The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1032: Sarah Hill | How Birth Control Rewires Women's Brains Part Two

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Beyond pregnancy prevention, birth control pills affect the way women think and behave. Dr. Sarah Hill explains their invisible impacts here! [Part 2/2 — find part 1 here!] What We Discuss: Birth control pills can potentially affect brain development in teenagers, raising concerns about prescribing them for non-contraceptive reasons like acne treatment. There's a possible link between birth control use and increased risk of depression, especially in younger women (up to 300% increased risk for teenagers). The politicization of birth control information has led to extreme views on both sides, making it difficult for women to access balanced, scientifically accurate information. Current research methods may mask individual experiences with birth control, as averaging results can hide significant variations among women. How women can empower themselves to take control of their reproductive health while being mindful of potential impacts on their overall well-being. And much more — be sure to catch part one of this two-part conversation here! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1032 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. So here we are going through this period of intense brain development that we're going through during the teenage years. And we decide that it's a good idea to give teenage girls whose brains are still developing, coordinated by sex hormones, something that shuts down their brain ovarian access. So it prevents their ovaries from producing hormones and then replaces them with a daily dose of the same synthetic hormone every day.

And we don't think this is going to affect brain. development. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional drug trafficker, former jihadi, gold smuggler, or Russian spy. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show. Our episode starter packs are a great

place to do that. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation and cyber warfare, crime and cults, and more, and that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, part two with Dr. Sarah Hill, if you haven't heard part one, it's absolutely fascinating, you won't regret it, and this conversation will make a whole lot more sense if you've already listened to that episode. All right, here we go, part two with Dr. Sarah Hill. I would love to talk more about the benefits of birth control.

Obviously, you don't get pregnant. Well, not always. Most of the time you don't get pregnant when you're on it. But I know it's prescribed for various reasons, and so I'd like to talk about that because I think the problem is a lot of people are like, well, I don't have to worry about this because I'm not sexually active. And then they go in for like, I don't know, acne, and they end up on birth control. And it's like, oh, now all these other things are potentially going to happen

to me and I need to pay attention. Right. So, you know, birth control when it's used as a contraceptive, I mean, just in terms of, you know, being able to regulate fertility is a huge benefit. And in some ways, I don't think that we can overstate how important it has been for women to be able to be given a tool that they can use to be able to safely and effectively regulate their fertility. Because until we were able to do that, I mean, it was really difficult to make long-term plans if you were a woman. I mean, if you think about like educational goals, it's like who's going to start a 10-year degree program as a female who's like, let's say that you're married or in a relationship and you aren't able to regulate fertility. I mean, there's a very good chance you're going to end up getting benched because of

pregnancy. And so there's just really no reason to even start trying. And what we saw is that when you look at historical trends of in education, what you see is when birth control pills began to be legally available to single women, all of the sudden applications. to post-secondary degree programs like law school, business school, and medical school went off the charts. It increased by something like 700%. And this is because birth control allowed women to make plans. And when women are able to plan, they do more, they achieve more, they are able to become economically, financially, I guess that's the same thing, politically independent from men. And so, you know, when we think about birth control as being this amazing tool to allow us to regulate fertility,

I mean, I think that it is an important, you know, it's been a really important piece of technology for women. And I think for that reason, there's been, you know, sort of a tendency to feel pretty protective of the birth control pill. Yeah. Which we can get into in just a minute. But as you noted, in addition to those benefits, which are pretty huge, now birth control is being prescribed for all kinds of reasons, many of which are far less important than that. And so just to give you some examples of that, you mentioned acne. certainly when I was a teenager, I mean, and that was a long time ago, that was being recommended. You don't have to do that to yourself on this show. We can live in a dialogue.

No, okay. Yeah, we can, yeah, we can, yeah, I love it. I love it. So maybe it is just a river in Egypt. Maybe it is. So, no, I mean, I was even recommended that and, you know, back when I was a teenager as a means for preventing acne. Certainly now, I mean, it's recommended almost as a first line of defense if you're having problems with your skin, or if you're having menstrual cycle irregularities, you're having bad cramps or that sort of thing, women are being given in a use the word women very loosely because a lot of times, these are girls, you know, very young girls, being put on hormonal birth control, which has all these effects that we were talking about earlier today that, you know, that are really wide ranging and potentially not what they are really bargaining for

when they're just looking for a way to clear up their skin. Yeah, I want to jump back on one thing because I know someone's going to email me about this. You said that when the birth control pill was essentially approved and started to get prescribed, that enrollment in university studies went up among women. Some people might say, well, that was just a general shift in society. We can't, that's correlation, not causation. But do we know that? Well, of course it's correlation, not causation.

But the fact of the matter is, that's all part of the societal trend. I mean, all that societal trends are is the result of individual people making decisions at the same time. Right. Okay. Right. And those individual people making decisions at the same time are a bunch of women, you know, who are now not being burdened by the burden of their fertility and able to actually plan and say, oh, my gosh, like, I can actually decide what I want to do 10 years from now or five years from now and not have to worry about getting totally sidelined because of pregnancy. And so it really opened up these doors for women. And I think that planning and having agency over kind of what happens in your life is like one of the most powerful tools that you can have. because without it, what can we do? And so I think that, you know, there's been a lot of difficulty around conversations about birth control just because there's a lot of women who feel very much like you can't talk about the potential drawbacks of something that's been that

important to us because it has been. It's incredibly important to us being able to regulate our fertility. And there are other ways to do it, of course, that are non-hormonal. But what was really nice about hormonal birth control is that it works really well. And it's, pretty easy to use and it's pretty accessible, particularly now, you know, that we have organizations like Planned Parenthood that help to provide these services to women who are in low-income groups. And so it's something that most women can have access to. Most women can use effectively and most women are able to manage to avoid pregnancy without too much difficulty. But, of course, there's all of these side effects. And so it's the discomfort of holding those two truths at the same

time that makes people get a little bit uneasy, I think. And that's, yeah. That makes sense. I'm already uneasy because I'm a male talking about birth control. So the bar has to hit like a pretty high level for me to redline on the anxiety around this conversation. I'm curious, though. You mentioned you said before that we're prescribing this for skin and I can't remember what else. Timing of periods. Cranps, yeah. But essentially, can I say little girls because they're 13?

I guess that count. That's a little girl-ish type person. That seems like a bad idea. And again, I'm no doctor. but like knowing all the side effects that we discussed earlier, it's like, oh, this isn't, I took antibiotics for acne as a teenager, and I didn't even have that bad of acne. It was just something the doctor was like, hey, if you get a zit every now and then take, I can't remember what it was called erythromycin or amoxus, something. Yeah. And now the insides of my teeth are brown,

because that's what it does to your teeth. If you take it over a long period of time. And oh, yeah, taking antibiotics for five years is a really bad idea because it messes with your gut and all kinds of stuff. So I stopped taking it. And when I had my wisdom teeth removed, the surgeon was like, oh, you took antibiotics on such and such whatever it was called. And I was like, oh yeah. And he's like, I said, how do you know? And he goes, well, look at the inside of your tooth. And it was like a brown. He's, I said, oh my God, my tooth is rotten. He's like, no, no, no, no, it's fine. It's just brown on the inside because I think it's called dentin, not the enamel, it's the stuff underneath. He's like, it just turns brown with that. I'm like, that can't be good. And he's like, it's fine.

But my teeth, I can't, like if people go and whiten their teeth, that's never going to work for me because the inside is brown. It doesn't matter how white the outside is. And I just thought to myself, I'm lucky, I'm really lucky that I have merely a minor cosmetic issue with this. I'm sure I screwed up my gut biome. Who knows what else got messed up. But we just over, my point is we prescribe things thinking, this is fine. Look, her acne went away, and now she doesn't have these minor cramps. Oh, oops, we've been giving a 13-year-old girl hormonal birth control that's been messing with her brain, and now she's 35, and she wants to have kids, and she doesn't, literally has no idea who she is off of these things. Right. Yeah, I mean, there's so much that you said there that I have something to say about.

And the first, just, we all have a blind spot with medication in this way. It's like when you take it for something, that's the only thing you're really focused on, right? And then... This is only doing the one thing I wanted to do. Right, right. And the fact is, I mean, our body, we, we... We are not built by an engineer. Like an engineer did not say, okay, now this part lives on this island. And if you take a drug that affects this, it only affects that. And oh, and if you, you know, and this part of your body is operated by this little cog and

sprocket over here and it doesn't affect anything else. Instead, you know, our whole body is just a big mess of electrical spaghetti that's been thrown together, you know, reverse engineered by natural selection and everything is intertwined into a degree that you would never even imagine because everything affects everything else and the body is just incredibly messy that way. And so you can't treat one thing, especially with like a pill, which is generally systemic and have like the one effect. And so we never think until recently, you know, I think we've gotten a little bit smarter about asking questions about things like antibiotics and that sort of thing like, gee, you know, does it make sense to wipe

out that person's microbiome in the service of maybe they have a sinus infection? When they probably don't. It's probably a virus, and that's not a good idea. But certainly for a very long time. I mean, this was just like they were giving medication like you were talking about off. For cosmetic reasons in a teenager? And it wasn't like I didn't have my face covered. I didn't need like, what is it called, acutane where it like it just dries you up because otherwise you look. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of rough. I had like the occasional Zit from being a dirt ass at age 13. And oh yeah, every kid has Zits. Okay. Put a little sticker on it and go on with your life. no, no, no, take antibiotics for a decade or whatever it was.

Right. So it's a ridiculous now. Well, no, I know. And instead of saying like, hey, perhaps you should cut back on sugar or like, hey, have you consider what, yeah, exactly. Have you considered washing your face, you dirty, little prick? That's what I think about with my son. I have a 14-year-old son and it's like, have you tried washing your face well?

Because that will do it. Like, I think that'll help you out. Soap, buddy. I think that'll help you. A little bit soap goes a long way. But I mean, with the birth control pill, you know, here we are giving girls, as you said, hormones. And a few things that we need to a little bit of background to kind of illustrate how much of a big deal this is. Our brain isn't done developing until we're in our 20s.

Until it is usually our early 20s, brain development is still going on. And during the puberty, so when we, you know, go through puberty. And for women, it's like getting your periods and for boys to solve the other sort of comparable activities. all of that is comparable activities is a great euphemism for what goes on during that phase of life. Yeah, I'm trying to be polite. Yeah, I appreciate that.

But all of that remodeling that goes on, I mean, because your brain is seriously undergoing a major remodeling project because it's remodeling it from like this kid brain which is just like happy and sunshine and rainbows and like, oh, it totally is transforming that into the really complex adult brain. And the adult brain is incredibly complex.

it takes a long time to develop, and that remodeling project is coordinated by our sex hormones. So here we are going through this period of intense brain development that we're going through during the teenage years, and we decide that it's a good idea to give teenage girls whose brains are still developing coordinated by sex hormones, something that shuts down their brain ovarian access. So it prevents their ovaries from producing hormones and then replaces them with a daily dose of the same synthetic hormone every day. And we don't think this is going to affect brain development. Yeah. And like what's really messed up about this is that I have only seen in my career fewer than 10 studies that have even bothered to ask the question. Nobody's even

asked. It was just like, oh yeah, let's give this to get it. It's kind of like, you know, I feel this way with psychotropic medication as well. Like you know, you see this with things like they're giving, you know, riddle in and Prozac and stuff to teenagers. And I'm thinking to myself, Like, no way. Yeah. There's not enough studies showing what this actually does then to long-term development. And looking at this question with birth control pills, with girls, the few studies that have actually bothered to ask the question seem to indicate that if you go on the pill during development

when your brain is still developing, that it may put you on the road for having a greater risk, a major depressive disorder throughout the rest of your lifetime, even after you go off of it. I was going to ask if that had anything to do with depression. or even maybe like postpartum depression or anything that triggers depression because the same way like going on anabolic steroids messes with your natural endogenous testosterone, it sort of seems like the same thing. And by the way, anabolic steroids highly illegal, right? But are basically the male version of kind of what we're giving to 13 year old girls to get rid of their acne. Not quite the same, but it's serious. But yeah, I mean, it's the same thing. You're giving them a systemic drug that has

widespread effects from head to toe. Right. And it's illegal for men to take steroids. I mean, to, you know, have them available because they have these like wide ranging systemic effects. Right. But for birth control pills, yeah, it's like, oh, you've got cramps? Yeah. Take the pill. Nobody on earth would go, oh, are you a little, like my son is quite small for his age. And I was like, oh, I know when I was a kid, there was a kid who was really small and they gave him some sort of growth hormone or something. And they're like, oh, yeah, we don't do that anymore. We do not do that anymore. And I was like, oh, really? And they're like, yeah, that's not good. It's better to be small than the side effects of taking this. And it's like, and I was like, oh my gosh, because, you know,

Ryan turned out okay, but he's also like seven feet tall now because they overdid it or something. And I was like, holy crap, he's really tall. It's ridiculous how tall this kid got. And he probably had a gross spurt and they gave him all this stuff. But you would never go, you know what, Jaden, you are a little small for your age. You should take anabolic steroids. Meanwhile, a 13 year old girl walks in and it's like, I have zits and my back hurts sometimes or my stomach hurt sometimes. And they're like, take this for the rest of your life until you want to have kids. Right. So of course it's suppressing stuff. And then you go off it and you're like, wow, I feel horrible. My brain doesn't know how to adjust to this new reality. Well, right. And when you think about, you know, if, and I wish I had a figure.

I would love to show a figure, but, you know, for naturally, yeah, a graph, like for naturally cycling woman, you go through these periods of escalating estrogen that goes on in the first half of the cycle and then it decreases, then it increases a little bit. And then progesterone is really low in the first half of the cycle, and then it rises in the second half and then falls. And it's like when you're going through puberty and when you're developing as a woman, you have these irregular cycles and all of these things as your body is learning to communicate with itself. So the brain is learning to stimulate the ovaries. It's learning to pick up on the hormonal messages from the ovaries. And so you get a little bit of messiness where girls cycles are irregular and this and that and the other thing. But that's all part of

like normal development and that's something that's super important. It's like developing what I guess I could only refer to as like hormonal tone. You know, it's like your brain and your, in your ovaries become really responsive to one another and one another signals. And that is how you get a healthy functioning body is that you develop this tone that's very responsive and it knows exactly how to adapt when, oh my gosh, there's a lot of estrogen going on right now. Like, you know, let's go to the high estrogen things. And oh, no, it's decreasing. Well, don't worry. We're not going to make a be too jarring. We know just what to do. And when you have a girl, whose brain development is going on with synthetic hormones in the birth control pill,

which is the same message every day, you're not developing that tone. You know, and the ovaries are never even learning to produce the hormone at all because you're not ovulating. And so your brain is used to only getting this, right, the same hormonal message every day. Your ovaries aren't used to doing anything. And then you go off of it. And if all that was going on during the period of brain development, you know, and again, And when you're a teenager, it's like you're not done being built.

Yeah. And so all of that could potentially lead to long-term changes. And we just don't know because nobody's bothered to ask the question. It was just like, oh, yeah, look, here's this thing that prevents pregnancy. Let's go ahead and give it to teenagers without anybody bothering to take two steps back and say, wait, what is it that they're actually giving teenagers? And like, is that a good idea? When you look at the research on things like depression and anxiety and that sort of thing,

what you tend to see is overwhelmingly it's the teenagers who are suffering from this. So, for example, when you look at the risk of developing depression on different types of hormonal birth control, especially with a combination birth control pill, what you find is that you do get a little bit of an increased risk of developing depression among adult women, but it's not that significant. But when you look at that same risk in teenagers, and I'm defining a teenager as somebody who's 19 and younger, what you get is like a 280 or 300% increased risk of developing depression. That's scary. Well, it is. That's really scary. And so here's these girls, you know, because we talked about the benefit of, you know, like the big benefit of birth control,

which is fertility regulation. And it's something that for some women, it's going to be worth all the costs that we talked about at the episode we were recorded earlier. But for something like acne, like, I think that if you told, you know, these girls or told their moms like, hey, there's no chance you could develop major depressive disorder. And we also don't, know what this does to brain development. I think that most of them would say, you know what, I might wash my face a little bit more carefully. We'll get to the expensive face care shampoo instead of the pill. Right. Yeah, instead of the pill. But these conversations aren't being had. And I don't think that it's because I'd like to think most people's doctors are

pretty well-meaning and they mean to take care of their patient. I just don't think that they're thinking about it. Whether you're on or off the pill, hopefully your taste and podcast doesn't change, nor your propensity to support the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. By the way, we have a subreddit. A lot of people who use Reddit who listen to the show, are over there. Jordan Harbinger is the subreddit name. Come on and join us. A lot of show threads. A lot of people talking about Feedback Friday, the different interviews. It's a fun place to talk with Gabriel and I. Again, it's on Reddit over at the Jordan Harbinger subreddit if you are a Reddit user. And if you're not, why not start now? It's the best social media platform out there.

It's only mildly ridiculously toxic, most of the time, some of the time. Now, back to Dr. Sarah Hill. Why my dermatologist gave me any biotics for five. Like, it was literally like five or six years. She was just thinking, ah, this is probably fine. But she was 100 years old in the early 90s. And she wasn't used to thinking that there could be knock on effects from this. And she wasn't reading journals.

She didn't use the internet. Right. And I think I said face care shampoo. Everybody knows what I mean, right? That's not a real thing. It sounds like with the pill, the female body turns into a symphony without a conductor, right? where they're just like, okay, the drums might play, the people might play, they're trying to

match with one another. They're doing maybe the best they can. And it might even sound okay if you're just in one section. And then later the audience comes in and the conductor comes back because you want to have a baby. And it's, and the guy's just like, what the hell have you been doing for the last 10 years? This is horrible. Right. They're out of practice. They're out of sync. And it's like they've never played together before. And that's horrifying. Yeah, it is. And I mean, honestly, that's actually a really good analogy because in a lot of ways, normally it's like the, you know, the brain is telling the ovaries what to do. And then when the ovaries producing hormone, then that kind of tells the brain how to conduct, you know, it's like, oh, okay, too much tuba,

you know, and they start to like decrease that. A theme in your house, too much tuba. It is. It is definitely a theme of my house. And so you get that like really nice feedback loop between somebody who's in charge of what's happening and then the activities that are going on in the ovaries. What happens with the pills, like you say, I mean, it's just like music is being played. And it's not being controlled by anybody. It's just like being released in the brain has just happened to figure out how to deal with it. And it's not learning how to adjust to hormonal variation. It's that all of that is potentially problematic, but we don't know because nobody's bothering to ask the research question. Do we know what this is maybe two in the weeds,

but do we know why it might cause depression? I know I've read something about brain shifting memories around that gets an inhibited and it can make us feel like our lives lack meaning. Do you know what I'm talking about at all? Yeah, yeah. So one idea is, well, so there's a few things. So one is the blunted stress response that we talked about last time. And stress is something that occurs in our body when bad things are happening, but it's also something that happens when good things are happening. And so having regular bursts of stress and regular bursts of stress hormone, you know, is one of the ways that I think that our brain learns to appreciate that it lives a meaningful life. Right. Like, if you have nonstop, flat,

line stress, that means that your life is pretty boring and there's probably not a lot that's meaningful going on because when meaningful things happen, it increases our stress response. Excitement, those sorts of things increase stress in addition to the bad things. And so lacking like regular ups and downs from our stress response is potentially one mechanism by which you sort of develop this kind of flat line where everything is just kind of blah and then that doesn't really make anybody feel good. What is that called like anhedonia? Is Arama?

Yeah, and Hedonia. Yeah, no, that's like a real, that was a nice 10-cent word he just threw out there. Yeah, 10 cents only. From psychology literature. Like, that's a good one. Yeah. Yeah, I know. So, yeah, lack of pleasure.

I mean, just like where everything just feels kind of, and that's one of the sort of key defining features of depression is Anedonia. Finding joy in basically nothing. Yeah, yeah, I know sounds great, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. And then there's just lacking the release of exposure really at all to endodging. is progesterone, which is women's other sex hormone. And it is, even though estrogen is the one that gets all the attention, progesterone is actually super good for the brain. It's really good for a lot of

things. But just keeping the brain happy and calm and smooth, running smoothly is something that progesterone is really good at. And it's good at this because when it gets metabolized, it releases this compound called alopregnanolone. And elopregnanoin activates like the chill out program in our brain. Yeah, I remember we talked about this. Yeah. Yeah, so you hit those chill-out switches, and it was really good at its inhibitory, so it, like, cause their brain to just kind of like this, and it's very relaxing. Like the progestins in hormonal birth control, because they're made out a testosterone usually, they don't get metabolized on the same pathway.

You don't release alipregnolone. Women's who are using birth control, they have significantly lower levels of alipregnanoan, and so their brain is probably not able to chill itself out as much. And obviously when you get that, you can get major anxiety and anxiety that's unrequited. Like if you're feeling anxious all the time and can't solve it, that leads to depression. I mean, anxiety and depression are about, you know, the two sides of the same coin. What about oxytocin signaling? Is that left alone? I think I've read this in your book, but it could be from another article.

There were some women that had trouble recognizing expressions in babies. And that was a little confusing because if you've had a baby, right, you're not on birth control. So does that effect stick around after you've stopped taking the pill? Is that what I'm understanding? No. Well, so we don't know yet about that. But what we do know is that women who are on it, they seem to have dysregulated oxytocin signaling.

And so they've studied this a couple of different ways. They've done it where they've done intranasal oxytocin and then just seeing whether or not the brain's pleasure pathways light up in response to seeing faces of people that they love, which is generally what happens when oxytocin is on the scene. if you like see a picture of like your wife or your children, your pleasure centers and your brain will light up and it'll be like, yay, it's people I love. What they found is that for women who are on birth control that you don't get that. So you give them some oxytocin and their brain is just like, they just see it as just another person.

Yeah. And which is really kind of scary. Scary and sad. Well, yeah, it is scary and sad. And it also like, I know for me, and we talked about this little bit last time, but my six, I think it was a six week visit after I have both of my kids. kids, they were like, all right, what are you doing for birth control? You know, what are you doing for birth control? And I'm like, well, I'm, you know, I'm breastfeeding. And they're like, well,

that's not going to cut it because some women, obviously, when they breastfeed, which is true, but I was not. And I know I was not because I've in tune my cycle. But I mean, they tried to put me on progestin-only birth control pills while I was breastfeeding because apparently it doesn't get in the milk, which I don't know that I believe. But better than pregnancy, I will say, like, I would not, I would not have wanted to have another baby right after the baby, but I probably would have done something different. But I wasn't ovulating, so I didn't have to worry about it. But yeah, anyway, so when you think about that, when there's a lot of women who are being put on this at their six-week appointment, when those attachment things are still happening with mothers and children. And, you know, a lot of women,

like, if they're not breastfeeding, like, and they know it, like at the hospital where they're like, I'm not breastfeeding, their doctor will put them on birth control right away, which, again, when you think about the importance of oxytocin to bonding with your infant and all of that sort of thing. And there hasn't been any research that's done on this particular issue. So, like, I have not seen a single study that's looked at hormonal birth control use and bonding to offspring. But the research that I've seen in adult women, like looking at other attachment figures of partners and so on, suggests that there could be some disruption there. And again, we don't know the answer to it because nobody's really asking their research questions. Jeez. It's like we're just, you know, I feel like

for the last however many years with 60 years, we've been doing this experiment on women that they didn't even know that they had consented to. Right. They're not recording the results necessarily. Yeah. Yeah, we're not even necessarily recording the results. So it's like we don't, you know, when you look at how much society has changed in the last 60 years, the differences that we get in rates of problems with mental health and all these other things, it's like we have absolutely no idea because our society has changed so quickly in the last six years. But like, it would be surprising to me if there weren't some of the differences that we see in things like risk for mental health and increase in postpartum depression and that sort of thing that aren't impacted

in some way by our use of hormones. Yeah. Like everyone wants to blame participation trophies or something. And it's like, well, maybe it's the fact that we've been taking, I don't even know what the percentages, a huge number, millions and millions, tens of millions of women taking this hormone from an early age. I don't know. I mean, that seems more likely than TikTok being the root of all even, not that I'm a fan of TikTok either. It seems more likely that that's causing the problem than participation trophies or cell phones. Right, right. Well, I mean, I think it's a, you know, and obviously it's a combination of all these different things. Yeah. But I mean, when you look at the risk of mental health problems in young women, I just think.

can't help but think that hormonal birth control isn't a really important player in this conversation because you add that to, you know, so we already know that young girls when they're on it are at a much higher risk of developing depression than adult women, probably just by virtue of the fact that their brain is still developing and that their developing brain just can't handle that shutdown of their ovaries because I'm sure that it causes a wider spread sort of set of changes than when you get an adult women. But you take that and then you add to it. social media and all these other things. I mean, it's just like a perfect storm of environmental influences that are not great for mental health for young girls. It seems like if women go

off the pill, they should tell people around them to look for signs of depression, right? Because when you're experiencing it, you just believe, you believe that there's a reason for it. Your mind's going to rationalize it. Oh, exams are really awful. My boyfriend's being kind of a jerk. And, like, I just haven't hung out that much with my friends. And I don't know what I'm going to do. with my major. And it's like, well, that's all maybe true. But the truth is you're also going through hormonal hell and you don't know about it because you stop taking the pill or whatever. We just think our life's crapp. Yeah, starting or stopping. You know, I think that it's so important that people know about the possibility of effects that can happen from having hormonal changes in that

way. So that way we have people looking out for us. Because the fact of the matter is, as you were saying, it's like our brain tells itself stories about what's going on all the time. I mean, the left half of our brain, which is like the communication center, is really just a spin doctor, just making up stories about why we do things. You know, it's like, oh, well, you know, I must be thirsty because I'm drinking water. You know, it's like it just tells the stories. And like you said, it's like, if we have depression from that's creeping in for some reason, including, you know, hormonal birth control, like, we just think like, gosh, like, nobody likes

me. Like, my friends all seem to hate me now. Like, oh, or like, gosh, my job just sucks. Like, it used to be so much better than what it did. is now. Yeah. And we come up with all these stories about why everything is happening. It must be my new manager, but maybe it's not. Yeah. Maybe that's not the only reason. Right. Exactly. And I think especially, you know, when we're talking about these young girls, because they are the ones who are overwhelmingly affected by the mental health side effects, there should always be somebody who's looking out for

them. I'm concerned about, you know, because now we have this O pill, right, this over-the-counter birth control that's going to be available to women. I'm concerned about that for that reason. So on the one hand, like, I love that we're trying to increase access to products to help women regulate their fertility, particularly in this day and age when, you know, women's reproductive health is under fire. Like, on the one hand, I'm happy that, okay, we're increasing access. I feel good about that. I don't feel good about women being able to go on birth control and especially this one. And the reason I don't like this one is it's a progestin-only drug, which is safer than a combination product. So, you know, when you're talking about birth control, you have progestin-only drugs, which only have a progestin, that's synthetic progesterone.

And then you have what are known as the combination products, which most birth controls are, like most pills are, where you have progestin and then you also have some estrogen. And the estrogen piece of it is a little bit more dangerous in terms of physical health. So just estrogen, for example, is thrombotic. So it's what's known for increasing heart attack risk and stroke risk when you have the pill. And so they've made this over-the-counter product progestin only because it doesn't have all of those risks because progestants don't have that risk. You don't have an increased risk of heart attack or stroke. And so that's why they made this product, the one that's available over the counter because it's like safer for physical health.

But for mental health, it is absolute trash. And the reason, I mean, the reason that most birth control pills are combination products is because the estrogen piece of it kind of takes the edge off how terrible you feel with this progestin. Interesting. Yeah. And so progestin-only products are some of the biggest offenders when it comes to the things that women hate the most about birth control, weight gain and mood changes. Yeah.

So that's the one that's going to be available over the counter. And I just, I don't like the idea of women or girls getting access to these products. Nobody knows that they're on them. Right. I was going to say their parents don't know. That's why they chose it. Yeah, I know. Nobody knows to look out for them.

And they're going on something that can increase. increase the risk of depression by 300%. Yeah, that's terrifying. I mean, it's just like, it's not good. I really worry about that. So I've got kind of mixed feelings about the over-the-counter birth control. I like the spirit behind it. I would like to see it implemented in a way that make sure that women are being taken

care of because I do like that, you know, women are able to access it and they're, you know, and they don't have to worry about their parents, if they're going to be having sex because I think that that's important. But then on the other hand, it's like, how can we still look out for these girls? and make sure that they're okay. I could not agree more. I mean, I'm doing this episode, this double episode,

because I want women and those of us that love them to stop thinking that something is wrong with them when maybe there's something wrong with their medication. It seems like the access to it over the counter, access is always better. However, yeah, we don't, we don't, it's a nightmare scenario that young girls

who are already under fire from TikTok and Instagram screwing with their mental health are now maybe going to take something that is going to make them, out worse. We just, they're just being dealt a really bad hand this decade or so. It's awful. What do you think of the latest politicizing of birth control? I know we touched on that a little bit last time, but if you search for birth control on social media, there is just a cascade of misleading videos. And it's like, if you take this, you're going to get fat, possible. But other

people are like, oh, it'll make you infertile, which is not great. And you see these testimonials online from health influencers, if you can call them that. And these are not doctors. These are just like random people that are stating birth control can make you infertile. And they're not saying that it happens to one in every million people who take it and they have a preexisting condition. They're making it seem like it's a dice roll if you take birth control pills that you're going to end up infertile. And they're also looping IUDs in with like the pill and the NUVA ring and all that stuff, just like it's one monolithic thing. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of bad information, I think, on both sides. Like, on the one hand, like, the sort of prevailing paradigm for so long has just been birth control pills. Once, you know, it's like everybody take the pill and everybody's going to, and just take it and just shut up. And don't worry about the side effects. Because who cares and they're just fine. And then on the other hand, you know, the other extreme end, you have exactly what you're talking about. You have a lot of health influencers who don't know, I never read a

research paper and don't, you know, have a degree of any type. And you don't need to have a degree to be able to understand science. But I have no background in science. And you also have to try to understand science. Yeah. Well, right. And you also have to like say like factual things, one would hope. Yes. And saying things like you're saying, like with the fertility issue, like, you know, that birth control makes you infertile, which it absolutely does not. And in fact, there's research that shows that there is a, it's slower to get pregnant, like when you have discontinued birth control compared to not, but by like two weeks on average. I see.

You know, people who are using it. That's good to know. And not, I mean, it's just really not the long-term effects on fertility are, except that when women are on it, it allows them to postpone childbearing. And so what you get is you get some women who are infertile because they waited until they were 35 to start having children. I see. So they are like, oh, my birth control made me infertile.

And it's like, no, actually, female fertility peaks at 25. And it's really horrible. It's a cruel biological fact, but it's a fact nonetheless. And so it's kind of where we're at. I think that it is very difficult to have conversations about birth control without, it always seems like it's one thing or the other. Like birth control is evil and it's going to make you grow a tail, you know, which isn't true. And then it's like birth control is a sacrosanct.

And how dare you say that it can, you know, do this or that or the other thing? thing. It's like people don't like to hold on to contradictory information. You know, it's like it causes dissonance where, you know, black and white thinking is a lot easier for sure. Yeah, I mean, it's totally, where it's like, okay, well, so the birth control pill is really important for women and we need to make sure that women are able to have access to it. At the same time, it is imperfect and it can potentially be linked with, you know, different types of side effects that you should look out for. And they're not one size fits all. And everybody's going to respond a little bit differently. And so it's just important that you know that these things are possible, so you know what to look out

for them. And so then it's like, everybody wants to say like, well, so are you for it or against it? I'm like, neither. Right. For it in certain circumstances. Yeah. No, that's not what we want to hear. It's like I am for you having all the information that you need to be able to make the decision that's right for you because what is the right decision for you might not be the same decision that's right for me. And the decision that's right for you right now might not be the same decision that's right for you in five years. it might not be the same decision that's right for you tomorrow. I mean, it's like all of us, our circumstances change. And it's like we're all smart enough to be able to take all the information in about what range

of effects, you know, the benefits and also the potential drawbacks and then make decisions about what's right for us based on at this point in my life. Like so for example, if you are a woman, like, so I'm going to think back to like 20-year-old Sarah, you know, 20-year-old Sarah when she is not in a relationship and is doing things like dating and choosing partners and figuring out her career goals and that sort of thing. 20-year-old Sarah does not need to be on hormonal birth control when she's not in a relationship because she's not getting pregnant anyway and she may as well be having her brain in the absence of these other hormones, you know, trying to figure out who she is and what makes her happy

and what job makes her happy and what kinds of partners she's attracted to and so on and so forth. 20-year-old plus six months, Sarah, who's in a relationship and also getting a college degree, it needs to not get pregnant in order to finish those things. For her, it might make the right decision to be on hormonal birth control because it's going to work. And so at that point, I make a different set of tradeoffs. And each one of us, you know, it's like you have to kind of weigh what the costs and benefits are and it's always going to be a little bit dynamic.

And I think that we can, are smart enough to have the conversation that here is this drug that's been incredibly pivotal in terms of moving women forward politically, economically, and so on, but is also imperfect. and it's something that women have absolutely, I mean, we should absolutely exercise caution with, especially with young girls. And when the benefits aren't potentially great enough to outweigh the risks, and we need to have real conversations about whether or not it even makes sense. Because this off-label use of birth control for things like skin and cramps and that sort of thing

for teenagers, like, I don't even know whether that's good medical practice. I feel like that should be a conversation that's being had among those in the healthcare industry, is like, is this good practice at all for this group of women? And because I don't know that those benefits, is there an acne, you know, clearance benefit that's so great as to outweigh the risk of long-term brain problems? Yeah, no. I mean, I don't think so. Really don't think so.

What about IUDs intrauterine devices? Do those have a hormonal component or is it just a metal object in your uterus? I don't even know. Yeah. So there's two different types. There is the metal device, which is the copper IUD, and that one does not have any hormones. And so those women cycle just like regular, you know, naturally cycling women. And the fertility regulation effect comes from the effect that you get a little bit of an inflammatory

event that's going on in the uterus from the little object. And that prevents implantation. And so that's how you get pregnancy prevention with that. The hormonal IUD is a little bit of a tricky device, and it has hormones, and the hormones are getting released. And whenever you have hormones getting released in the body, it is a systemic effect. So a lot of times you'll hear doctors say that the hormonal IUD acts locally. That doesn't make sense.

It's in your blood. Yeah, I know. There's no such thing as a local. Go back to medical school. Well, I know. I mean, honestly, like, I think that if you ask the doctor to repeat that, I'm like, can you repeat that back slowly? Like listen to what you're saying.

I think that they'd be horrified that that ever even came out of their mouth because it's impossible. And so what you get, because it has low doses of hormones, these hormones will still, because they're getting in the blood, they still reach the brain. And they're often at a high enough level that they shut down ovulation just the same way all other hormonal birth control does. So, for example, when you take the pill, those progestins tell your brain, don't ovulate. And that's why you don't ovulate. And the same thing with the hormonal IUD is when that progestin reaches your brain, it's like, hey, don't ovulate guys. But it is a really low dose of hormone.

And so what happens is over time, women oftentimes will begin ovulating again. And then the device is working in the same way as the copper IUD because it's also, because it's in the uterus, it's like causing an inflammatory event because the uterus is like, what the fuck is this? Right, yeah. There's a paper clip in here. Yeah, it's like, do not implant an embryo. Like, this is terrible timing, guys, don't know what this is.

So it's interesting is that women on the hormonal IUD, some of them are ovulating, some of them are not ovulating, some of them ovulated the entire time they were on it, some of them never ovulate. And so it's a really heterogeneous group of women. So here's the question I have, and you probably don't have the answer to this, but I'm going to ask you anyway. Ask me, yes, the expert over here on women giving birth. Are you ready to this?

So the hormonal IUD, they put this hormone in there, right? and it shuts down ovulation. Like I said, and 80% of the women who use it for the first year, they're not ovulating because it's shutting down their brain axis. But by five years, about 80% of women are ovulating. And it still works. Okay. So it seems to be working primarily through the same mechanism, which is that, oh, no,

there's a paperclip in here that the other IUD works. So then it's like, why put hormones in there at all? I wonder if there's a pill that I can take that would have y'all tip me more. Or maybe there's a pill that will get you to support the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors.

All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at Jordan Harbinger.com. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code. You're not sure. If there is a code, email me, Jordan atjorniger.com. I am happy to surface that code for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Dr. Sarah Hill.

My question is, why do you need the other one that has the side effects if the other one works? I don't understand. Although my mom's friend had a child and he was born holding that IUD like he was won an Emmy Award. So there is that. So maybe it's because it's less effective because I was like. I mean, I don't know. But I do know that if you're holding like you just won an Oscar, it probably didn't work when you. Oh, yeah.

At that point. It makes me have like, and I don't have. a lot of these moments because I'm a pretty practical thinker but I'm like they're just looking to sell their drugs yeah you know they're just like want to put the drug in the and it's not necessary and they just put it in there because it's probably 50 times more expensive because yeah yeah because that's a drug and then the drug is what was patented not the device I don't know if IUDs I mean is it all medical things that go into the generic or is it just drugs it might just be drugs that the patent sort of expires after 15 years that's an interesting question you know

an interesting question. I don't know the answer to that, but we'll see, you know, if patents do expire on those types of devices in the same way that it does on regular medication, then my guess is they're going to stop prescribing the hormonal IUD as much as they do now, because the reason that it's been so hot is because it's still under patent. And so drug companies are making a shitload of money off of it. Yeah. And so it really gets pushed by the drug companies. After I learned the magnitude of women who are not ovulating on it for, you know, after a couple of years, I'm like, then why have it? Like, why are the hormones in there at all? Yeah, that doesn't make any sense to me. And it's not necessary. I don't think it's necessary.

We've seen a lot of media on the left and the right, like you said, one side will say one thing is an extreme and the other side will say the other thing is an extreme. There's almost like this weird agenda on each side. Like one side doesn't want birth control to be fallible because they don't want people to stop taking it because it limits the new liberties that women have, but then you'll see right-leaning media that's like, it's going to make you infertile. Some right-leaning media has said that women have been silenced and shamed by legacy media, the pharmaceutical industry, and in many cases by their own doctors, who sort of gaslight them about their experiences with hormonal birth control. And it sounds, that actually sounds pretty reasonable if you have doctors

telling people that the IUD is only local and you don't have to worry about it. Or like, it can't possibly do these things when we know now that it can. I mean, it seems like there's an element of truth to some of what each side is saying, which makes this thing all the more frustrating and irritating to deal with, right? Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, because I don't think that it, well, A, I don't think it should be politicized. I think that it's just, like, way too important. It is, yeah.

I think that it's something, you know what I mean, that it's like everybody, we should all agree that this is an important issue. and I think we should all agree that, and I shouldn't even say agree, we should all recognize that women have been mishandled by medicine for a very long time and that the birth control pill in a lot of ways is no exception to this. And not that the birth control pill is evil and make you grow a tail and you shouldn't be on it and doctors have been poisoning women, but rather that, you know, I think for a really long time doctors weren't listening to women when they were talking about the seriousness of their side effects. And I also think that

there is a tendency to trivialize the types of side effects that we have from the pill. Because, you know, when you look at some of the most, like the most frequently occurring side effects, it's things like depression or like a complete absence of sex drive. And doctors are like, oh, yeah, you know, well, a little bit of, and it's like, that's a person's like, you know, it's like, as far as the medical profession is concerned, it seems, unless it causes cancer or gives you a heart attack, you're fine. It's fine. Right. If it doesn't kill you, then it's just a minor thing. Like, oh, you'll be fine. just buy some sexy underwear and that'll fix it. Right. Yeah. Watch some dirt in it. Yeah.

Watch Cinemax. Yeah. And so I think that it's too important to be politicized. And I think that we can, and again, it's like part of this, the nuance of the conversation is the conversation is incredibly important tool for women. Like having birth control is incredibly important for women. And we all need to be champions of making sure that women have access to this. We also need to be sure that women are being championed for access. to information about what they're being put on and having doctors that are going to be willing to listen to them and their range of experiences. The fact of the matter is, because hormones affect, I mean, there are receptors for sex hormones on almost every cell in the female body just simply because pregnancy requires almost every system that we have to have a workaround. Yeah, row in the same direction or shut off. Right, exactly.

And so it's like all of our cells are very sensitive to sex hormones because they have to kind of do something special depending on what our sex hormones are doing. And so when you take a drug that changes this, you know, it causes these big sweeping changes in the body, it's going to be very idiosyncratic. I mean, there's me a lot going on. And everybody's body responds to things a little bit differently. And all of us has different preexisting levels of hormones and all of us have different ability to adapt to hormonal changes. And all of us have different ways of metabolizing hormones. And so there's all these different ways that women differ from one another. We're all given these drugs and there's like a hundred different variations of hormonal birth control. So there's all

these different drugs. And then, you know, they do a study where they compare a group of women who's on the pill or whatever to a group of naturally cycling women and they don't find average differences between the group and they say, oh, look, no side effects. But it turns out that when you look at the nuances of the data, oftentimes what you get is you get these huge differences among individual women in the birth control group. But when you average them all together, it just looks like nothing happened. Oh, that's interesting. Just to give you an example of this, there was a study that was published not that long ago looking at weight changes, which is something that many women report. They're like, I'm gaining weight on the pill.

And the doctor's like, no, you're not because there's no differences in weight gain among women who are on the pill and off the way. You're just eating too much and you don't notice it. You're just eating too much. Yeah, exactly. You're just getting lazy or whatever terrible thing that they're saying to women. But when you look at the actual research studies, what you find if you divide up the weight changes among heavier women and lighter women, What you find is that the heavier women in the sample who were on the pill, they lost weight. And the lighter women gained weight.

And so when you put all these women together and you just average their weight changes at zero. Right. Okay. But what you get are real differences that matter to women. And for some women, it's going to make them very happy. And for other women, it's going to make them very unhappy. And instead, you just have the doctors saying, oh, well, no differences because, you know, we looked at these two groups. It's like, the role is so much more.

complex than you can do like really simple statistics like they're oftentimes used in a lot of biomedical research it's just like not going to capture the nuanced way that our bodies respond to medication yeah they've got to show the absolute what is it called it's been a while since we've been in math class absolute value whether it's plus or minus it doesn't matter and so weight change of up to 15 pounds or 25 pounds or whatever it is is more accurate than weight gain of x oh weight gain of x zero perfect well that's yeah like you said if If somebody loses 10 pounds and the other person in the group gains 10 pounds, the weight changes zero.

It's zero. Oh, man. And that's scary because I'm not an average. I'm the person taking this particular medication. Maybe not the pill in this case, but that's really scary. I would want the complete info. This is so fascinating. I mean, like I said, I needed another hour to get through everything.

I thought I, and I've got notes where I'm just like, okay, I'm going to cover it in the show close because there's so much here. I think it's really interesting. I think from a guy's perspective, I'm very fortunate. that I can look at this and just be interested in the science. But if I'm a woman listening to this, I've got stuff I've got to do if I'm on that pill or thinking about taking that pill,

there's action that needs to be taken in one direction or another. Even if that action is just doing research and reading your book and maybe rewining to the beginning of this if I'm jogging and not really paying attention, because there's so much in here. And it's just, it's kind of scary because if the birth control pill is this complex,

probably every other medication that we take is really this complex. not been around for 60 years, studied a bunch, and affect maybe our personality as much. But it's, it doesn't make sense that the pill is more complex than other medication that we're taking, like, I don't know, O-Zempic or whatever. Right. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see how all of that unfolds as well. Yeah.

I think in some ways, hormones are kind of uniquely systemic for women, just again, just because of how many cells have to sort of march in a different direction in response to pregnancy. But I think like with things like GLP, for example, like with those EMPIC, I mean, that's something that helps to regulate metabolism and glucose and all of that affects the whole engine of the body. And so that one may end up being like really sort of widespread as well. You know, I've always wondered this with all of these psychotropic medications that they're putting folks on, especially kids, like my kids, I mean, I'm telling you, so my kids are both high school age and half of their peers are on drugs of some sort for psychotropic medication.

And so both my kids are like, Redaline or something? Yeah, like that or something for depression or something for anxiety or something for, I mean, it's kind of what happens when you have, I don't know, I've got my own hypothesis. We can talk about it off camera. I was going to a private school. It feels like the parents are just like, you know what? I don't really want a parent.

And look, not that only private schools do that. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just noticing a trend. Right. But I mean, honestly, though, so they're always like, well, I feel like I need to. And I'm like, you aren't going on anything. Like, I'm not letting a thing touch your brain other than like vitamin D.

your vitamin D supplement and that's it. Yeah. You know? You can have Flintstones vitamins. Yeah. Teenagers, nobody studies them and they're such a vulnerable group because their brains are developing still and they're a pain in the ass. And so everybody wants to give them drugs to try to get them to, you know, do something different

because they're such a pain in the ass. That's right. We just have to roll with it, you know. We have to learn to put up with them. They're just toddlers that can drive. That's true. Exactly. It's frustrating.

Exactly. Man. I will say there's a whole section. in your book about birth as well, or different sections talk about this. Do you ever just wish y'all laid eggs? It might be a lot easier. I feel like it would have been a lot easier that way. Probably would be a lot easier that way. It probably would be a lot easier that way. I'd love to say some, like, you know, sweet things about pregnancy of being this amazing experience. And it kind of was, but I don't know that the benefit of all that amazingness would, like, outweigh the

amazingness of just being able to lay an egg and have somebody else sit on it for a little while. Yeah, just sit on it. You probably couldn't feel that kicking or anything, but yeah, you're right. The tradeoff is there. It's like, I might give that. I might give that up to be able to just like take a break from it for a little bit. That's right. That's true.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate this. Again, so fascinating all around. Great. Thanks so much for having me. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with North Korean Defector Yonmi Park. In North Korea, birds and mice can hear your whisper. It's the only place that modernity hasn't touched.

90-70% North Korean walls are not paved. In the hospital, they use one needle to inject everybody. It's very common to have a surgery without a painkiller. The worst torture is being starved. And before you die from starvation, you hallucinate. You lose your mind. So some mothers eat their children because they thought their children were dogs. Because they go crazy when you don't eat.

And then they wake up and then, like, what happened to my child? If somebody challenging the party ideology, They don't just go after killing you or your son and your grandma. They really go after a generation, like get rid of entire clan. That's how they prevent the revolution. And that's how they became like Almighty God. Every front newspaper in North Korea is a Kim's photo. So sometimes you do not see the front page and you rip it.

That's how you get executed. How do they prepare you to escape? Pray and fasting. You need a miracle to do it. Because you are going to go across the Gobby Desert into Mongolia. from China in the minus 4 degrees. That's why they make you pray. They just give you a compass.

Why don't you walk, follow the north and the west, and then cross eight wire fences, and hopefully that's going to be Mongolia. Very unique thing with North Koreans, whenever you ask them, in their dream, is always North Korea. You never escape in your subconscious. You're there forever. Every night, every night I'm there.

Like, nobody escapes in your dream. To hear more about the bizarre mind games that generations of North Koreans have had to endure under the current regime, check out episode 578 and 579 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. What a marathon. In the end, the pill is more good than bad, but it's never as simple as take it and forget it when it comes to our bodies. I find it fascinating that the pill might make it hard to pick a partner.

Guys might look good on paper, but you lack chemistry. And the pill, it blunts this instinct and keeps women from flagging mates. there's depression because the brain doesn't feel as excited about people or opportunities as it did before. 50% increased risk of depression, especially in younger women. So these are serious side effects that could potentially happen and do happen to a few people that you need to pay attention to. You need to take breaks from the pill so you get to know yourself off of it, especially when you're making big decisions or changes, marriage, career, et cetera. And if you're not having sex and you don't have any other medical reason to be on it, talk to your doctor about getting off of the pill. I know a lot of

social media influencers are recommending natural alternatives, like timing sex to menstrual cycles, which is a less effective birth control method that doctors, of course, warn, could result in unwanted pregnancies in a country where abortion is now banned or restricted in nearly half the states. And I know that a lot of you disagree with whatever decision, but it doesn't matter what you think about abortion, right, left center. I think we can all get behind not increasing unwanted pregnancies. That is a good thing, right? Come on, folks. Let's at least agree on that. distrust among women of color in terms of the medical community has just has the trusting influencers a lot more, which is really unfortunate. Younger, Gen Z folks are more likely to trust

random nobody's online because of poor media literacy and health education. And many young women are turning to these quote unquote natural methods, which can have it up to 23% failure rate. This is not good. So while we might have to pay attention to what goes on in our bodies with the pill, we also have to pay attention to the fact that you might have a kid and not be able to do anything about it, which is horrible, depending on where you are in your life. The algorithms behind TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, they are designed to surface content similar to what viewers have already watched, which experts say leads viewers to believe that more people suffer complications than they actually do in reality. Now, all that said, all forms of medication, including hormonal

birth control control can have side effects. Some are rare but serious. Birth control pills that contain estrogen. They can lead to blood clots and strokes. IUDs can perforate the uterine wall. So talk to your doctor. Pay attention to this stuff. Don't stay on. it for a zillion years. I care about y'all, and we should care about each other. Folks, share this with every woman in your life. Any doctor that treats women, anyone in a relationship, anyone who wants to be in one, basically share this with everybody. I think this stuff is fascinating, but it is super, super important as well. All things Dr. Sarah Hill will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support this show,

all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter, We Bit Wiser, a practical bit every Wednesday. The idea is it gives you something specific, something that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships in under two minutes a week. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. Jordan Harbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six-minute networking over at six-minute networking. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn in this show. Hey, it's created an association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who has a body or is related to somebody who has one and they might put this stuff in it, or they're interested in interesting things.

I know that's vague, but this episode is warrants it, I'm telling you. This stuff is super freaking interesting. And if you don't agree, you wouldn't have made it this far. share it with them. Share this far and wide. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by What Was That Like Podcast. If you're looking for a new show to add to your rotation, something that'll make you stop mid-dishwashing and go, wait, what that actually happened? You've got to subscribe to what was that like. It's real people telling the most surreal moments of their lives and they're not just giving you the highlights. They're walking you through it from the inside as the person who actually lived it, which means you're basically getting a front row seat to the chaos. One episode is about Scott getting locked up. in a foreign jail for a crime he didn't commit. Sure, Scott. Another is Sue's parachute failing. Wow, I'm surprised she was around to tell that story. And then there's Michael who was stabbed on a bus, which makes your commute instantly feel a little bit more relaxing. Do what you think?

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Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not, the through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people

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