You can't trust what the drug companies tell you though.
I am very skeptical when it comes to drug companies.
My wife was a young woman once upon a time, and she was taking birth control pills for a couple years before we decided to have kids. Then when she was 27, she developed breast cancer.
After we went through all of that, never again did she ever take birth control pills, and never again did she develop any further problems.
While the jury may still be out on the birth control issue, I think it will eventually rule that those things should not be taken by young women.
I think that there is much we don't know about hormones, and what all they effect in the body, how the body regulates them and for what reasons.
Birth control pills do NOT balance the different types of estrogens....just like Premarin does not. I don’t think BC pills would work if they did. They purposely mess up a woman’s system to prevent pregnancy. Sooooo.....they are playing with the body in ways the body wasn’t meant to be played with.
I too am very skeptical of drug companies. I am NOT however, skeptical about hormones when they are responsibly used, and the individual undergoes proper testing.
Birth control pills protect against some cancers and slightly increase the risk of others. Breast cancer at age 27 is almost certainly due to genetics, but artificial hormone intake can aggravate certain types of cancer in people who are already prone to them. The hormone levels associated with pregnancy can also energize these types of cancers.
Probably the number one thing responsible for out-of-whack hormone levels in our society has nothing at all to do with hormone replacement therapy or birth control pills. It’s the unnaturally sedentary lifestyle of the “information age” and the closely associated high rates of excess weight. Levels of fat and muscle in the body are simply HUGE drivers of hormone levels, and anything we’re doing with pills and creams and injections is likely a drop in the bucket compared to the unnatural effects of a lifetime of sedentary existence and excess food intake. For women, carrying just a few extra pounds sharply increases breast cancer risk — a significant effect has been found even at “normal” weights, starting with weight of just 5% more than when the woman was college-aged.