Study Suggests Link Between Birth Control Pills and Crohn's Disease

Birth control pills: good for you or not good for you? (Don’t answer that; it’s a trick question, since no one has a definitive answer.)

But if you’ve got a family history of Crohn’s disease, you might want to rethink taking birth control pills, according to a new study out of Massachusetts General Hospital.

Via Telegraph:

Research in the United States suggested there may be a previously unidentified link between a huge upsurge in cases of Crohn’s in the last 50 years and the explosion in oral contraceptives since the Swinging Sixties.

A study of 230,000 American women by Dr Hamed Khalili, a Harvard gastroenterologist, found the risk was three times higher for women who had used the Pill for at least five years.

However, Dr Khalili stressed the Pill alone was unlikely to cause Crohn’s and that the risk of developing the disease depending largely on the patient’s genes.

~~Filthy whore pills~~ Emergency contraception, a.k.a. the morning after pill, also carries an increase in triggering Crohn’s, in case you were planning on sleeping with some rando before your next visit with your gastroenterologist.

All jokes aside: Crohn’s sucks. Symptoms include diarrhea, bloody stool, fatigue and perianal disease, among other complications, and affects as many as 700,000 people within the United States alone.

What’s more frustrating, I think, is the rise of autoimmune disorders among women, with no clear cut explanation as to the how or why of their origin—and then throwing out complications like, ‘Hey, maybe don’t take the medication that lets you have a modicum of control over your future so that you don’t cause a domino effect on your health today.’