Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, We're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix,
Speaker 1: Arizona this fall. Yeah, October, we're going to be at
Speaker 1: Salt Lake Cities Grand Theater and then the next night
Speaker 1: October will be in Phoenix. And we added a second
Speaker 1: show to our Melbourne show, right, that's right, a second
Speaker 1: earlier show in Melbourne. So you can get all the
Speaker 1: information for all of these shows at s y s
Speaker 1: K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: and there's the ghost of Jerry Rouran and the empty chair.
Speaker 1: Thanks you love this, Thanks again to Ramsey. Yeah, thanks Ramsey.
Speaker 1: How do we feel about this? I feel great. The
Speaker 1: pill is it has everything. This might be I just
Speaker 1: love this episode already. I do too, but I kind
Speaker 1: of like when we did the female Puberty episode. I
Speaker 1: just feel nervous. This is gonna be fine. Dude, explaining
Speaker 1: female reproduction. I just I don't know. Hey, man, We're
Speaker 1: just we're just explaining stuff. I know. I know. It's
Speaker 1: not like we're we're We're just we're just explaining stuff.
Speaker 1: Just be cool. Hey, before we get going, dude, do
Speaker 1: you mind if I do a little pluggage for my
Speaker 1: movie Crush show? Do you plug away? So everybody murdering
Speaker 1: nos out there, you know, I love my favorite murder
Speaker 1: of the podcast and just got back from l A
Speaker 1: and Karen and Georgia were kind enough to sit in
Speaker 1: and do a movie crush with me. That's awesome, man,
Speaker 1: that's huge. It was huge because I'm such a fan
Speaker 1: and they were great and murderingos you should know. They
Speaker 1: are warm and friendly and lovely and generous. And I
Speaker 1: was a little nervous meeting them because I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: what if it's gone to their heads and their jerks.
Speaker 1: But they were great. They were so awesome and nice
Speaker 1: and we had a blast, and of course I they
Speaker 1: let me pick the movie because it's a Murderino special
Speaker 1: and we did the Silence of the Lambs. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that's a great movie. Yeah. So not only that, but
Speaker 1: we talked about their life and live shows and touring
Speaker 1: and their rise to podcast stardom and about all the
Speaker 1: people they've kidnapped and killed. Yeah, it's great, man. It's
Speaker 1: an hour and forty minutes long, so it's supersized and
Speaker 1: you're gonna love it. And even if you don't like
Speaker 1: my favorite murder, it might be a good chance for
Speaker 1: you to check out movie Crush. Yeah, so go check
Speaker 1: it out. Everybody. When's that one coming out? Chuck, it's
Speaker 1: already out. Just drop this last Friday. So wait, so
Speaker 1: you guys don't even have to wait wait wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: listen to this episode first and then go listen to
Speaker 1: that movie Crushed. Actually doesn't matter, just listen to them both.
Speaker 1: All right, you ready to get to this? Yeah? Man,
Speaker 1: all right, so let's talk the pill. Yeah, the opposite
Speaker 1: of having kids, the pharmaceutical so famous that it's called
Speaker 1: the pill. It is there. I read this New Yorker
Speaker 1: article about a book on the birth of the pill,
Speaker 1: and now I'm talking about it, so everything comes full circle. Um.
Speaker 1: And they were saying, like, there's like, you don't call
Speaker 1: anything else the pill, Like viagra is not the pill,
Speaker 1: Antibiotics isn't the pill. Um, you don't call it the
Speaker 1: vacuum or the meat grinder, right, Like, there's there's really
Speaker 1: nothing like that, nothing compares to it. And it's it's
Speaker 1: for good reason. I mean, the pill is monumentally huge
Speaker 1: as far as pharmaceuticals and medicine goes on the scale
Speaker 1: of antibiotics easily. Yeah, and it's um, it's the very
Speaker 1: first medication that was designed for a non therapeutic purpose too. Yes,
Speaker 1: very interesting and so it's really difficult to over to
Speaker 1: overstate how much of an impact the pill had when
Speaker 1: they released it in I think nineteen sixties when it
Speaker 1: first history first. Yeah, let's let's do that. So let
Speaker 1: me set the stage for you please. Oh, you're bringing
Speaker 1: a couch out back in back in the day. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do my Charles Nelson Riley one man show impression.
Speaker 1: Back in the day. Um, if you were a woman
Speaker 1: and you didn't want to get pregnant, you had to
Speaker 1: coordinate with your husband, Um that he wear a condom. Okay, sure,
Speaker 1: your boyfriend, Well, that's like a whole other kettle fish
Speaker 1: at this time, supposedly and socially that went on all
Speaker 1: the time. There's plenty of premrital sex, but socially speaking,
Speaker 1: only single men were allowed to have premarital sex, which
Speaker 1: is like, who are they having premarital sex with? Then? Right,
Speaker 1: if they're the only ones allowed to have premarital sex,
Speaker 1: considering considering everyone refused to officially recognize homosexuality even existed.
Speaker 1: And where you're getting okay, so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: double standards, a lot of repression going on. But if
Speaker 1: you were if you were a woman and you wanted
Speaker 1: to have sex, so whether it was with the guy
Speaker 1: you were having sex with or your husband, you you
Speaker 1: basically had to say you got to wear a condom.
Speaker 1: And if you said no, well you were s O
Speaker 1: L one way or another, either you weren't having sex
Speaker 1: or you're gonna have sex without a condom. And if
Speaker 1: that happened, there was a really good chance that you
Speaker 1: were going to end up getting pregnant just from having sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the ball was entirely in the man's court and women
Speaker 1: did not have much say in the matter. No, they didn't.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of things on the market so
Speaker 1: before the industrial the Industrial revolution, they were like folk
Speaker 1: remedies where you could use herbs and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Basically I think they're called herbal douches where you're just
Speaker 1: like squeezing stuff in there and hoping for hoping for
Speaker 1: the best, right. Um, And then by the depression there's
Speaker 1: something there's a whole line of stuff called uh, gynecological
Speaker 1: aids or feminine hygiene, I think is what it is called.
Speaker 1: And some of them worked, some of them kind of worked,
Speaker 1: some of them didn't work. Some of them worked but
Speaker 1: would kill you or give you chemical burns. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of problems, so you didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of options, right, And then along with the fact that
Speaker 1: you you actually didn't have that many options socially, in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty, thirty states and the federal government said you
Speaker 1: can't have anything that that can be used as a contraceptive,
Speaker 1: and you can't even learn about it from your doctor
Speaker 1: or from school. Thirty states in the federal government. This
Speaker 1: is nineteen fifty. Ten years later, the pill comes out,
Speaker 1: and a couple of years after that, five million American
Speaker 1: women are using it as a contraception, and they now
Speaker 1: it was in their hands. They had the ability to
Speaker 1: decide for themselves whether sex laed to pregnancy or not. Well,
Speaker 1: and sort of even then, right because not all states
Speaker 1: allowed it and not all doctors would give it out right,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't like, oh, the FDA said it's good
Speaker 1: to go, so we can all get it. It was
Speaker 1: still a fight for years and years of decades it
Speaker 1: really was. So I guess we should start with a
Speaker 1: woman named Margaret Sanger. She is very controversial figure, uh,
Speaker 1: founder of planned parenthood. She's a nurse, and she wrote
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve about a magic pill that could prevent conception. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just a theoretical hypothetical pill, right, and um, she's controversial
Speaker 1: for many reasons, um, not the leases which is her
Speaker 1: she was anti abortion. Um, kind of when she was
Speaker 1: most famous, she was anti abortion and kind of went
Speaker 1: all in on the pill and was like, this is
Speaker 1: the way to do it, is to prevent the pregnancy
Speaker 1: once you're pregnant. Sorry. Uh, and then you know there's
Speaker 1: the whole eugenics thing. We should do a podcast on
Speaker 1: her probably at some point we should, because that's a
Speaker 1: that's a rabbit hole right there. Yeah. So, but she
Speaker 1: was the early champion of it. She was she coined
Speaker 1: the term birth control and I think nineteen twelve as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen fourteen she started a newsletter called The
Speaker 1: Woman Rebel. That's where birth control was first typed out
Speaker 1: and distributed the words like you said. And then in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, some breakthroughs happened, uh in science where
Speaker 1: they were able to identify a progesterone and estrogen and
Speaker 1: realized kind of how it all worked. Yeah, so at
Speaker 1: first they were looking at this stuff as our fertility drugs,
Speaker 1: and then they noticed that it actually could suppress fertility.
Speaker 1: And as they were I think this is in the
Speaker 1: forties when they were really starting in earnest or is
Speaker 1: it the twenties. Well, I mean they were sy synthesizing
Speaker 1: it from animals, and it was in early ninety one.
Speaker 1: I don't think they were even synthesizing. I think they
Speaker 1: were extracting it. And then that's what you got in
Speaker 1: your pill was animal hormones. Well it's says synthis eyes
Speaker 1: from animals, so maybe it was a process. But um,
Speaker 1: eventually Dr Marker, Dr Russell Marker, I just said it
Speaker 1: like James Bond. For some reason, he discovered how to
Speaker 1: synthesize the synthetic form of progesterone, which is called progestine,
Speaker 1: and that really this is from wild yams, believe it
Speaker 1: or not. So he did that and that changed everything.
Speaker 1: It did. It made it cheaper, it made it easier
Speaker 1: to obtain. You could research all of a sudden, right,
Speaker 1: but you still couldn't really research right, because there were
Speaker 1: laws on even doing research on birth control. So the
Speaker 1: people who were doing this it started out as Margaret
Speaker 1: Sanger she um, she hooked up with a doctor named
Speaker 1: Pinkus and Gregory Pinkus who was a biologist and he
Speaker 1: was interested in in coming up with birth control as well. Um.
Speaker 1: Mary McCormick was there for St Mary Catherine Catherine McCormick
Speaker 1: of the McCormick Uh, I guess the spices, okay, so
Speaker 1: um she uh. She lent a tremendous amount of her
Speaker 1: wealth to this to this research. And then a guy
Speaker 1: named John Rock who was a doctor who was also
Speaker 1: working on a birth control pill. Um. They all joined
Speaker 1: forces in the nineteen fifties and started working on this
Speaker 1: really hard. But they had a lot of roadblocks up
Speaker 1: against him, and they cut a lot of corners and
Speaker 1: getting this thing out into market. Yeah, like going to
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico too, because they had to trials, right, and
Speaker 1: so this is not like Puerto Rico was like, we
Speaker 1: don't want this, but you're forcing it on us. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico had the exact opposite attitude towards birth control
Speaker 1: that the United States did at the time. So there
Speaker 1: was a good place to do it. They just didn't
Speaker 1: inform anybody what was going on with this, that this
Speaker 1: was a clinical trial. They just gave him some pills
Speaker 1: and said you take these, they'll keep you from getting pregnant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which they kind of came about by accident. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: of the pills were contaminated with s regen and they
Speaker 1: used that in scare quotes, I guess just because what
Speaker 1: they really mean is mixed by accident, and that reduced
Speaker 1: a lot of the side effects because that was one
Speaker 1: of the big problems at first and continue to be
Speaker 1: for a while. And eventually they landed on UM, a
Speaker 1: drug company called Cyril. There were two competing ones, another
Speaker 1: one of Syntax and Cyril. So you pronounced it Cyril cyrile.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm going with. S A R L e
Speaker 1: u he Zerril. They finally came up with they thought
Speaker 1: was the right formulation and uh. In nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: Syntax came out with their version and then pretty soon
Speaker 1: it was being marketed and distributed after FDA approval in
Speaker 1: so yeah. So Cyril was the one who hooked up
Speaker 1: with UM Sanger in in Rock Yeah and UM they
Speaker 1: were the ones who provided the pills for the clinical trial,
Speaker 1: and Puerto Rico. There was also a clinical trial in
Speaker 1: at a women's mental asylum in Massachusetts, and the patients
Speaker 1: there didn't have any informed consent. And when they released
Speaker 1: this formula um, first it was for gonecological disorders things
Speaker 1: like O vary insists. They knew it could be used
Speaker 1: to treat that, and Cyril at the time was like,
Speaker 1: they had no expectations for this whatsoever. And then within
Speaker 1: a year there were half a million women in America
Speaker 1: who were suddenly using this for gnecological problems, and Cyril
Speaker 1: figured out, well, no, they're actually using it for contraception.
Speaker 1: And so when they went and saw at FDA approval
Speaker 1: and got it, that was when the floodgates opened, Like
Speaker 1: there was now a pill on the market that could
Speaker 1: prevent contraception that was the woman's to take, and um,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden there was the first year there
Speaker 1: was one point two million American women on the pill,
Speaker 1: and Cyril at first thought, they're not gonna want this.
Speaker 1: Women are gonna want to take a pill every day
Speaker 1: to keep from getting pregnant. But they couldn't even finish
Speaker 1: the name pregnant before like the pills were being grabbed
Speaker 1: from their hand. Yeah, you know, there was a huge deal,
Speaker 1: it was uh. And then these pills were not very safe.
Speaker 1: That's that's the upshot of this. The estrogen. There was
Speaker 1: way too much estrogen. It was dangerous, it was causing cancer. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen sixty nine, a very famous book came
Speaker 1: out called The Doctor's Case against the Pill, written by
Speaker 1: a medical journalist named Barbara Sieman, and she got together
Speaker 1: with a bunch of doctors and researchers and women uh
Speaker 1: and made a case against the pill that it wasn't safe.
Speaker 1: It was a senator named gay Lord Nelson who read
Speaker 1: the book took on birth control um in Senate hearings,
Speaker 1: and in January in the Senate Chamber there was this
Speaker 1: testimony about the pill going on, of course run only
Speaker 1: by men, with only men testifying providing witness testimony. But
Speaker 1: there was a one in their named Alice Wolfson and
Speaker 1: her group, the DC Women's Liberation Group. They were sitting
Speaker 1: there just getting more and more steamed. Yeah, in these
Speaker 1: in these hearings. At this time, these hearies were kind
Speaker 1: of under the radar until Alice Wolfson, Like the Blue
Speaker 1: c Span wasn't a thing yet, so they were just
Speaker 1: getting more and more steamed watching all these men get
Speaker 1: up there and talking about women's reproductive health. And but
Speaker 1: not only that, they were also these people were talking
Speaker 1: about how how dangerous the side effects were with the pill, hypertension,
Speaker 1: blood coots, heart attacks, high blood pressure, um stroke, all
Speaker 1: of these things. And these the women in the DC
Speaker 1: Women's lib Movement uh and including Alice Wilson, were like,
Speaker 1: We've never heard this before in our lives. How did
Speaker 1: our doctors not tell us this? Well, that was the backstory,
Speaker 1: is that the none of the doctors were sharing this
Speaker 1: information because they were getting and it's you know, I
Speaker 1: think there's always been a problem not across the board,
Speaker 1: but with doctors and pharmaceutical companies pushing start and drugs
Speaker 1: over others. But even but at the time it was
Speaker 1: way worse than it is now, Like there was an
Speaker 1: actual yeah, there was. There was a a mentality among doctors,
Speaker 1: male doctors, um who who believed that if if you
Speaker 1: a woman was better off not knowing, you didn't want
Speaker 1: to get her all upset by giving her all the information,
Speaker 1: and um if you did tell her, you ran the risk.
Speaker 1: Since women were so suggestible she might develop a stroke
Speaker 1: just by thinking about it so much, so it was
Speaker 1: better off just not telling her about it. That was
Speaker 1: the entire medical establishment at the time. And so the
Speaker 1: pill went from this feminist icon in the sixties to
Speaker 1: buy nineteen seventy becoming a an icon for white male patriarchy.
Speaker 1: Medical patriarchy and how UM patients informed consent was was
Speaker 1: a paramount issue now and it just took on this
Speaker 1: other role well, and informed consent was literally born that day.
Speaker 1: At that hearing, they finally heard an expert say estrogen
Speaker 1: is to cancer what fertilizer is to wheat, and Alice
Speaker 1: Wolfson stood up and started screaming. She was screaming, why
Speaker 1: are you using women as guinea pigs? Why are you
Speaker 1: letting drug companies murderers for profit and convenience? And it
Speaker 1: got a lot of media attention, and really the aftermath
Speaker 1: of those hearings is when this consumer health movement started
Speaker 1: and they started informed consent. They started having to list
Speaker 1: um side effects on bottles, and you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: an overnight thing, but it really changed the form uh
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical industry forever. So the pill managed to accept this
Speaker 1: um UH I guess iconography, right, it became a symbol
Speaker 1: for this other thing. Yeah, but still and if you
Speaker 1: keep on keeping on like like, I think eighteen seven
Speaker 1: percent of women between eighteen and forty nine in the
Speaker 1: US followed those hearings once um Alice Wolfson and the
Speaker 1: DC Women's Lib movement like made it a national thing,
Speaker 1: um and I think eighteen percent of them stopped taking
Speaker 1: the pill as a result. But the pill really didn't
Speaker 1: fall out of popularity. It stood in as the as
Speaker 1: the icon for informed consent, and then just after that
Speaker 1: was established, it just went back to being the pill.
Speaker 1: I think that's amazing because it was this huge thing
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty for one thing, huge thing in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy for another thing, and now it's it's it's part
Speaker 1: of the cultural zeite guys, forever. Should we take a break, Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna take a break. We're all excited
Speaker 1: about history and now we're gonna get into uh science. Hey,
Speaker 1: let's talk menstrual cycles? All right, let's man, because that's
Speaker 1: all that's going on here is the pill manipulates the
Speaker 1: menstrual cycle by tricking the body with synthetic hormones. Yes,
Speaker 1: it tricks the body into thinking it's already released an egg.
Speaker 1: It's pretty brilliant, it is. It is, UM, but it's
Speaker 1: also kind of low fi if you think about it,
Speaker 1: it is very low it's neat. So we should kind
Speaker 1: of give you um an idea of what the menstrual
Speaker 1: cycle is. Right, it's twenty eight days generally, Yes, that's
Speaker 1: the that's the rule of thumb. But yes, it's certainly different.
Speaker 1: And I think it's also down to like hours and
Speaker 1: stuff like that too. It's not just dateies. It's a
Speaker 1: human construct you now, But have you stopped and never
Speaker 1: thought about, like how interesting it is that the cycle
Speaker 1: of the moon is like twenty eight days as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's fascinating. No, I didn't say it when fascinating.
Speaker 1: I never stopped it. I just just in researching this,
Speaker 1: I was like, that's the cycle of the moon as well.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So anyway, UM, over the say roughly twenty
Speaker 1: eight day period. UM, the whole thing starts with the
Speaker 1: pituitary gland getting a little froggy and saying, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: going to release some follicle stimulating hormone at s H
Speaker 1: and that stuff floods the body and it makes its
Speaker 1: way down to the ovaries and it stimulates follicles, hence
Speaker 1: the name, that's right. It makes these follicles and the
Speaker 1: ovaries grow, and it just sets off a big series
Speaker 1: of events. Basically, estrogen is triggers that pituitary gland again, yeah,
Speaker 1: because the follicles then in turn release estrogen, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so the pewitary gland is busy because then it
Speaker 1: secretes what's called gonadotropin releasing hormone G little in big R,
Speaker 1: big H, one of the better abbreviations ever, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it looks sort of like guns and roses a little bit. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that triggers arise in lutenizing hormone LH. Right, and
Speaker 1: so lutenizing hormone goes back down to the ovarian follicles
Speaker 1: and it what it gets one of the follicles. So,
Speaker 1: if you have a bunch of ovarian follicles growing, one
Speaker 1: of them is going to clearly it's the lead horse, right,
Speaker 1: It's going to develop into an egg. And as the
Speaker 1: lutenizing hormone stimulates it to develop into an egg, the
Speaker 1: egg pops off. The rest of the other follicles wither
Speaker 1: and die. And then the egg travels down um, the
Speaker 1: fallopian tube, where it may or may not be fertilized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is called ovulation. And while this is going on
Speaker 1: in the background, the uterine lining the endometrium is thickening
Speaker 1: up right, it's getting ready for business. And the reason
Speaker 1: that is is because the estrogen and the lutenizing hormone
Speaker 1: are are causing that to happen. Yeah, they're just rising
Speaker 1: and rising. So, Um, the the mucus in the vagina
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like even more than usual right now. But
Speaker 1: the mucus in the in the vagina also, um, does
Speaker 1: it thicken? So it thickens? Is that after the egg
Speaker 1: has been fertilized, because I think it would make it,
Speaker 1: it would become okay, so it d thickens. The uterine
Speaker 1: lining thickens. I think the vaginal mucus makes it makes
Speaker 1: it easier for sperm to make its way correct, Okay.
Speaker 1: So that's so if all that goes um according to
Speaker 1: the genetic plan, then those sperm are gonna make their
Speaker 1: way to an egg. The egg is gonna be come fertilized.
Speaker 1: It's gonna come down the flop and to attached to
Speaker 1: the uterus. And it's going to start to grow into
Speaker 1: a child. It might also not happen either. Um. The
Speaker 1: woman involved might not have sex, so there might be
Speaker 1: no sperm. Um, the sperm might not make it. There
Speaker 1: might be some sort of barrier method being made, or
Speaker 1: the dude may have that sperm. Sure. Um. Regardless of
Speaker 1: how this happens, If the egg is not fertilized, the
Speaker 1: egg eventually weathers up itself and dissolves, and that thickened
Speaker 1: endometrium uh is shed. Basically, yeah, the uterine lining is shed. Yes,
Speaker 1: so um, when they have like kind of iron rich
Speaker 1: blood tissue, Okay, that is menstruation, that's menstruation. So when
Speaker 1: you think of, um, but that's your period. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: whole thing's menstruation. But yeah, okay, it's like a twenty
Speaker 1: eight day cycle is menstruation because I always think of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the periods menstruation. No, that's actually the end of menstruation.
Speaker 1: And then the whole cycle begins again. Right after that time,
Speaker 1: the pituitary glands like oh, all right, I'll release some
Speaker 1: follicle stimulating hormone. The whole thing begins again. The pill
Speaker 1: interrupts this by making the body think it's already released
Speaker 1: an egg. Like when the egg comes off of the
Speaker 1: follicle and makes its way down in the fallopian tube,
Speaker 1: the ovum makes its way down the fallopian tube. Um,
Speaker 1: that's when the estrogen and the progesterone levels are high. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the pill introduces progesterone and estrogen levels and keeps
Speaker 1: them high at all times, and therefore the body stops
Speaker 1: releasing eggs because it thinks it's already released in egg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just hijacks that whole process. Synthetically, the woman's body is
Speaker 1: amazing when you think about all that's going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our body is not doing anything even remotely like that.
Speaker 1: It's making like farts. That's what I thought when I
Speaker 1: was researching this. I was like, man, I've never felt
Speaker 1: less important, and like the insides of my body are
Speaker 1: just I got some lungs doing some things. I got
Speaker 1: a heart, And then like, I guess I'm still making sperm.
Speaker 1: I don't even know. I've got like a weezy old
Speaker 1: donkey running the show in there kind of dirty. Oh goodness.
Speaker 1: Uh So, the endometrium still builds up in the uterus
Speaker 1: and is released, but it's known as a withdrawal period.
Speaker 1: So this is if you're on the pill. But that's
Speaker 1: why your period while on the pill is going to
Speaker 1: be generally lighter and shorter. Yeah, and so um, technically
Speaker 1: this the pill mimics the structure called the corpus luteum,
Speaker 1: which is the thing that releases progesterone and estrogen once
Speaker 1: an egg is released. So the body's like, oh, the
Speaker 1: corpus luteam's got it going on. I don't need to
Speaker 1: release another egg. I Also, I am not going to
Speaker 1: have a period because during this time after the pill um,
Speaker 1: those hormone levels start to become like a normal baseline
Speaker 1: in the woman's body. There's no endometrium that builds up,
Speaker 1: and therefore there's no endometrium to shed right, And I
Speaker 1: don't think we mentioned this yet. Progestin, which is the
Speaker 1: synthetic progesterone, it's gonna make that vaginal mucus thicker, so
Speaker 1: you're right earlier. It is thinner to make the sperm,
Speaker 1: make it excess the eggs easier. It will thicken it
Speaker 1: up that mucus to make it harder by the sperm.
Speaker 1: So it's and I think it's just sort of like
Speaker 1: a one two punch to make it even harder to
Speaker 1: get pregnant, although you can still get pregnant, usually due
Speaker 1: to misuse of the pill, because what you do is
Speaker 1: you take the pill at the same time every day.
Speaker 1: It's all very uh synchronous and depends on that timing,
Speaker 1: and if you don't time it out right, um, your
Speaker 1: chances are getting pregnant or a little bit more. But
Speaker 1: apparently if you're taking it exactly right at the same time,
Speaker 1: then your failure rate is going to be point three percent.
Speaker 1: So it's still technically possible. Yes, it is point three
Speaker 1: percent possible, which offers up the question like why, Like
Speaker 1: when they were developing the pill, they had it completely
Speaker 1: in their control as to what they wanted to do
Speaker 1: with the Minstreul cycle, and they decided and I never
Speaker 1: knew this, it's very interesting. They decided to keep it
Speaker 1: on that twenty eight day cycle because for a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons, they thought, um, Dot the Rock thought the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church, because he was a Catholic, they might be
Speaker 1: more willing to approve it if it seemed more natural.
Speaker 1: I guess right here. They thought way off. He thought
Speaker 1: that women would be more apt to take it if
Speaker 1: it didn't seem like it was disrupting things too much,
Speaker 1: Like it still in my regular cycle, right, because you
Speaker 1: do have that withdrawal period. Um, it's not an actual
Speaker 1: real period, but it does come at that at the
Speaker 1: end of that the pill cycle. Yeah, but they could
Speaker 1: have gotten rid of the period altogether. Right in a
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, well, go do that. And
Speaker 1: there are pills on the market that we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that do take away women's periods. There's others that put
Speaker 1: them at different like spaces of them out like like
Speaker 1: four times a year or something like that. And people
Speaker 1: started looking into this and they're like, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: like should shouldn't women be having periods? And the answer
Speaker 1: is not necessarily right, Yeah, I mean it's controversial, like
Speaker 1: if you're not if you're not ovulating, you technically don't
Speaker 1: have to have a period. And this Molly Edmonds wrote
Speaker 1: this really interesting pill article. Um, like is a period necessary?
Speaker 1: I think is what it's called. And um, women today
Speaker 1: have many more periods than our ancestors, right, something on
Speaker 1: the order of like four hundred and fifty periods over
Speaker 1: the average woman's lifetime, about three times as many as
Speaker 1: our ancestors. Yeah, so like back in like hunter gatherer
Speaker 1: pre pre pre agricultural women had about a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty or something, right, and that was because they had
Speaker 1: more kids, they breast fed longer, they didn't live as
Speaker 1: long yet, And so some people make the point like, well,
Speaker 1: women are having more more periods than ever before, and
Speaker 1: the body wasn't meant for this. It's actually kind of
Speaker 1: rough on the body to have a period. Like when
Speaker 1: the the ovum pops off of the fallopian tube, it
Speaker 1: leaves a scar on the ovary and that scar has
Speaker 1: to be repaired. And to repair the cells in the
Speaker 1: ovary have to divide, and as long as they divide
Speaker 1: correctly that that damage will be repaired. If they divide incorrectly,
Speaker 1: that damage can turn into ovary and cancer. So that's
Speaker 1: that's a that's a problem with it. Um there's also
Speaker 1: scarring with um endo, the shedding of the endometrium, like
Speaker 1: actually having your period itself can leave scarring. Same deal, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think does an iron deficiency come into play?
Speaker 1: So that's actually a benefit of having a period. You
Speaker 1: you get rid of excess iron, which can lead to
Speaker 1: cardiovascular disease. Well, and there are a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: during the mental minstrel cycle where women have a lot
Speaker 1: a significant reduction in blood pressure. So during the years
Speaker 1: you know, their reproductive years, at least they are at uh,
Speaker 1: I guess a slightly lower risk of stroke and heart attack,
Speaker 1: think like ten percent lower. Yeah, well it's not bad, No,
Speaker 1: not at all. So, um, there's pros and there's cons
Speaker 1: to having a period. The thing is, and this is
Speaker 1: what Molly ultimately points out, is we actually don't know
Speaker 1: if a period is necessary. Like the pill is still
Speaker 1: relatively new, and um, I think that she quoted a
Speaker 1: doctor in their doctor Susan Rothko, I think or roco um,
Speaker 1: and she called the the pill that does away with
Speaker 1: periods entirely the greatest unregulated medical experiment of all time.
Speaker 1: And um, she she makes a chilling point like we
Speaker 1: don't really know what the side effects yet because all
Speaker 1: of this is too new, especially the pill that that
Speaker 1: does away with the period altogether. Well, yeah, and they
Speaker 1: haven't done there are no long term studies of minstrual
Speaker 1: suppression from oral contraceptives. At least they don't know about
Speaker 1: what that means for a woman. They don't know because
Speaker 1: most of this testing is done for women over eighteen,
Speaker 1: so they don't know what it means for women under
Speaker 1: eighteen UM at all because they're just not involved in
Speaker 1: the research, even though they do have research that shows
Speaker 1: about two thirds of women would get rid of their
Speaker 1: period if they could do so safely. Because I mean,
Speaker 1: we have any mentioned PMS or PPMD, which is just
Speaker 1: isn't that like a really really severe yeah form of
Speaker 1: p MS? Yes, it's like much worse. Yeah yeah, But
Speaker 1: whereas like p MS is is not a picnic to
Speaker 1: begin with, this is this is like go the hospital bad, right,
Speaker 1: can be at least? So, yeah, that's really interesting to
Speaker 1: think about it. Also, UM treats a very insists there's
Speaker 1: other uses for UM for birth control pills too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you want to take another break and get back
Speaker 1: to it? Okay, okay, Chuck, where are we we were
Speaker 1: talking about? I'm over here hanging but on this cliff
Speaker 1: by my fingernails. I think you're doing great? Aren't you
Speaker 1: doing great? Everybody? Yes? So remember so there are side
Speaker 1: effects both positive and negative to taking the pill UM.
Speaker 1: There's some very common negative side effects like UM Nausea
Speaker 1: is a big one. UM weight gain spotting, which is
Speaker 1: called breakthrough menstruation, which is where you have bleeding during
Speaker 1: the actual pill cycle, not the prescribed um period cycle
Speaker 1: of the pill. Yeah. I don't think we mentioned yet
Speaker 1: either that in the pill uh prescription, in that monthly
Speaker 1: dose there are seven not always, but the way they
Speaker 1: designed it was their seven placebo pills that are in
Speaker 1: there because you only take the pill for twenty one
Speaker 1: days a month, but they put those extra seven pills
Speaker 1: in there to keep women on that. I guess the
Speaker 1: thinking was, if they're used to taking this pill every day,
Speaker 1: they need to keep doing it. Yeah, if they don't
Speaker 1: for seven days, they might forget on the eighth day,
Speaker 1: and that's bad news. Yeah, So that's that's the most
Speaker 1: common way to do it. And those that's a very
Speaker 1: easy type of um of pill to take, right because
Speaker 1: all of them are the same level of hormone and
Speaker 1: the um the seven inert ones are usually a different
Speaker 1: color and they come at the end of the month.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be easy. There's actually a recall right
Speaker 1: now of Ta Tula. Did you see that Ta Tula
Speaker 1: has made it by Alurgan I think, and they recalled
Speaker 1: a lot of their pills because they put the inert
Speaker 1: ones at the beginning of the cycle accidentally just bad packaging, yes,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh. And if you look, you can clearly
Speaker 1: see that the first like seven or different color, but
Speaker 1: where they're supposed to be at the end, there at
Speaker 1: the beginning, and that is bad news if you're taking
Speaker 1: that pill. So if you have ta tula, go check
Speaker 1: it right now and uh go get some more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but um I think it interrupted you on the side
Speaker 1: effects nausea, headaches, breastworness, acne, depression, moodiness, weight gain, decrease, libido,
Speaker 1: and sometimes these can be um like if if you
Speaker 1: start out on the pill, it can be worse. A
Speaker 1: few cycles in it might get better, and if it doesn't,
Speaker 1: you can There are different pills out there, there are
Speaker 1: there's UM so the the when those pills originally came out,
Speaker 1: that first four formula um I think it was called
Speaker 1: like a novid. That was the first one by Cyril
Speaker 1: um cereal and they had ten milligrams of um progesterone
Speaker 1: or progestin and point one five milligrams of estrogen and
Speaker 1: that is like a nuclear bomb pill. Women had the
Speaker 1: worst side effects from it, like all these side effects,
Speaker 1: like each of them mac truck and they were still
Speaker 1: willing to go through it to to like have control
Speaker 1: of their body as far as pregnancy went. UM, but
Speaker 1: they very quickly figured out through further research, you can
Speaker 1: do the same. And the reason they selected that is
Speaker 1: like they knew that there was not going to be
Speaker 1: any ovulation with ten milligrams of progesterone and UM, so
Speaker 1: they figured out that you could formulate with a much
Speaker 1: lower amount of both progestin and estrogen and still get
Speaker 1: the job done. And they still do that today. I
Speaker 1: think the estrogen gets down into the micrograms and you
Speaker 1: can get like um two point five milligrams or progesterone
Speaker 1: in in some forms of the pill. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: if so, if the pill is mistreating you, what you're
Speaker 1: saying is there are options, right, Well, yeah, there are
Speaker 1: three main types of oral let's say types I think
Speaker 1: I did. You also said, Cyril. There are three main
Speaker 1: types of the oral contraceptive pills now combination pills, progestin only,
Speaker 1: and extended release, which are the newest ones out there.
Speaker 1: The combination pill is the most common pill that you
Speaker 1: will get UM. The mini pill is the progestin only
Speaker 1: and for some women that's better like if you're breastfeeding
Speaker 1: and you can't have the estrogen, like this is gonna
Speaker 1: affect your milk, you'll probably be on the mini pill uh,
Speaker 1: and the mini pill peel. It works in a couple
Speaker 1: of different ways. It makes the endometrium too thin to
Speaker 1: accept that egg, uh, and it won't allow it to attach.
Speaker 1: And again with the vaginal mucus, that makes it too
Speaker 1: thick to allow the sperm to reach the egg. But
Speaker 1: it is a little less um effective, but still effective,
Speaker 1: but a little less than the combination pill because it's
Speaker 1: almost like a different different they're different mechanisms. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: it's twenty eight active pills for the mini pill, right,
Speaker 1: but rather than tricking the body into thinking it's released
Speaker 1: an egg, this is just making it hard to get pregnant. Yes, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a different kind of pill. And then
Speaker 1: there's um, what's the other kind. Well, the combination pill
Speaker 1: the most common. There's a few subtypes of that pill
Speaker 1: as well. Right, So there's monophasic, which is what I
Speaker 1: was talking about, where you've got twenty one pills and
Speaker 1: all of them are the same dose of progestion, progestin
Speaker 1: and um estrogen and then you've got the seven inert pills,
Speaker 1: and some women say I'm not gonna have a period
Speaker 1: this this month, and then you just rather than taking
Speaker 1: those seven inert pills, you just move on to the
Speaker 1: next month's twenty one pills. Yes, and believe with the monophasic,
Speaker 1: if you miss a day, you can double up the
Speaker 1: next day because it's the same amount of pills or
Speaker 1: the same level of hormones. Right, So, yeah, that's and
Speaker 1: that's far away the most common. There's bi phasic, which
Speaker 1: has two different levels of hormones, and then tryphasic has
Speaker 1: three different levels. And the point of of biphasic and
Speaker 1: tryphasic is it's they're designed to give you the absolute
Speaker 1: minimum amount of synthetic hormones that your body requires to
Speaker 1: keep from ovulating. Because the point is is the lower
Speaker 1: the amount of hormones you have in there, probably the
Speaker 1: better off you are. Whether it's cancer risk, moodiness, who knows,
Speaker 1: you're um, you're you're just better off with the least
Speaker 1: amount that does the trick. Yeah, and the kind of
Speaker 1: progestin and each of these is gonna vary, but the
Speaker 1: type of synthetic estrogen is the same, right, it's called
Speaker 1: ethnel estradi all deerk estrada estradiol. That's it ethanol estradiol. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the progestin is the thing that that differs sometimes,
Speaker 1: right and depending if like you're on a pill that
Speaker 1: uses going type of progestine, you can say, oh, I
Speaker 1: want to try a different type of progestin and they'll
Speaker 1: say here you go. Uh. And then the extended cycle,
Speaker 1: which we talked about, this is the newest, the newest
Speaker 1: one on the market, and I believe isn't this the
Speaker 1: one that is can reduce your period to like a
Speaker 1: few for four times a year. Yeah. So there's, um,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of different there's seasonal and seasonique and
Speaker 1: they're called that because that four time of year period
Speaker 1: it'll just be like, oh it's fall up, it's summer. Uh,
Speaker 1: not in that order, but you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And then there's libral and I'm sure there's other ones
Speaker 1: on the market too. We don't mean to buzz market
Speaker 1: or anything like that. So there's there's um, there's one
Speaker 1: that's like three sixty five days, and then there's others
Speaker 1: that are eighty four days, so that you have or
Speaker 1: either no periods at all or four periods a year.
Speaker 1: So there you go. So there's a couple of other
Speaker 1: things I want to hit on, um, the pills. It's
Speaker 1: so much larger than just birth control. I mean, just
Speaker 1: the fact that his birth control is an enormous thing. Like,
Speaker 1: like you said, John Rock thought he was going to
Speaker 1: be able to convince the Catholic Church that that this
Speaker 1: is an okay thing. That was not the case. Um.
Speaker 1: In the late sixties, the Black power movement really zeroed
Speaker 1: in on the pill, especially the men of the Black
Speaker 1: Power movement, and said like this is this is tantamount
Speaker 1: to black genocide. And there they definitely had like a case,
Speaker 1: like there were plenty of cases of um of black
Speaker 1: women who went into hospitals and gave birth and then
Speaker 1: came out unknowingly sterilized, like the doctor had just taken
Speaker 1: it upon himself to sterilize er after delivering her baby. UM.
Speaker 1: So they're like they had this, they had this evidence
Speaker 1: to back this up, and it was never shown like, yes,
Speaker 1: there was a conspiracy to um to wipe out Black
Speaker 1: power in America through the pill. But you like, there
Speaker 1: were plenty of black women at the time who said
Speaker 1: like yeah, I can get birth control pills easier than anything,
Speaker 1: um that you know down the like corner clinic or
Speaker 1: something like that. And even even with the early trials
Speaker 1: from John Rock and Gregory Pinkus, Like, one of the
Speaker 1: things that they zeroed in on Puerto Rico for was
Speaker 1: because they thought that if they could show that backwards
Speaker 1: Puerto Ricans of color could could learn how to take
Speaker 1: the pill regularly, it would demonstrate that women in the
Speaker 1: inner cities could or women in developing countries could. So
Speaker 1: there was definitely like a mentality toward the white establishment
Speaker 1: being on board with the idea of at least providing
Speaker 1: the tools for other for minorities to to control their
Speaker 1: rate of birth. That was just pure and simple. That
Speaker 1: was a thought of it. It was, and it's had
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of benefits too, but there were some there
Speaker 1: was some darkness in the place that it originally came
Speaker 1: from as well. Well. Yeah, and of course, um, anti
Speaker 1: abortion groups. I think that the pill still to this
Speaker 1: day is an abortion causing agent what they call in
Speaker 1: do you know how to pronounce that a borda fashion
Speaker 1: aborda fashion? I think so, yeah, I think that's right, Um,
Speaker 1: which you know that's that's long been their argument. Well,
Speaker 1: they their argument is that it makes the uh, the
Speaker 1: uterus hostile to a fertilized egg, like prolonged use would
Speaker 1: prevent a fertilized egg that would otherwise attach from attaching.
Speaker 1: And so that's for all intensive purposes abortion in their position, right,
Speaker 1: And yeah, that is I don't think that one settled
Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination. So you got anything else,
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. As I predicted, this is a
Speaker 1: good one. I think it was good. I think it
Speaker 1: was great. Yeah, because we're not like patronizing. We've never
Speaker 1: been patronizing. That might be like white dudes, but we're
Speaker 1: very much aware that we're white dudes. And let me
Speaker 1: leave you with this, white dude, If you're a white dude,
Speaker 1: whether it's in America or the West or anywhere, your
Speaker 1: one job is to have some perspective. That's your first
Speaker 1: and foremost job. Take yourself out of your own shoes
Speaker 1: once in a while, look around, put yourself in other
Speaker 1: people's shoes. Your eyes will open widely and in agog
Speaker 1: some say, walk a mile. Sure, why not get a
Speaker 1: little weight off? Right? At least go check the mail
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the pill, just
Speaker 1: type in the pill. Uh. It'll bring up some cool
Speaker 1: stuff on how stuff works dot com. Uh. And there's
Speaker 1: also a really great American Experience site on PBS that
Speaker 1: had a man that was good, so good. Um And
Speaker 1: since I said American Experience and Chuck said so good,
Speaker 1: it's time for listening man. Oh no, it's not uh
Speaker 1: no listener mail today because we we've had some milestones
Speaker 1: here lately, and as we sit here today in real time,
Speaker 1: we are as a company are celebrating the tenure anniversary
Speaker 1: of Stuff you Should Know again again, but we're actually
Speaker 1: having the party today. And on the same day, um
Speaker 1: Apple announced at their um there w d c C. Yeah,
Speaker 1: their developers conference, got up on stage and this one
Speaker 1: kind of hit me like we had the thousand episodes
Speaker 1: that was good. The ten years kind of hit me
Speaker 1: in a big way. But they got up on stage
Speaker 1: today and they said that Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 1: now the first podcast in history, first and only to
Speaker 1: reach five hundred million downloads and streams on their platform,
Speaker 1: which is I didn't know. No, it hit me too. Somehow.
Speaker 1: Adam Carolla is in Aguinness Book of World Records. But
Speaker 1: here we are yeah, as the only one, and that's
Speaker 1: because of you all out there. Yes a gazillion times.
Speaker 1: But without you, there is no us. We would have
Speaker 1: been long gone if not for your support. So we
Speaker 1: continue to give thanks. Thank you again. Yeah we and
Speaker 1: we will continue to give thanks, and we will continue
Speaker 1: to podcast. Yes we will, Chuck, Yes we will. And
Speaker 1: that's all I got. If you want to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us, you can hang out with me. I'm
Speaker 1: on Twitter at joshuam Clark. I'm on Instagram and Josh
Speaker 1: I'm Clark to Chuck's on Facebook dot com, Slash Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant and Slash movie Cross check them out at both.
Speaker 1: You can send us all an email the Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com and as always, joined
Speaker 1: us that are extraordinarily grateful home on the web. Stuff
Speaker 1: you should know Doc. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. M
Speaker 1: HM