World Leader in Cancer Prevention Links Birth Control Pill to Cancer; Other "Benefits" of the PIll

By Terry Vanderheyden

CHICAGO, March 7, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A world leader in cancer causes and prevention has warned that the so-called birth control pill is “the largest unregulated human trial that’s ever been conducted.”

Dr. Sam Epstein, author of Cancer-Gate: How to Win the Losing Cancer War and Professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, told the CBC’s Marketplace that exposure to the hormones estrogen and progestin, as found in the pill, increase breast cancer risk.

Marketplace author Wendy Mesley, herself a breast cancer survivor, explained that the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer last year re-classified hormonal contraceptives as carcinogenic to humans.

Dr. Chris Kahlenborn, M.D. demonstrated that a woman who takes birth control pills before her first child is born has at least a 40 percent increased risk of developing breast cancer and a woman who has taken the pill for four or more years prior to the birth of her first child has a 72 percent risk factor in developing breast cancer. Dr. Kahlenborn’s book, “Breast cancer: Its link to abortion and the birth control pill,” published by One More Soul, is based on six years of study and a meticulous analysis of hundreds of scientific papers and other sources. [Continue]

In addition to breast cancer, some other wonderful benefits of taking the birth control pill are:

Increased risk of blood clotting,heart attack and stroke
Migraines
Gall bladder disease
Increased blood pressure
Weight gain
Mood changes
Nausea Irregular bleeding or spotting
Benign liver tumors
Breast tenderness

The use of antibiotics has been shown to decrease the effectiveness of birth control pills.

What is not usually mentioned, or even known, is the metabolism of birth control pills by the liver requires extra amounts of the B-complex vitamins, vitamin C, magnesium and zinc. That means if you're taking birth control pills for years at a time, as are most American women, you're creating nutrient deficiencies. Weight gain, fluid retention, mood changes, depression and even heart disease can all arise from nutrient imbalance.

For example, we now know high levels of an amino acid called homocysteine cause heart disease. And high homocysteine occurs when there is a deficiency of B vitamins and magnesium.

In addition to all this misery, the continuous use of birth control pills like the new no-period pill has not been sufficiently studied.

Women who use these methods -- that may be you -- are the "test subjects," if you will, for an ongoing experiment. We have no idea what the long-term effects of daily hormones will do to fertility or other aspects of our health.

Via Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.