How do birth control pills belong into Cave Kitchen? Well, I am not going to recommend using them in recipes. However, while my Science page has not been created yet, part of the purpose of this blog is to reconcile recommendations of Paleo lifestyle with mainstream science.
An aspect of Paleo philosophy that I find so appealing is that it does not reject modern developments for being modern. It is not about going back to traditions, but rather, it uses history book along with modern science to estimate the most optimal lifestyle given our current knowledge.
So... birth control pills: good for sex at the office, bad for health, right? Wrong! Actually, birth control has been prescribed for a long time for young women (even preteen girls) to treat various conditions from high blood pressure to endometriosis. Recently, I was alerted to a rather interesting history lesson into the development of the pill It also talks about the harm and benefits of the pill, the research into making it even better and describes some interesting habits of the primitive cultures when it comes to menstruating women.
On that note, I'd like to digress, just for a second. PERIODS. There - now I said it. Your mother had them, your girlfriend's got them and your daughter's going to have them. Can we please lift the taboo and teach our boys & girls that there is nothing to be embarrassed about? My 4-year-old can give you a lecture on menstruation, reproduction and will successfully identify articles of feminine hygiene (well, because he keeps getting into my cabinets!) I really hope our culture is moving in that general direction and most girls don't have to live through the embarrassment I remember...
OK, back to the topic. Turns out:
a) The Pill protects you from ovarian cancer. Mainstream cancer researchers agree.
b) The Pill does increase the risk of breast cancer. Pregnancy (agreed) & menopause (Resounding yes!) all reduce it.
Basically, the idea is, ovulation is a hard on a woman's body. Doing it over and over again will eventually result in wear and tear leading to cancer. Being pregnant for much of your life or (if you must insist) using the birth control pill (which suppresses ovulation) makes things better, EXCEPT that the pill causes hormone fluctuations which, while protecting the ovaries, creates a problem with the breasts. But now that we are thinking about it, we can work on correcting.
So.. evolutionarily women are supposed to have lots and lots of babies and live for a long time to take care of them (and perhaps help them take care of their babies), but no similar evolutionary mechanism exists to protect women who do not reproduce. Their body is more likely to fail. So for us, the over-educated busy career women of the modern times, the best hope for survival is the ironically natural ovulation-suppressing pill and the hope for producing an even better pill that keeps us safe.
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