Posted: August 28, 2015 Contributor: PRJKT RUBY
New Study Finds Additional Benefits of Birth Control Pills
Most commonly women love their birth control pills for their ease of use and effectiveness against unplanned pregnancy but now, research shows there is yet another reason to love your birth control! It appears that women who use birth control pills during their reproductive years may benefit with long-term protection against endometrial cancer.
The key to this added protection is in the makeup of the pill itself. In combination birth control pills (the most common form often just referred to as “the pill”), the two hormones present are estrogen and progesterone. These hormones have been linked to a reduced risk for ovarian and endometrial tumors.
The most common time for women to be diagnosed with endometrial cancer is around 60 years of age, right after the reproductive years have ended. Additional risk factors for this type of cancer include obesity, never having children, starting menstruation at a young age and entering menopause at an older age while taking estrogen therapy for the treatment of menopause symptoms.
To further understand the relationship between birth control and edometrial cancer risk, researchers looked at the data of 27,276 women who had these tumors and 115,743 who did not. After completing many different types of analysis on all this information, it was discovered that among the women with this form of cancer, about one third used birth control pills for an average of three years. Nearly 40% of the women without these tumors reportedly stayed on birth control for more than four years.
The study authors also made quite the conclusion – it appears that over the past 50 years, up to 400,000 of the estimated 3.4 million endometrial cancer cases may have been prevented with the use of oral contraceptives.
Well, in case you needed another reason to love your birth control, there you have it!