[Editor’s Note: This article, rightly so, has generated a lot of commentary on the issues of women’s reproductive health. We urge you to please read the original article and comment on it. The OCA’s intention in linking to it is not to condemn birth control at all, merely to point out that in certain instances, womens’ health issues allow us to become unwitting victims of Big Pharma and the medical establishment. Birth control pills, while helpful and liberating for many women, are also a potential cause of cancer, and readers deserve to know about this and make more informed choices.]

These days, young women are besieged by many challenges. Social pressures, economic concerns, health problems, schoolwork, and family tensions all tilt the stress barometer into the dangerous red zone. Skipping meals, eating junk food along with starvation diets have become a way of life for teenagers. More than ever, young women seem to be burning the candle at both ends.

Women’s lifestyles and behaviors directly affect their physical and emotional wellbeing, both for the short and long term. It’s no wonder that their hormonal health is under attack. Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), painful periods, irregular or absent periods, ovarian cysts, polycystic ovaries, fibrocystic breast disease (lumpy, painful breasts) endometriosis, hormonal migraines, fibroids, acne, allergies, fatigue and mood swings are occurring in young women at epidemic rates. Many girls try to ignore their health problems hoping they will disappear. Others schedule appointments with their doctors. Odds on, they will leave the doctor’s office with either a prescription drug or some version of the Birth Control Pill.

Rather than perceiving hormonal imbalances as aberrations created by the many abuses of modern life, Medicine has convinced women that menstruation itself, is the problem and those natural menstrual cycles are dangerous, disease producing and require medical intervention. Doctors have also convinced many women that their ovaries are the villains behind their health problems and emotional turmoil. The solution: shut it down. The method: some form of birth control!

The erroneous notion that menstruation is a rather unpleasant, toxic process has been around for a hundreds, if not thousands of years. So has the belief that the source of a woman’s suffering resides within her ovaries, uterus and her menstrual flow.

In a syndicated column written by a well-known Australian doctor a reader asked the following question. “My doctor told me recently that monthly periods were now regarded by some as a ‘disease’ and totally preventable. Is this true?” His reply. “Why should women be burdened with loss of valuable blood each month, which is often not manufactured in similar amounts, often leading to anemia and chronic tiredness? Taking the active ingredients of the oral contraceptive pill daily, with no seven-day break solves the problem.”