the fact that it's made a lot of men friends investors sort of learn about the problem um and a lot of them but then also i've had a lot of men say oh I know my wife my sister whatever they all have a story related to a woman that they know that they can also relate that back to which is really really reassuring has there been a bigger uptake in women maybe between their 20 and their 30s between the 20s and the 30s because I think we were having a conversation about like the fertility crisis

and how that age where you can conceive has gotten slightly lower due to environmental stuff like are we becoming a little bit more skeptical about what we're putting into our body like around that age yeah i think that's because every pretty much every woman i've spoken to is like at the age of 16 i was put on the pill it's never like you know i chose to go on the pill it's always the language is i was put on the pill and then they sort of as they get into their 20s maybe they realize that pill wasn't right for them and then they come off it and then they go through this process of like learning about their body learning about what they want to do so i think it's just like a combination of their first experience not being great and then

that leading to them being really curious about their body and the hormones and everything like that and on the fertility point i the issue that contraception has is often linked with um reducing your long-term fertility but that's not the case it's just that often when you're using contraception it may mask things like endometriosis or pcos or irregular periods that could have an impact on your fertility yeah but if you're on the pill for 10 years you just might not realize that's happening does that make sense you're kind of um you're putting a pause on that that work to work that out because you're taking contraception quite rightly because you don't want to get pregnant at that point so um often when you come off that contraception you then say oh i'm suddenly realized i might not

be able to get pregnant as quickly as i'd hoped it's not the contraception's fault it's just that that's the first time you're in your normal natural cycle for many years yeah yeah i was gonna say i feel like what you just said is like once you get onto like a contraception because you know exactly what you're trying to stop you then kind of switch off so you don't think about like let me still research on my body or let me still go say for instance check-in and stuff so i do feel like there's always that oh yeah come back in like six months and we'll see how it's going and but it's not that always that mental checking like oh okay cool i've been on this for like a week or so let me see the difference how am i feeling there's not like a you don't daily log your log your emotions and stuff yeah

just because you know you're stopping something so i do feel like we kind of it's there to help us but we also do us a disservice for not like checking in on ourselves personally i say that it's like um it's like we've taken out a 30-year mortgage that's the average amount of time we're on contraception for but like we really should like once a year or once every six months like check in and be like is this working is this not hopefully it's fine and if you're not asking yourself that question it probably is because you're not thinking about it yeah which is great and that's our goal for you not to when you're happy with something not to have to worry about it right to get on with your life yeah i guess but we probably also don't see them cases of all the

women that are quite happy so it's good that your forum allows people to maybe kind of not criticize but like report on maybe the bad side effects but for the people that are doing well there's nothing more reassuring than going on and saying oh that's going to be all right yeah and we actually have an even split of positive and negative reviews on our site which i'm really pleased about because one of the initial criticisms was oh isn't everyone who's just had a bad experience gonna come and moan I mean any review platform has that problem yeah um but yeah it's been really nice to see women saying this has totally changed my life it's improved my you know heavy periods or my sex life's better as a result and yeah really really pleased about that yeah do you hear many myths on i mean i mean

it's the worst place for it it's so bad but around contraception have you seen much on the platform or with your friends so many myths not just from women from healthcare professionals everything sort of just pervades and you know you end up with people coming to you saying oh i've heard this i've heard this everything from i think the biggest thing is you you don't have to take breaks between your pill packets if you're on the combined pill you don't always have to have a break between those packets so you don't need to have a breakthrough bleed if you don't want one um that is like mind-blowing for so many people who thought they had to take that break and we've got loads of advice for that on the on the low down um things like people thinking that you need to have had a baby to get a coil fitted that's not true i've heard that one yeah and i think it

comes from the belief it would be easier to fit if you've had a baby but you know there's absolutely no reason why you can't look into the coil as an option if you've never had given birth um there's lots of myths and misinformation about the morning after pill i feel like that's a space and it's quite a taboo space that people definitely know the belief the incorrect belief that if you take it too many times you'll become infertile or you know it's sort of laden with stuff that i remember being a teenage girl being like scared of the morning after oh yeah i was a lot of negativity yeah or not not negativity but just unknown you saw that from like a lot of your friends be like you're going again are you are you sure you want to do that yeah how many times has it been this year i think you should slide

like oh okay yeah cool slow down it's really interesting um and you know it's it's safe to take as many times as you need to take it but it's not a great form of long-term contraception but you know it shouldn't be it's bound up with all of this stuff has there been like an increase of increase of women using natural methods um on your site have you seen like a lot of people being like oh yeah i was on now i'm just completely yeah i think um by natural methods there's like two types so there's the old school type which is like plotting your period and um and kind of using almost like pen and paper to work out when you think you might be fertile yeah and then there's apps like natural cycles which do all of the kind of decisioning for you

so you don't have to um but you keep track and you really have to be really into it and on it but um the app helps work things out for you we've definitely seen a movement towards women being interested in these options um because there aren't that many good non-hormonal contraceptive methods out there in terms of you know they they all give hormonal methods all give a lots of us similar side effects yeah and impact our life so women are desperate for something better um we do i do though say it shouldn't be overstated how many women are going towards natural methods so natural cycles has about two million users around the world the pill is taken by over 150 million women so it's still a tiny subset of you know how many people take um something like the pill um but we're really excited that these

new uh innovations have happened and people are building new contraceptives or looking at doing it in a different way because we definitely need better methods so i remember back in school i was quite i jumped on conscious very very late but a lot of um i went to a girl's school as well so a lot of the girls in school you jump on just to add weight oh i want bigger boobs so i want to look this certain way so i think we had like a pandemic of like in my in my year like from year seven to like by year 11 maybe like 80 percent of the my school like my year group were on contraception I was just like guys why are you doing that but then you could tell like some people they were on it and they didn't basically

take it the right way so some of them got pregnant some of them just had very bad mental health and stuff as well so it was quite interesting that back then it was just like yeah it's enhanced you know to make me like a woman again growing to my woman body um it was quite interesting yeah so it always used to kind of confuse me i was like people are doing it for the wrong thing so i'm always i'm a panicky person i always have a lot of questions so i'm just like y'all y'all go ahead i'll watch and see see how my own boobs grow and then when my when my time comes then i'll do what i have to do so i just find it interesting that back then when we're in school and stuff there wasn't much on it and people just go in as it was basically a trend

so um that's so true i wonder if it's more like that as young people i don't know if it's less young people going on the contraceptive pill these days difficult or contraception difficult to tell there's definitely been a move away from things like the pill and the patch and the ring to things like the coil and the implant right injection so um to be honest it's it's better value for the nhs to try and fit a coil or an implant in your arm because it will sort you for you know months and years versus trying to keep giving you packets of pills it's a it's a kind of it's more effective it's safer and those methods are really great because you don't have to think about them yeah oh there was there was one rumor we were a bit of a horror story we're not a horror story i think it's not a rumor i

think it's a fact i don't know let's see um um apparently with the coil look inside you coil inside you sometimes when you're having sex the man can feel is that true said strings strings yeah is this true it is it's true um i think men like to pretend they all feel them but right okay gaslighters right it is true especially after you've just had it fitted the threads sort of um become more um bendy as the longer it's been in okay they sort of um soften yeah okay so especially um if you've just had it fitted they might be able to fill them more but over time the threads will soften um but yeah definitely had partners and friends partners comment that they felt something yeah um and it's

fine but some some some men do you find it uncomfortable can you still stick a tampon in if you've got the coil it doesn't go that far i'm just i'm just asking yeah you can um okay although if you if you want to try moon cup you've got to be a little bit careful when you take the moon cup out because there have been um some links to um coils becoming dislodged because of the moon cup right yeah sort of suctioning things out so if you yeah if you use a moon cup and you have a coil there's some really good guidance on the moon cups website about what to do yeah and i've heard rumors about rumors they're facts again sorry so i love making gossip um people having the one in the arm move around the arm when they've gone to go take it out yeah very very small number of cases that

happens but yeah that that can happen um what else have i heard coils i think just like kind of make everyone a bit like scary squirmy squirmy um i couldn't get one fitted for a long time because every time i even thought about it i squirmed you know i was like oh i can't the thought but um after trying pretty much every contraceptive out there i was like well i've got to try the coil like it's the last one left um and it wasn't actually as bad as i thought it would be um but yeah i think there's there's there's always horror stories and there's always like a small percentage of people who will have, you know, the coil maybe coming out or being super painful or the implant moving.

But those are really a small proportion, a very, very small proportion. And the majority of these methods are so safe and they've been used by so many millions of people for so long. Yeah. Well, I don't know the personal reason you maybe went on contraception in the first place but i personally um had possible symptoms of endometriosis and i i went to several different gps both from like the small

island i grew up in and then small towns and just everyone heard that and instantly went no it's just severe period cramps go on this pill and then go on this pill that will stop the periods completely um and I guess my question for you would you consider yourself pro contraception or pro maybe awareness of the options you have out there yeah it's a good question I think what I hated is that before I started the lowdown you couldn't have like a nuanced discussion about contraception you couldn't have like pros and cons in the same place it was always oh well if you're too negative about it women will stop

taking it so you can't ever say anything about side effects because otherwise we'll stop using it or it was so like pro it that it was kind of in denial about the bad bits do you know what I mean so I was I found that really frustrating I felt it was quite like patron it that it was kind of in denial about the bad bits do you know what i mean so i was i found that really frustrating i felt it was quite like patronizing of women you know as if we like can't make our own minds up and that we are you know going to be so terrified by things that we won't use them at all i don't think that's the case and anyone who uses our platform says i feel more informed about what may happen yeah and it's so much better to know what could happen instead of going into something completely unknown was the scariest thing I think when I would sit in

that 15 minute session and I come out of it and be like oh god I feel like nothing came out of that and then I don't really want to pester them again because they've not got the time to test me and so I'll just take this pill yeah and then that's just continued pretty much every six months for like up until now yeah so yeah it's interesting i as i said i was on like seven seven different things i tried and then like basically i had one that i that really sat well with me up until about six months ago when i was traveling and i started getting this hormonal acne again i was like right so then every time I'd come off on the seven-day break my skin would clear up so then I was assessing and I was like god is this really for me but I think as well one of the

biggest fear of the biggest fears of the unknown for me was like is coming off it going to be just as bad as when I'm on it yeah and I think I was told horror stories of like oh your skin could get worse like just be prepared for that so there's a life cycle right yeah we've got a mortgage for 30 years but we're like moving house quite a lot you know and we've got to like work out what's right for us at that time yeah and like so many women I've just had a baby and so many women say their hormones and their body change so much after they've had a baby that the contraception that they were on before right suddenly doesn't work for them you know yeah they get different side effects i think it's fascinating i was i had a coil fit for three years and like in over those three years my side effects changed quite a lot my periods stopped for a year then they came back then my mood changed why is

that because our hormones are yeah i guess you know our hormones are changing and um on something like the coil it it it kind of effectively starts to run out right it's not got a um constant it's going to need changing at the end of that three years as an example yeah um yeah and i i just think so much more research needs to be done into all of the complexity and intricacy and that yeah why do some women get on with a certain type of pill and not others right i think there's something with the whole body literacy uh like knowledge gap is that i feel like it's amazing for us to understand our own bodies but is there research being done that kind of supports us just being a bit of guinea pigs like is there actually like research into the

long-term effects of taking contraception and things like that there is a lot of like good research into long-term effects um you know when it comes to things like fertility you know people thinking that taking contraception long-term may even there is loads of research into that that proves absolutely no it does not impact your long-term fertility which is really reassuring and trust me i've looked at all of it yeah um but the thing that is frustrating is when it comes to studying side effects who's going to do that research who's going to pay for it yeah like the pharma companies aren't going to pay for it they all made a pill 50 years ago that still sells you know yeah a lot because it's loads of women use contraception they're not going to bother so they've never been adapted to any like they've been sort of a few generations they call them of pills that have been

launched but it's as a drug category it's so sleepy and uninvested like yeah there's no really investment into new drugs or better options for now so you can go and like study the side effects but i don't think i don't know if it would actually change anything and i don't know who would fund that research and that's one of the reasons i started the lowdown because i was like we're gonna have to crowdsource this data ourselves because no one else is gonna study it for us yeah i think even as like as i've got older more and more side effects just come out the woodworks and even things like libido i feel like that is one of the the things that wasn't talked about for so long. And then suddenly it was like one of my friends was like, God, you know what?

I've come off the pill and suddenly I feel like I'm no longer numb from the waist down. And I can feel things. And I feel in tune with my body and this and that. And I was like, God, you know what? Now I think about it. Like, baby, my sex drive hasn't been like the most natural thing to come to me. And is that something people talk about as well? The main four things that come up on our platform are impact on mood, impact on sex drive, impact on skin and impact on your periods.

Those are like the four areas that women consistently talk about, you know, and we've got data on what methods are better and worse in these areas which is really exciting so on from that conversation about the way we talk about contraceptives pills coils all those forms of contraception in our group chats do we talk about it at all we've looked we've gone we've deep dived and looked at all the times these key words have come up in our texts. Christy, do you want to start? So what word should I search? Go contraception. How do you spell that? Okay.

Oh, God. First issue. Sorry, English is not my first language. Shall I go first? Yeah, go on. Why is contraception so fucking long? It would probably be easier to get prego and i feel like i've had that text so many times it's just like everyone going into the

i want to go on the coil so i don't have the hormones i've heard mixed reviews but then i've heard mixed reviews about all contraception oh this is actually quite funny so um last year we went to jamaica right and a lot of the girls think because our periods kind of sink we were like so what contraception makes us miss our periods all right yeah so a lot of them were like i tried it wasn't too bad but i've heard a lot of people who have awful periods afterwards this is talking about the period delay yeah i've tried that i'm not doing that again yeah i didn't even know that was a thing yeah that's one of the best benefits of contraception, right? Being able to choose when you have a bleed. But there's also a drug which contains a type of progesterone

that can help stop your periods. We get a lot of requests for it around summer holidays. I took it for the first time two years ago for my birthday. So I feel like my period now aligns with the first of the month and I'm born on the first of december so it really it really gets to me but the one day i was like i'm having a birthday party i am not gonna be on my period i'm gonna enjoy myself so i looked did some research looked into it i'd even go to my gp i actually um used the sexual health london site i love that site yeah

it's great love it so i went on that and did some research read spoke to an online um pharmacist and they gave me the pill took the pill so it's seven days you've got to take it leading up i think it is um great perfect first came enjoyed my birthday party but that following month the pain was absolutely awful i didn't know that was even a thing yeah well i'm happy it's out there because you know i mean i know a lot of friends that are getting married and then oh my god the time of the month they can like control it okay i don't want it during my my wedding yeah so i can kind of have it later so i do appreciate that contraception technology mad crazy crazy pain yeah alice do you have any i'm as you can imagine the like phone a friend contraception technology lads crazy crazy pain yeah alice do you have any i'm

as you can imagine the like phone a friend contraception person in my mates so if it's like you know i've just started sleeping with someone um what what contraception is the least bad one on your side um yeah how would you even respond to that um well i've also got yeah well i always say actually the hormonal coil is the site is the method on our site that ranks okay in terms of overall satisfaction or at the low down it's the hormonal coil so you might have heard of a coil called the morena yeah and then there's also fertility awareness coil so you might have heard of a coil called the marina yeah and then there's also fertility awareness methods so things like natural cycles they rank really highly as well yeah i was gonna say a couple my my things are kind of slate in the coil someone put found out

last week that my coil was inserted wrongly and was stuck in the side of my cervix had it removed but it's made me feel really crap oh that is horrible i want to go on the coil so i don't have the hormones i've heard mixed reviews but then i've heard mixed reviews on all contraception what does that mean i i want to go on the coil so i don't have the hormones they just wipe out there's two coils there's a non-hormonal one right yeah so a lot of a lot of people like the copper coil because it's not got any hormones in it but it does make your bleeds it's likely to make your bleeds heavier yeah here's another one anyone that says contraception doesn't cause weight gain can suck my tit does it fair fair another one why can't

men just take the pill yes why can't they why can't they because um it's taking so long to make a male pill yeah it's really annoying basically pharmaceutical companies are like you've got drugs that work you know they they do prevent pregnancy they they don't think the need from the they don't think the desire from men is there to take a male pill that's not true like there is a lot of desire for men to take yeah i think a lot of the research shows it there is there nice and also i think it how fascinating would it be to have like oh my god yeah men totally empowered in that sense more than they are with condoms it would be great yeah i love how you use the word empowering that sounds very um like believing in them yeah that kind of thing i feel like we should all play our part when it comes to like having safe sex and enjoying that kind of like um enjoying that um what do you

call it that moment of intimacy right um and i feel like we should all take the responsibility as well it should just lay on the woman so if they could hello hello guys if you guys can create it please create it because there is a need for it and it needs to be out there i feel but i don't think even like i don't have any text in here of men asking are you on the pill after we've had a little da da da why is it just it's like there's so much onus on the woman just have that sorted and that's just a bit mental to me it's like how much is it all right, how much is it? All right then, how much is it? What do you mean, how much? Hello?

You're talking to me like that? There's my monso. And it's like, you get it for free. You can keep the money anyway. Cool. No, I do feel like, yeah, I think it's needed. It's so needed. There's a trial going on, being led by Edinburgh University,

into a male contraceptive gel. And we actually spoke to some of the trialists. Oh, that's a trial going on being led by edinburgh university into a male contraceptive gel and we actually spoke to some of the trialists oh that's a bit harmless isn't it nothing stuck up there willie oh what um yeah and it's you rub like a gel onto the man's like back and shoulders and it is you know it stops his sperm from swimming effectively it's really interesting it's not very invasive is it they just get oh come and just get a nice little rub down the massage i've got to sit on the nurse bed and no open wide christy no yeah that's crazy what are they trying to do less invasive i know there are a couple things like the patch for the women but is there are they trying to do i think what they want to do is like first develop the gel to work and then they'll put it in pill form because the gel itself is quite a hassle

because it rubs off and it varies some cream isn't it yeah yeah so um yeah they're trying to look at making it into a pill so it's easier um but yeah like it's interesting if you follow that study because there's been like complaints of bad side effects for the men oh yeah my heart bleeds yeah a bit of side effects for them wouldn't hurt no it's really interesting what are the side effects things like well effectively they're sort of taking out their natural testosterone so right um some of them you know their voices go a bit higher and things like that and they're trying to get that balance right. No, don't laugh. Don't laugh. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I just, in my head,

I just imagined somebody talking and a helium voice is going. No, no. Be kind. Be kind. This is what we're wanting. This is the future.

You can't be laughing. No, but the same way we kind of be like, you know, when that kind of sharp pain when we're like, oh my God, sometimes they should.

To be fair, men have been like calling us out for being on the blob and stuff for all that time yeah it's about time their voice is raised enough octave yeah sorry jokes okay let's see i've got one here uh fact of the day breastfeeding is a form of contraception is that true um this is so technically um it's it's quite complicated you've got to breastfeed only breastfeed very like you can't even like pump you can't even miss a feed um there's loads of like things you have to be really careful right but in some in some situations it can

stop you from ovulating and therefore you you know you might not be able to get pregnant but that is a huge caveat and you know you should really speak to your doctor about it it's yeah it's often not advised um to be used as a formal contraception there okay noted good wow all of mine are just like those group chat discussions of just i can't finding the right one is so hard it's annoying and unfair we have to put our bodies through it to be honest and then we're just going back and forth with what did it feel like i've tried every single type except the patch and injection it's just yeah a lot of ones of my friends also complaining that they can't get a coil or an

implant fitted because there's no air yeah this is a thing yeah so even if you didn't get on with the coil for example and you were bleeding heavily and in pain it's not guaranteed if you called up your gp and was like i need this taken out today yeah that could happen it's hard and that's because of loads of cuts that they've made to sexual health services in this country yeah yeah yeah i mean in terms of i think it was an interesting conversation about like the politics we vote for and the government and how much investment they're putting into women's health and things like the contraception and a lot of them are men as well so that's something like is that something we should be more conscious of yeah I mean it's a huge problem not to bore you but essentially the budget that goes

to sexual health um it got moved to like councils or local authorities to sort of have that budget and look after it and so it has to play off against all the other things that councils are trying to you know roadworks and bins and all of that and that's not it's always going to get like pushed to the side that's why you've had loads of sexual health clinics shut down um i mean the government's recently pledged 25 million to put into women's health hubs um but i think the government's just pledged 30 million into grassroots women's football now i love women's sport don't get me wrong but like 25 million is a drop in the ocean for how much we need to be spending on women's health in this country and when you see them you know spending money more money in other areas you just think we've got all of our priorities wrong and we need to fix the basics first what would that

look like then if they were investing money into women's health it would look like you'd go to the same place to get your smear test as to get your contraception to get your coil fitted you know to get your hrt like you shouldn't have to keep going to different places or being told that you can't get a coil fitted at your gp surgery or to be told that they don't do sti tests because you have to do it this way like if you're going to put a swab in my vagina can you just do it once for like three different things yeah and like can you just help me not get pregnant? Because it's the best investment of the government, like for every pound that they spend on contraception,

they save nine pounds. It's such a big return on investment to make sure that we are able to decide when and where we have children. I'm literally trying to think about the last time where there was even like a government scheme or like a boost on like, guys, save sure you're unconscious yeah i think probably the last time was when i was in secondary school where we used to have like like little packs of like

information like condoms in there or like people come in and talk about those type of things i think since then i don't think there's ever that kind of emphasis in schools even in sexual education it's just very much this this this one and done one and done yeah you have a baby this is how you avoid it blah blah but it's not that much in-depth focus in schools and i do feel like when you are in school you're more curious yeah you're instead of like talking to people that are you know they have the knowledge they have the background you're going on social media and social media already we as we know you hear one thing but some things are not true some things are just to push like a uh medicine or push just push that the wrong things out there so i do feel like it's weird looking back back then even though we didn't have that much information out there

there was people there willing to come and tell and teach people on how to stay safe and what constrictions are out there so it's yeah it's very interesting where the money is going yeah not not into sexual health and contraception sadly so how how can we ensure that women are taking or looking looking into the best options for their body it's obviously great to have these kind of forums but if they don't feel like they're getting that from their gp like what is the situation yeah i think we have um like i said we have a recommender tool which is a really good place to start almost to check back in on what your preferences are and what you medically um can and can't take maybe because of um health issues or other issues in your family that will open up

a kind of menu of options that you can we've loads of information and content on our site which you can read webinars blogs everything that you can really kind of get your hands on for example if you're thinking about getting a coil fitted we have loads of guides on pain relief and that process and what that looks like because I would also really advise um asking your GP surgery if anyone has if you're not getting um the best advice from the GP or you want to try and speak to someone um with more um experience I would ask your GP surgery if anyone has a special interest in sexual health or try to go to a sexual health clinic because in these clinics they've got people who speak about

these things day in day out and they really know their stuff and i know a lot of clinics have been shut down and it's hard to get into them but if you really are struggling they're a really good place to go to so we've been given some facts and myths to test ourselves on around contraception guys ready yes let's go okay right number one how did they test for contraceptive pills does anyone know on lab on on what on lab i thought it said on lamp other that's not human like you see how they test on that rats and stuff no really no they would have like probably done animal trials first but the history of how they initially developed the pill was pretty dodgy yeah um there's a horrible history of them giving it to puerto rican women who didn't know what they were taking and then suffering horrendous side effects and some of them dying during the trial

not to that that was a very very very old version of the pill you know in the 50s um but yeah it's pretty depressing and uh something that the medical well the pharmaceutical industry should be very embarrassed about yeah that's not really talked about haven't heard of that one wow yeah i've got some a bit of information they did clinical trials on over 200 puerto rican women who were poor and had no other methods of contraception the reason it was here because contraceptions were already legal in puerto rico however the women were not properly informed of the health and safety risks and then the the symptoms they reported were vomiting headaches

dizziness and menstrual irregularities with some having to be hospitalized hospitalized however the receipt researchers deemed these side effects unimportant compared to their discovery were they men by any chance yes all right cool so my first question is when was the oral contraceptive pill it first invented oh oral contraceptive pill would that be that one from 1960 i think it launched in the 60s 60 61 okay i think it's available in the nhs 69 or something. Oh, very close, guys. I guess I could give it to you guys. It says May 1950.

However, it wasn't FDA approved until 1960. Wow. The swinging 60s. Whoa. Love it. All right. What percentage of the UK are using contraception? 60? I want to say 78.2 that's a lot christy but 60 is a lot 40 is it more or less i don't come on come on guys sure surely it's more of us 84 percent 78.2 yeah we have one of the highest contraceptive I'm pretty surprised

by that yeah wow and the other top countries are Finland Switzerland and Canada ooh

Finland that's amazing yeah very progressive that's a lot though 80% we're all and we're all

taking these things that we don't quite know how they work well thank god for the lowdown eh big up the lowdown for real all right should i should i do one then yeah go on oh this is interesting what was the first record of birth control was that not the first question no did i say what was the first record of birth control

huh oh like the first yeah yeah is it like um the romans probably oh something they probably made condoms out of like sheep skins or something they definitely did that oh oh yeah definitely weren't pills about no coils maybe they were coils they loved doing things with their hands so you guys are going roman oh no i reckon like pre-romans pre-romans coils out of just stone i wouldn't want some stone on my vagina oh hell no um no the answer says it dates back to the to an egyptian manuscript written in 1550 bc it describes the use of honey. I can't pronounce that word. Acacia? Acacia?

Acacia. Acacia. Acacia leaves? Yeah. Well, it says A-C-A-C-I-A leaves and lint to be placed in the vagina to block sperm. Lint, like tummy button fluff. It says lint. Lint.

Lint and honey. Yeah. In where? In the vagina to block sperm. Oh, honey trap like a bee trap oh my god like a venus i love that don't try that at home don't try that at least it'll be sweet yeah yeah honey sweet isn't it yeah but that's quite interesting though that's jokes 1550 bc yeah that's old wowza okay okay do you want to do another one right so we're really lucky in the uk because we get our contraception for free but um do these countries offer free contraception australia norway ireland and brazil oh i feel like ireland's a telltale giveaway. Maybe no. Yeah, you have to pay for it in Ireland.

Pay for it. How much? I don't think it's that much, but it's still, you know, probably, I don't know what it is, 20 quid a month or something. Yeah, wow. That's crazy. Okay. Do you know what lactational amy...

Well, say one that I know then. Amary... Whoa. Amary... Amary... Aminuria that sounds like a lovely girl's name yeah okay do you know what lactational aminuria method is lactational milk lactational is it the breast breast milk well then that's what we talked about earlier but you gotta know the pattern you know you can't just do it you gotta know how to actually do it yeah yeah okay good

right true or false iuds can tear through the lining of your uterus how sharp is it down there i would like to say false because if it was true, they wouldn't put it down there. I think they would. Is it true? In a tiny, less than 1%, less than half a percent of cases, that might happen. But yeah, it doesn't happen a lot. That was a shout. Okay.

Which method is coitus interruptus? Say that again, sorry. Which method is coitus interruptus say that again sorry which method is coitus interruptus wait a minute it's not quite as interruptus like interrupting something yeah so what could that be what method the pill what quote is it literally what is What? Quote a thing literally. What is your... Period cramps. Oh, no. How am I meant to know? Let me do it again.

I'm done. A bit like a Roman sacrifice. egyptians would have done it oh guys i'm really slow the egyptian is the pull out baby the pullout method withdrawal interrupt so you're interrupting said perm sperm who's perm that was not pulling out what it's gonna be like oh coitus interrupts the withdrawal method or pulling out the fun fact the biblical character onan incurred incurred god's wrath by in using coitus interruptus instead of following local custom and impregnating his sister-in-law after the death of his brother god that's just drama.

I'm not about that too. Do you know what I mean? Sorry guys, the way that Lauren was describing that, that drama was definitely drama. Acting out the window. You knew what I meant. Did you guys get it? Or different breed of men, I guess.

Okay, good. Interesting. Should I do one more why right okay can you name all the methods of contraception i'll go all right pill coil morena coil that patch that patch i was going to say Femidom Oh yeah that is contraception Oh god The injection in the arse Oh I'm all out

We got the implant as well As the rod in the arm We mentioned the vaginal ring oh my god yeah that's one yeah she's like um a smaller version of like a shag band they don't do that no more do they they do yeah it's still but it's not very common it's not very common because i remember i searched it one time and it says that they don't do it in the uk no more i was like oh okay yeah it's quite it's quite new actually it's one of the newer methods but um it's quite hard to get hold of here interesting you got yeah so patch ring pill coil hormonal coil non-hormonal yeah implant injection um

condoms so male condom female condom um you've got all the like natural methods so like the digital apps and the pen and paper method she's going in you've got um the vasectomy don't talk enough about vasectomy we don't do yeah it's when they uh yeah yeah um give men the snip which i think way more men should get i don't understand kieran my partner's getting that asap right kieran if you're listening um and then obviously women can get sterilized as well which is a lot more of a like involved procedure so it shouldn't yeah vasectomy you could go in for a couple of hours and get vasectomy and go home it's not as big and it's reversible no for men for men it is not always not always right okay i think even just having that conversation just now three seconds ago about all the different types of contraception there are i think you can sometimes forget yeah it's like you just go by what's common about what's common in your group chat or what you guys

have heard overheard like you don't i wouldn't basically gone gone and done the research because obviously they've spoken about this my friends know about this so why am i going to go elsewhere let me just go with what i know and what's on trend unfortunately we shouldn't be doing that we actually should be like doing our research and finding what actually works for ourselves yeah spring summer the catalog's out head to the low down find out yeah what what's what's back in fashion what kind of contraception you should try and use some of our tools to figure it out and we've also got a team of amazing doctors you can speak to as well knowledge is power power is knowledge thanks so much for joining us this week on t4 and thank you alice for being our

amazing guests thanks for having me guys and be sure to go check out the lowdown and see our next episode in the four nine revolution series