ZM's Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley - Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley's Lil Bitta Pod - 4th March, 2025

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

On Today's Lil Bitta Pod; we chat to Dr Megan Ogilvie about birth control and more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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From the ZM Podcast Network, it's Fletch Vaughan and Hayley's Little Bit of Pod. Welcome to A Little Bit of Pod. Hey homies. What's up, slayer? Slayer! Now, listen to me, penis havers. Okay. That's you guys. That's us, now. What's up, Sleor? Sleor. Now, listen to me, penis havers. Okay. That's you guys.

That's us. And I can only assume I've seen neither of them. Good. With my own eyes. Yeah. But I don't have one. You've heard of it. I've heard about one of them.

You've heard about the legend. The legend. Oh, my God. No. But as you know, I do have, I've got a female reproductive system. You do, yeah. And I tell you what, sometimes it gives me a lot of grief, guys. And I read an article about, because you know I've talked about this quite a bit.

I've come off the oral contraceptive pill. Coming up two years. Yeah. Coming up two years. Well, I don't know. It was easy. I just stopped taking it yeah um but it kind of wreaks havoc on your body and i read an article actually uh about this and they're calling it

like a syndrome like a post oral contraceptive pill syndrome and a lot of women are struggling uh with the crash in the hormones and it's actually you know causing a lot of side effects that maybe we didn't anticipate and this was interesting to me because. And it's actually, you know, causing a lot of side effects that maybe we didn't anticipate. And this was interesting to me because for me, it's been a positive experience, but for a lot of people, a negative experience.

So, I've got a little treat for us. I've actually met this endocrinologist before, endocrinologist, hormone specialist. Yep. And... You did a documentary, didn't you? I did.

It was on PCOS. But now, I've invited her I've personally invited her onto our show to talk about what it's like when we come off the pill so good morning Dr Megan welcome to the show thank you Hayley thank you for inviting me to come and talk an absolute pleasure I've actually um I've met Megan before she I made a documentary about PCOS and we chatted to her about it but can you just explain to our listeners what an endocrinologist is so we understand what it is that you actually specialize in? So an endocrinologist deals with the hormone systems and there's several different hormone systems in the

body. Hormones are essentially messengers they take messages from one part of the body to another part. I'm a reproductive endocrinologist so my subspecialty interest is reproductive hormones. So, and often the reproductive hormones, those are the ones that sometimes ruin my life, right? And make me upset and then happy and then upset again. I think there's always good things and bad things and you need to look at both sides. So, Megan, a lot of women are sharing their experiences online

and I'm sure you get this a lot like, I saw this on TikTok and I do apologise but they're coming off of the pill or hormonal contraception and they're experiencing these really shocking and they're calling them debilitating side effects of that. What is happening to these women that they're coming off this birth control and their lives are kind of falling apart? So let's just,

I think we're talking about the combined contraceptive pill, which everybody calls the pill. There's several different forms of hormonal contraception, but shall we talk about the pill in terms of answering this question because everybody does different things. Every medication has

different side effects and positive benefits. What the combined contraceptive pill does is it stops your own ovaries working. So it changes the hormonal environment, it switches off your own ovaries. When you come off it, your ovaries switch on again. And typically nowadays with the low-advanced pill that we have available, that can happen pretty quickly. In fact, if somebody hasn't had resumption of periods

within three months of stopping a pill, then actually they should be having some investigations around that as to why periods haven't recurred. Well the boys know that I went a year. I did a year. But you know I've got PCOS so I came off the pill and it was a year. Yeah, so that, I mean polycystic ovarian syndrome changes things, right? Makes it different. But for the average woman without an underlying hormone condition, we should see periods coming back quite quickly. And often in the first month,

women will get a spontaneous period. So it is a different hormonal environment. The contraceptive pill holds things very stable for women. Now, for some women, that's a good thing. For some women, that's not a good thing. But that does change as you come off because you get back to your up and down cycle, which again, for some women that's positive and for some women that has some negative outcomes. So, because I feel this, like I came off the pill and a lot of feelings came back, which for me were positive. Like, I like the fluctuation of feelings as opposed to like a flatness.

But I think for a lot of people, it's really shocking them because some of these feelings can be quite big, right? And they can feel a little bit out of control of them. Yeah, I mean, I think we all have different sensitivity to our hormones. So some women have no idea whether they are in their menstrual cycle at any one time point and other women have a significant awareness of that. And you cycle again. So you lift your estrogen in the middle of your menstrual cycle, then your progesterone comes up and then they drop down leading up to a period. Now there's some positives. A lot of women will describe a lift in libido mid-cycle. Many women who have quite creative brains

might notice that in the first half of their cycle they feel very creative, whereas actually as their hormones drop again leading up to a period, that can bring about some premenstrual syndrome or for women who are right at the other end of that spectrum some premenstrual dysphoric

disorder and there are a certain percentage of women, a small percentage of women that can feel frankly suicidal in the few days leading up to a period and then that lifts as the period arrives so it means different things for different women It does.

Do you, I totally relate to that because I have this, I mean, the libido thing for sure, but then the creativity, but then it kind of crashes into a moment of insanity. And I feel like people around me can often sense that, especially partners. And I work with two men and often I'll say, I'm feeling a bit insane and I think this means I'm about to have my period.

What advice would you give to people who are around women as they fluctuate through these hormones? How can they handle us better? I mean, I normally talk to the women, not the doctors, but what I say to the women is that for women who are affected by those psychical changes, there's actually great psychology literature out there around thinking about

this and managing this. So I encourage everybody to keep track of their menstrual cycles, whether that's an app on your phone or some other way of keeping track and generally making the people that you live with aware of your menstrual cycles. If you and generally making the people that you live with aware of your menstrual cycles if you want that for the people that you work with of course you can do that too so i should share i could share my cycle app with um fletch and vaughn here and they just know you could do that um and then thinking about what works for you to manage those changes at that time.

So trying to schedule the things that you find difficult in the first half of your cycle if you can and trying to schedule in things in the second half of your cycle that you know makes life more beneficial for you or easier for you so for some women that's going to be catching up with a friend for coffee other women don't want to personalize they just want some self-time regular exercise is really important and eating very regularly over the day and trying to avoid those sugar cravings that you can get leading up to a period because they're only going to lift your blood sugar it's going to crash down again and your

mood's going to fall back so trying to keep as even a blood sugar as you can regular exercise some outdoor time some sunshine all of those things are going to help regulate your mood what works and what doesn't yeah and of course the time that typically falls to pieces that all of those things are going to help regulate your mood. That's great advice. But working out what works and what doesn't. And of course, the time that typically falls to pieces that women come to see me is when they've got young children. They lose the autonomy over their time. They're trying to work part-time or full-time and they're struggling to run that kind of schedule.

But for other women who aren't in that situation, thinking about those things can really help. That's great advice final question for you megan uh dr megan give her the respect she deserves sorry um when where is this male contraceptive pill i think we've been talking about it and talking about it they did trials and the men were like i got fat and sad and we were like welcome to our life where is it do you know My feeling is it's probably going to be a wee way off. There have been studies, they're small numbers and they're studies that are a month or two months long. And if you think about the fact that it takes three months

for sperm to develop within the testicle, we're going to need men to do something for three months before we can be sure it's safe. Right, they didn't want to do it for that long. But I suspect if it does affect libido, it can cause weight gain. Yeah. Oh, no, that's three strikes you're out. The women listening are just like,

oh, we've been on these things for 20 years. It's not available in the US yet, and anything that's available in the US takes a few years to actually make it to New Zealand. I think we're a way from having a male contraceptive come on. Oh, well, we can only but dream. Dr Megan Ogilvie, thank you so much for your insight. I really appreciate it.

Lovely to catch up with you. Nice to talk, Hayley.