I truly don't understand how depo is still on the market. The bone density loss is well known. I'm not anti-birth control, exactly, but the hormonal ones all have kind of horrendous side effects that are well known and rarely communicated clearly to women and girls. I'm so sorry you're in pain, Ex. Calcium/magnesium/K2 supplementation may help with the bone density loss. Collagen supplementation may also help with cartilage maintenance. They will not be cure alls, but they may help the pain.
K2 is the one you want, not K(1). K1 has something to do with clotting, but K2 turns on the calcium receptors in your bones, so it actually goes to the right place. :) D is also very important.
This also opens up the whole can of worms about about ocps being handed to young girls like candy.... It's almost a rite of passage and it's alarming to me when I actually dive into it. Note that teenage boys are never advised hormones and surgery, whether "gender-affirming" or not.
Teenage boys never become pregnant. The main purpose of the oral contraceptive pills is to prevent pregnancy, and pregnancy can kill you. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19644742/
Yes, but there are contraception methods that do not involve chemically suppressing the brain function and maturation processes of girls' and young women's bodies. There's no reason to give depo provera to someone who had not hit peak bone density when other contraception methods that are even more effective, without the use of hormones, exist including abstinence, condoms, and non-hormonal IUD.
I don't advocate depot medroxyprogesterone acetate, partly because an injection cannot be removed (unlike an etonogestrel implant). The problem with abstinence is that a woman's wish to abstain from sex is not always granted, nor is her desire for a male partner to use a condom always respected. I am saying that the risks of the side effects of hormonal contraceptives should be assessed in light of the known risks associated with pregnancy.
I hear you and I agree, but at the same time, there's other solutions that don't permanently stunt growth. If a woman or girl is raped or has some other known exposure to male gametes, such as broken condom, that's a time to use progesterone to prevent pregnancy (emergency contraception), or failing that, terminate it early.
Alas, those options are increasingly becoming unavailable in the United States. Personally, I think that we also need to focus on keeping full-grown men from messing with underage girls.
I tried oral contraception in my 20s and it made me sick. We always used a diaphragm. I don't think that's probably very popular today, but it used to be for married couples. Now I don't need anything.
agree, but please do not cite abstinence as a form of birth control. it is highly ineffective. condoms should always be used---do teach that---but are not, given real-world pressures and desires, enough. IUDs have to be improved, ones that do not contain hormones. no one is advocating fussing with boys' and men's biology EVER. it's considered near-sacred. women's is not.
I used the diaphragm with contraceptive gel and/or condoms for decades, never had an unwanted pregnancy. I'm so sorry to hear of these skeletal problems, Ex. I'd heard about headaches from the Pill so never took it, though I believe most heterosexual women my age (now late 60s) did. Keep us in the loop about how things are going. Make sure you're eating enough protein~
I have friends who were put on oral contraceptives at age 15 by their mothers. It was just the done thing, "better to be safe", etc.
By the time some women are 30 they've been on them continuously for 15 years!
We forget that these are pharmaceutical drugs. Whatever social benefit they have, they should first and foremost be seen through a medical lens: you are intervening on a healthy body for a prophylactic purpose and not because you're trying to cure an ailment. Deciding to go on hormonal contraceptives shouldn't be treated so casually, and as a society we really need to have discussions about this.
I don’t understand mechanism behind oral contraception and potential consequences of it (you can laugh, but I think im definitely not alone in this), but I used to take Vibin Mini (Drospirenonum + Ethinylestradiolum; idk what’s the brand name in USA) for 4,5 years at 21-26. I didn’t feel any side effects while on it and was very happy with lack of period, then I quit it because I broke up with my bf. My sex drive was nonexistent during this entire time, which I contributed to depression (real) and asexuality* (not real, recency bias and internet poisoning), then it got back along with period**. M a g i c. I was completely oblivious to the fact that contraception changed/suppressed my personality in major way.
*in hindsight homosexuality was among real causes, but I couldn’t know that without sex drive
**I don’t think depression was signifiant factor here, because during these years I survived 2 major depression episodes with normalcy in between, yet lack of libido was constant
Could not agree more! There are also environmental effects that aren't talked about much, like how hormones, medications, and pesticides are affecting animals/waterways. They are typically not removed in the wastewater treatment systems before being put back in the environment. In the early to mid-2000s, there was a study done on rivers in CO and the feminizing effects of excreted hormones on fish and amphibians, which was noticeable, anx traced back specifically to hormonal birth control. There are pesticides that do similar things (atrazine, and I wouldn't be surprised if that has something to do with the trans boom, as well).
Are you sure? What I'm seeing suggests it's a very small contributor to total estrogen. You have to understand women make estrogen and birth control reduces the natural level you make. You pee it out either way.
I suppose I'm not, because I never bothered to look for any follow up studies, but thank you for calling me out and posting the other one. :)
I will say, though, that the patentable version of estrogen and progesterone in birth control, while similar to our naturally made hormones, are fundamentally not exactly the same, and were never studied in natural environments long term (they weren't even studied thoroughly in women long term), so we don't know exactly what they do or don't do until we start looking, and there is very little financial incentive to do that in terms of funding/grants/etc. Humans have a pretty long history of thinking whatever compound is fine and then finding out decades later that it isn't.
I wouldn’t be worried about hormonal bc contamination in the water, a potentially much bigger threat is from hormone-mimicking chemicals leached from plastics directly into water from drinking vessels, or from the plastic linings of canned foods and beverages.
Although a seemingly reasonable hypothesis, there’s no evidence that the huge increase in individuals identifying as “trans” is related to any environmental endocrine disruptors. If that were the case, there should have been a corresponding increase in incidence of congenital disorders of sexual development, yet there’s no evidence of such; “trans,” despite activists’ claims to the contrary, has no relationship with DSD conditions, other than as an ideological parasite, opportunistically hijacking recent political movements seeking to stop the regular practice of performing surgeries on children with ambiguous genitalia, as evidenced by the appropriation of the phrase “gender assigned at birth,” which is nonsensical except within the context of those cases.
Oh my God. I knew depo Provera was bad but I didn't know this aspect of it. My Younger sister went on it in her teens. Of course I can't prove it was the depo, But I can say that she went from being a super outgoing, charismatic, happy healthy girl to a chronically depressed, miserable girl who put on like 50 pounds in the first year she was on it. She stopped Taking it but has never recovered. She developed such Terrible joint pain that she is just been stuck in a spiral of out of control weight gain and inability to exercise ever since, and never regained her former personality either.
Have her look at primal edge health, they can help with all of that with dietary changes focusing on protein and fat macros rather than carbohydrate. It really does make a massive difference to energy levels, wellbeing and general health. Losing excess weight is a bonus side effect. She'll soon get her spark back.
Calcium supplements do not prevent or cure osteopenia/osteoporosis. You can get osteoporosis from taking catabolic hormones (e.g., prednisone). But most cases of osteoporosis are due to long-term consumption of a diet high in animal protein, even though the diet may be rich in calcium (from dairy foods or fish bones). That basic fact has been known since the 1980s. (In fact, I learned about it while copyediting the manuscript of a nutrition textbook in the 1980s.) Some short-term studies seem to show a benefit from calcium supplements, but that is because the calcium has an alkalinizing effect on the body, not because it is calcium, per se. It would be better to consume a diet with a lot of fruit and vegetables (rich in potassium and magnesium) and no animal protein (and no colas, which contain phosphoric acid). It is natural to lose some calcium from the bones after menopause because the body no longer needs to prepare for pregnancy (during which a woman's body must supply the calcium for the growing fetal skeleton). It's unclear whether prolonged use of depot medroxyprogesterone acetate has a long-term effect on fracture risk in later life. https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2014/06/depot-medroxyprogesterone-acetate-and-bone-effects We do know that osteoporotic bone loss can be reversed through yoga. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27226695/
About desisting/detransitioning binary: I know it doesn’t cross the line of medical intervention to the body, but something that further blurs the picture is the fact that many trans-identifying people tend to bring their larp of opposite sex to various documentation, surveys, questionnaires. I knew people who put their trans identity in questions about sex, because, as they openly said, they felt like they would lie if they put they birth sex - lack of medical interventions doesn’t make anyone less trans, they said. So I wonder what quantities of unreliable medical data we have as the outcome.
Yes that’s a huge problem. Media outlets in the UK have been puzzled by a recent increase in the number of women committing sex crimes, a category of criminality historically only associated with males.
I discovered I have hips arthritis with 51 (it's not so known as osteoporosis but it's also a consequence of menopause). Lifting weights it really helped. Your muscles can make your bone growth. Keep strong dear! 💚🤍💜
I lifted weights the whole time I was on it, just like they said. I got really strong too. I took my D and calcium. But my maturation was stunted and so it was not enough to get to where I needed to be. I hope there's some improvement from being off the that and the implant by the next time I get tested. I'm still lifting
One thing that may help in addition to what you are already doing is nettle infusion. Stinging needles are high in calcium, and also in other minerals that make the calcium more bio available to your body. You might get up small benefit from just buying some already made tea bags of nettle tea, But it won't be as powerful as a stronger infusion. And of course there's also the microplastics in all tea bags these days. Get dried organic stinging nettles, Fill a one quart jar up to the 1 cup line with the dried herb, and then pour boiling water over it to steep overnight. Strain and drink hot or iced at least a cup a day.( Keep unused part in the fridge of course) It doesn't taste awesome but it does have many health benefits.
i had excruciating period cramps after taking birth control for one year (j&j vaccine and plan b made it even worse). i was going to the ER for debilitating pain. i vomited every period and i could not move an inch. i stopped nsaids completely and took anna’s wild yam cream (vitex and aloe vera). it completely eliminated my pain. i have next to no pain now with my period and i cherish when i have it. this was a miracle for me and i am so grateful i could cry
drank countless organic nettle root and leaf teas. yarrow, reishi, chicory, dandelion, marshmallow root, rishi ginger tumeric tea, bergamot oolong tea, ashwagandha, licorice root, yarrow, it goes on and on. i also used castor oil liver packs and they really freaking helped. a lot of tart cherry juice. did some black walnut hull and ap tincture at my point. my heme iron from simply heme really made a huge difference. i really love the company metagenics for supplements - i have their b complex, phytomulti, and magnesium glycinate. i have a new tincture with chinese skullcap root, albizia bark extract (!!!), holy basil leaf, perilla leaf extract, calendula flower, goldenrod leaf and stem, and organic giloy leaf and stem. working on thyroid hormones that got messed up from the birth control with trace minerals ionic zinc, selenium, and iodine and gaia’s thyroid support with schisandra. i do bergamot essential oil in the diffuser and always rose otto hydrosol and calendula oil. i have a little medicine cabinet!! i really want to get my hands on some borage and some evening primrose oil. it has changed everything, everything
"It was not covered fully because it was considered diagnostic and not preventive." Women start DEXA at all degrees of bone density. I'm not aware that that is a factor in payment. Without laying out my argument, I'd suggest full review of your being charged for this treatment.
I had several ER visits from menstrual cramps. The cramps were so bad that they were taking my breath away. It felt like somebody was kicking the breath out of me. I tried birth control pills but they didn’t help at all. The hormonal Mirena IUD saved me! I get it replaced every 4 years. Is that different from the depo provera?
Yes, mirena is etonorgestrel and depo provera is medroxyprogesterone acetate. I had Mirena for about 10 years. They said it doesn't act on the brain but I think they're full of it personally. It definitely does suppress menstruation and causes reduction in size of endometrium. Since I've been off it they are lighter than they ever were before.
Well, like probably most things, everyone has different genetics, but more importantly than that, everyone has different baseline nutritional profiles, which are literally never looked at in the US. Very often, severe menstrual cramps & breast tenderness are due to a lack of iodine/iodide and magnesium, and/or a bromide toxicity. But I'm very glad you're not in monthly pain!
also. it's not true "you don't need to menstruate" per se. you do need to continue monitoring for example the endometrium. ensure it is not getting thick and susceptible to cancerous cells. *we cannot flee our biology, our sex, our genetics.* we cannot flee our life traumas, either. you cannot become male and pretend this part of your body doesn't exist. we need to find ways to live in our bodies.
Please stop calling them "gender affirming hormones"! This kind of language just perpetuates the myth that hormones in excess of the normal range for individuals of one sex have overall positive ("affirming") effects on the person who takes them. Hormones in excess of the normal range for individuals of one sex are more accurately described as "delusion affirming".
Jesus 😱 I take a desogesterol only for contraception, didn't start it until I was 36 and I think I'm OK... I have a very physically demanding job with a lot of heavy lifting and can outperform a lot of younger people but this is concerning...
They told me heavy lifting would prevent this but I think that advice only works for women who've already finished maturing and mineralizing. This disrupted that process. I was lifting regularly up to 200 pounds deadlift and I was very strong, but I was not finished growing when they disrupted my hormone cycles.
I got some DEXA tests about 10 years ago. I was wondering whether to take bone meds for awhile, but after some research, I found that that only increases the chance of fractures. My yearly heel test had sunk pretty low. I decided to lift some weights. Just in my own house, 2 kilogram weights. Maybe 10 minutes before my swim workout. And the heel test results improved! I got the exercises off the net. I’m now 73, and have had a few falls off my scooter and bike in the last few years. Nothing broke. So I suggest exercising with light weights and to keep it up. Good luck! I hope your next score goes up!
I truly don't understand how depo is still on the market. The bone density loss is well known. I'm not anti-birth control, exactly, but the hormonal ones all have kind of horrendous side effects that are well known and rarely communicated clearly to women and girls. I'm so sorry you're in pain, Ex. Calcium/magnesium/K2 supplementation may help with the bone density loss. Collagen supplementation may also help with cartilage maintenance. They will not be cure alls, but they may help the pain.
Cal, vitamin D, vitamin K is what they tell all of us older women with bone loss. It's do-able.
K2 is the one you want, not K(1). K1 has something to do with clotting, but K2 turns on the calcium receptors in your bones, so it actually goes to the right place. :) D is also very important.
you are right. thanks for that note.
It's not nice to fool (with) Mother Nature.
This also opens up the whole can of worms about about ocps being handed to young girls like candy.... It's almost a rite of passage and it's alarming to me when I actually dive into it. Note that teenage boys are never advised hormones and surgery, whether "gender-affirming" or not.
Teenage boys never become pregnant. The main purpose of the oral contraceptive pills is to prevent pregnancy, and pregnancy can kill you. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19644742/
Yes, but there are contraception methods that do not involve chemically suppressing the brain function and maturation processes of girls' and young women's bodies. There's no reason to give depo provera to someone who had not hit peak bone density when other contraception methods that are even more effective, without the use of hormones, exist including abstinence, condoms, and non-hormonal IUD.
I don't advocate depot medroxyprogesterone acetate, partly because an injection cannot be removed (unlike an etonogestrel implant). The problem with abstinence is that a woman's wish to abstain from sex is not always granted, nor is her desire for a male partner to use a condom always respected. I am saying that the risks of the side effects of hormonal contraceptives should be assessed in light of the known risks associated with pregnancy.
I hear you and I agree, but at the same time, there's other solutions that don't permanently stunt growth. If a woman or girl is raped or has some other known exposure to male gametes, such as broken condom, that's a time to use progesterone to prevent pregnancy (emergency contraception), or failing that, terminate it early.
Alas, those options are increasingly becoming unavailable in the United States. Personally, I think that we also need to focus on keeping full-grown men from messing with underage girls.
They really aren't, you can very easily get, at minimum, EC online. The wonders of Amazon.
I tried oral contraception in my 20s and it made me sick. We always used a diaphragm. I don't think that's probably very popular today, but it used to be for married couples. Now I don't need anything.
agree, but please do not cite abstinence as a form of birth control. it is highly ineffective. condoms should always be used---do teach that---but are not, given real-world pressures and desires, enough. IUDs have to be improved, ones that do not contain hormones. no one is advocating fussing with boys' and men's biology EVER. it's considered near-sacred. women's is not.
I used the diaphragm with contraceptive gel and/or condoms for decades, never had an unwanted pregnancy. I'm so sorry to hear of these skeletal problems, Ex. I'd heard about headaches from the Pill so never took it, though I believe most heterosexual women my age (now late 60s) did. Keep us in the loop about how things are going. Make sure you're eating enough protein~
I have friends who were put on oral contraceptives at age 15 by their mothers. It was just the done thing, "better to be safe", etc.
By the time some women are 30 they've been on them continuously for 15 years!
We forget that these are pharmaceutical drugs. Whatever social benefit they have, they should first and foremost be seen through a medical lens: you are intervening on a healthy body for a prophylactic purpose and not because you're trying to cure an ailment. Deciding to go on hormonal contraceptives shouldn't be treated so casually, and as a society we really need to have discussions about this.
I don’t understand mechanism behind oral contraception and potential consequences of it (you can laugh, but I think im definitely not alone in this), but I used to take Vibin Mini (Drospirenonum + Ethinylestradiolum; idk what’s the brand name in USA) for 4,5 years at 21-26. I didn’t feel any side effects while on it and was very happy with lack of period, then I quit it because I broke up with my bf. My sex drive was nonexistent during this entire time, which I contributed to depression (real) and asexuality* (not real, recency bias and internet poisoning), then it got back along with period**. M a g i c. I was completely oblivious to the fact that contraception changed/suppressed my personality in major way.
*in hindsight homosexuality was among real causes, but I couldn’t know that without sex drive
**I don’t think depression was signifiant factor here, because during these years I survived 2 major depression episodes with normalcy in between, yet lack of libido was constant
Could not agree more! There are also environmental effects that aren't talked about much, like how hormones, medications, and pesticides are affecting animals/waterways. They are typically not removed in the wastewater treatment systems before being put back in the environment. In the early to mid-2000s, there was a study done on rivers in CO and the feminizing effects of excreted hormones on fish and amphibians, which was noticeable, anx traced back specifically to hormonal birth control. There are pesticides that do similar things (atrazine, and I wouldn't be surprised if that has something to do with the trans boom, as well).
Are you sure? What I'm seeing suggests it's a very small contributor to total estrogen. You have to understand women make estrogen and birth control reduces the natural level you make. You pee it out either way.
https://www.acs.org/pressroom/presspacs/2011/acs-presspac-february-23-2011/new-report-dont-blame-the-pill-for-estrogen-in-drinking-water.html
I suppose I'm not, because I never bothered to look for any follow up studies, but thank you for calling me out and posting the other one. :)
I will say, though, that the patentable version of estrogen and progesterone in birth control, while similar to our naturally made hormones, are fundamentally not exactly the same, and were never studied in natural environments long term (they weren't even studied thoroughly in women long term), so we don't know exactly what they do or don't do until we start looking, and there is very little financial incentive to do that in terms of funding/grants/etc. Humans have a pretty long history of thinking whatever compound is fine and then finding out decades later that it isn't.
I wouldn’t be worried about hormonal bc contamination in the water, a potentially much bigger threat is from hormone-mimicking chemicals leached from plastics directly into water from drinking vessels, or from the plastic linings of canned foods and beverages.
Although a seemingly reasonable hypothesis, there’s no evidence that the huge increase in individuals identifying as “trans” is related to any environmental endocrine disruptors. If that were the case, there should have been a corresponding increase in incidence of congenital disorders of sexual development, yet there’s no evidence of such; “trans,” despite activists’ claims to the contrary, has no relationship with DSD conditions, other than as an ideological parasite, opportunistically hijacking recent political movements seeking to stop the regular practice of performing surgeries on children with ambiguous genitalia, as evidenced by the appropriation of the phrase “gender assigned at birth,” which is nonsensical except within the context of those cases.
Oh my God. I knew depo Provera was bad but I didn't know this aspect of it. My Younger sister went on it in her teens. Of course I can't prove it was the depo, But I can say that she went from being a super outgoing, charismatic, happy healthy girl to a chronically depressed, miserable girl who put on like 50 pounds in the first year she was on it. She stopped Taking it but has never recovered. She developed such Terrible joint pain that she is just been stuck in a spiral of out of control weight gain and inability to exercise ever since, and never regained her former personality either.
That's awful.
Have her look at primal edge health, they can help with all of that with dietary changes focusing on protein and fat macros rather than carbohydrate. It really does make a massive difference to energy levels, wellbeing and general health. Losing excess weight is a bonus side effect. She'll soon get her spark back.
Calcium supplements do not prevent or cure osteopenia/osteoporosis. You can get osteoporosis from taking catabolic hormones (e.g., prednisone). But most cases of osteoporosis are due to long-term consumption of a diet high in animal protein, even though the diet may be rich in calcium (from dairy foods or fish bones). That basic fact has been known since the 1980s. (In fact, I learned about it while copyediting the manuscript of a nutrition textbook in the 1980s.) Some short-term studies seem to show a benefit from calcium supplements, but that is because the calcium has an alkalinizing effect on the body, not because it is calcium, per se. It would be better to consume a diet with a lot of fruit and vegetables (rich in potassium and magnesium) and no animal protein (and no colas, which contain phosphoric acid). It is natural to lose some calcium from the bones after menopause because the body no longer needs to prepare for pregnancy (during which a woman's body must supply the calcium for the growing fetal skeleton). It's unclear whether prolonged use of depot medroxyprogesterone acetate has a long-term effect on fracture risk in later life. https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2014/06/depot-medroxyprogesterone-acetate-and-bone-effects We do know that osteoporotic bone loss can be reversed through yoga. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27226695/
Do you have a scientific article about the dangers of animal proteins?
I wish you all the best and sincerely hope it won’t be that bad
About desisting/detransitioning binary: I know it doesn’t cross the line of medical intervention to the body, but something that further blurs the picture is the fact that many trans-identifying people tend to bring their larp of opposite sex to various documentation, surveys, questionnaires. I knew people who put their trans identity in questions about sex, because, as they openly said, they felt like they would lie if they put they birth sex - lack of medical interventions doesn’t make anyone less trans, they said. So I wonder what quantities of unreliable medical data we have as the outcome.
Yes that’s a huge problem. Media outlets in the UK have been puzzled by a recent increase in the number of women committing sex crimes, a category of criminality historically only associated with males.
I discovered I have hips arthritis with 51 (it's not so known as osteoporosis but it's also a consequence of menopause). Lifting weights it really helped. Your muscles can make your bone growth. Keep strong dear! 💚🤍💜
https://youtube.com/shorts/mpvW-hWZXoI?si=nLy3aXHL7bIQYeku
I lifted weights the whole time I was on it, just like they said. I got really strong too. I took my D and calcium. But my maturation was stunted and so it was not enough to get to where I needed to be. I hope there's some improvement from being off the that and the implant by the next time I get tested. I'm still lifting
How old were you when you started on it?
One thing that may help in addition to what you are already doing is nettle infusion. Stinging needles are high in calcium, and also in other minerals that make the calcium more bio available to your body. You might get up small benefit from just buying some already made tea bags of nettle tea, But it won't be as powerful as a stronger infusion. And of course there's also the microplastics in all tea bags these days. Get dried organic stinging nettles, Fill a one quart jar up to the 1 cup line with the dried herb, and then pour boiling water over it to steep overnight. Strain and drink hot or iced at least a cup a day.( Keep unused part in the fridge of course) It doesn't taste awesome but it does have many health benefits.
i had excruciating period cramps after taking birth control for one year (j&j vaccine and plan b made it even worse). i was going to the ER for debilitating pain. i vomited every period and i could not move an inch. i stopped nsaids completely and took anna’s wild yam cream (vitex and aloe vera). it completely eliminated my pain. i have next to no pain now with my period and i cherish when i have it. this was a miracle for me and i am so grateful i could cry
drank countless organic nettle root and leaf teas. yarrow, reishi, chicory, dandelion, marshmallow root, rishi ginger tumeric tea, bergamot oolong tea, ashwagandha, licorice root, yarrow, it goes on and on. i also used castor oil liver packs and they really freaking helped. a lot of tart cherry juice. did some black walnut hull and ap tincture at my point. my heme iron from simply heme really made a huge difference. i really love the company metagenics for supplements - i have their b complex, phytomulti, and magnesium glycinate. i have a new tincture with chinese skullcap root, albizia bark extract (!!!), holy basil leaf, perilla leaf extract, calendula flower, goldenrod leaf and stem, and organic giloy leaf and stem. working on thyroid hormones that got messed up from the birth control with trace minerals ionic zinc, selenium, and iodine and gaia’s thyroid support with schisandra. i do bergamot essential oil in the diffuser and always rose otto hydrosol and calendula oil. i have a little medicine cabinet!! i really want to get my hands on some borage and some evening primrose oil. it has changed everything, everything
just be aware nettle should be avoided if one has kidney disease, diabetes, or high blood pressure
"It was not covered fully because it was considered diagnostic and not preventive." Women start DEXA at all degrees of bone density. I'm not aware that that is a factor in payment. Without laying out my argument, I'd suggest full review of your being charged for this treatment.
I had several ER visits from menstrual cramps. The cramps were so bad that they were taking my breath away. It felt like somebody was kicking the breath out of me. I tried birth control pills but they didn’t help at all. The hormonal Mirena IUD saved me! I get it replaced every 4 years. Is that different from the depo provera?
Yes, mirena is etonorgestrel and depo provera is medroxyprogesterone acetate. I had Mirena for about 10 years. They said it doesn't act on the brain but I think they're full of it personally. It definitely does suppress menstruation and causes reduction in size of endometrium. Since I've been off it they are lighter than they ever were before.
My periods were super heavy before Mirena.
I find it fascinating how birth control affects women so differently.
Well, like probably most things, everyone has different genetics, but more importantly than that, everyone has different baseline nutritional profiles, which are literally never looked at in the US. Very often, severe menstrual cramps & breast tenderness are due to a lack of iodine/iodide and magnesium, and/or a bromide toxicity. But I'm very glad you're not in monthly pain!
Oh wow
<3 <3 <3 much love to you, dear sierra - i'm so sorry you are dealing with this <3 <3 <3
edit: I got an ovary saving hysto for my endo, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. Worth looking into.
also. it's not true "you don't need to menstruate" per se. you do need to continue monitoring for example the endometrium. ensure it is not getting thick and susceptible to cancerous cells. *we cannot flee our biology, our sex, our genetics.* we cannot flee our life traumas, either. you cannot become male and pretend this part of your body doesn't exist. we need to find ways to live in our bodies.
Please stop calling them "gender affirming hormones"! This kind of language just perpetuates the myth that hormones in excess of the normal range for individuals of one sex have overall positive ("affirming") effects on the person who takes them. Hormones in excess of the normal range for individuals of one sex are more accurately described as "delusion affirming".
Jesus 😱 I take a desogesterol only for contraception, didn't start it until I was 36 and I think I'm OK... I have a very physically demanding job with a lot of heavy lifting and can outperform a lot of younger people but this is concerning...
They told me heavy lifting would prevent this but I think that advice only works for women who've already finished maturing and mineralizing. This disrupted that process. I was lifting regularly up to 200 pounds deadlift and I was very strong, but I was not finished growing when they disrupted my hormone cycles.
Damn... young women need to be aware of that. I get that it's a safer option than a combined hormone but that's very serious.
I got some DEXA tests about 10 years ago. I was wondering whether to take bone meds for awhile, but after some research, I found that that only increases the chance of fractures. My yearly heel test had sunk pretty low. I decided to lift some weights. Just in my own house, 2 kilogram weights. Maybe 10 minutes before my swim workout. And the heel test results improved! I got the exercises off the net. I’m now 73, and have had a few falls off my scooter and bike in the last few years. Nothing broke. So I suggest exercising with light weights and to keep it up. Good luck! I hope your next score goes up!