Liking Your Birth Control Pills? Should You Switch to A Contraceptive Ring?

You will love the ring. It’s handy, you can control when to pop it in and when to pop it out, so you are controlling the hormone use, and it’s more effective at having steady blood levels. So do consider switching to the ring even if you are quite pleased with your pills. Today you have to take your pill, and yesterday, and tomorrow, and we have you scheduled to take over 3650 of these pills over the next ten years. So trying to minimize that day in and day out issue has been one of the main driving forces behind the popularity of the vaginal ring for contraception. Vaginal rings should be available in the 40 different sizes and shapes that birth control pills come in, but they are not, they are currently available in one size and one shape. The shape is simple: a ring. It’s soft, it sits pretty much anywhere in the vagina. It doesn’t need the careful engineering of a diaphragm placement, and it’s not likely to pinch or be felt. About 1/10 women in some studies report the ring can slip out at least once a week, so do check it, but in our patients we do not get reports of slippage that are as common as all that (I’m proud of you girls, good job, beating the averages). You can even have a pap smear while it’s sitting there. Pills contain progesterone to stop a woman from getting pregnant by stopping ovulation, the estrogen in pills helps to make that ovulation prevention more effective and it makes a woman less likely to have breakthrough bleeding. The NuvaRing has essentially the same estrogen: ethinylestradiol specifically most birth control pills have, it releases etonogestrel, which is a form of desogestrel, one of the progesterones found in birth control pills, and the hormone, is released though the silicone wall that houses the hormone, over the lining of the vagina, into the complex network of arteries and veins that surround this delicate tissue and without giving a large exposure to one’s liver, gets the hormone into the circulation very quickly and effectively. The hormone probably accumulates a bit on the surface of the ring while sitting in your fridge waiting for the first use, and the first day or so you pop your ring in the hormone levels can be the highest. For most women that tiny extra hormone burst is not something to worry about, not like eating the cherries in the Whitches of Eastwick, dramatic consequences are not likely! If your moods, your periods, your waist line or your skin is getting out of whack, you and your gyno need a longer talk, it might be that new contraceptive ring, but likely there are other contributing factors that have to be evaluated. The hormones estrogen and progesterone have a bit of a burst then they slightly but steadily decline from week one to week 3, again, for most, this slight decline is not very noticeable, for others it maybe. Most studies show that about three quarters of women who launch off on the use of a NuvaRing will still be using it at the end of the first year, but there are so many reasons stop their method of contraception, its as likely as not, that you will be very happy with this method, and more likely if you were already liking the pill!

Passing Your Uterine Lining, Menstrual Period Norms

Decidual Cast Periods can be fairly easy, passing some tissue at a time, or off can come the whole lining in one piece called a decidual cast. Generally the lining of the uterus is only 6-8 mm thick at the time of the menstrual period, and it is shed gradually, a few cells at a time. The decidual cast is when the entire lining passes spontaneously. It's not uncommon, but it usually both uncomfortable, and alarming to some. But us women are designed to have some sort of periods Or Not? We have to pass tissue each month. Or Not? Are they good for us? Or Not? Do we want them? Or Not? Is this something that is individual? Or Not? It's a complex topic that I will be discussing a lot over my time in this blog. So lets start with basics: How much do we bleed and what are we loosing, and just what was this that the patient passed? And another basic: track your periods, and the Women's Health Practice site http://www.womenshealthpractice.com/media/pdf/menstrual_chart.pdf you...

You Have an IUD: But a Positive Pregnancy Test

Fortunately IUD pregnancy failures are rare. But if you have an IUD for contraception, and you get a positive pregnancy test, you probably ask yourself, what next? Well, make your gyno appointment promptly, this is a condition that is not typically an emergency, but it can be and it’s not handled over the phone or on a blog, or through self diagnosis! That being said, some researchers from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas decided to look back at over 4100 women who had IUDs and of those 42 cases who became pregnant in their institution, over about a year period of time, to help understand what these women could expect when they got to their gyno and what actually happened to their pregnancies. Accurate pregnancy diagnosis, pelvic examination, and pelvic ultrasound were the cornerstones of the evaluations. They had very specific ways they looked at their ultrasound to prove there was no pregnancy in the fallopian tube, or partially in the fallopian tube...

Post-Endometrial Ablation Syndrome

If you have had an endometrial ablation and have developed symptoms of pelvic pain you might have post endometrial ablation syndrome. What is post-endometrial ablation syndrome? It is a constellation of symptoms due to entrapped blood or tissue within a uterus that has previously undergone an endometrial ablation. We are able to diagnose this at Women's Health Practic e but occasionally other conditions are causing similar symptoms. Other complications of endometrial ablation include pregnancy, risks from pre-existing conditions such as a polyp or fibroid, an infection of the uterus, or a pregnancy. If you have had a tubal ligation then it is possible that the condition could be post-ablation tubal sterilization syndrome. The ablation procedure is designed to destroy all lining tissue, but in fact there is no way to confirm the completeness of the ablation. It is thought that either residual or regrowth of the tissue is producing the symptoms of post-endometrial ablation syndrom...

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