Latest / The You Project / #1814 The Pill's Hidden Toll on Teenage Girls - David Gillespie

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#1814 The Pill's Hidden Toll on Teenage Girls - David Gillespie · The You Project

0:01
Speaker 1: My good agulestar. How are you ni?
0:03
Speaker 2: Good to see you mate.
0:05
Speaker 3: Now you and I.
0:06
Speaker 1: Are doing an impromptu one. Now let me just set
0:08
Speaker 1: the scene everyone.
0:09
Speaker 3: So today I was due to record a solo one today,
0:13
Speaker 3: so to go up tomorrow tomorrow.
0:16
Speaker 1: So today is the third of March.
0:18
Speaker 3: It's Monday, and I'm always looking at David's work. And
0:24
Speaker 3: I'm not saying this insincerely because i just said this
0:26
Speaker 3: to him one on one off air. It's one of
0:29
Speaker 3: the most brilliant articles that I've read in a very
0:32
Speaker 3: long time. And apart from the fact that the content
0:37
Speaker 3: is amazing, that like the interweaving of all these different
0:40
Speaker 3: factors and variables and things that I hadn't really considered,
0:44
Speaker 3: like stuff like kind in you but never really thought about,
0:47
Speaker 3: but the actual writing and David would hate this, but
0:50
Speaker 3: the writing of the article is so fucking good. So
0:53
Speaker 3: the article is called The Price of Liberation The Pills
0:56
Speaker 3: hit in toll on teenage Girls. It's on substack and
1:03
Speaker 3: find that have a read of that is my suggestion,
1:07
Speaker 3: because really it is more significant. It is give or
1:10
Speaker 3: take three and a half thousand words, but it is
1:13
Speaker 3: worth the time and the energy investment because it is
1:15
Speaker 3: a revelation for guys and girls, I think anyway, that
1:19
Speaker 3: is my opinion. I didn't intend to read it all.
1:22
Speaker 3: I thought, oh, this looks interesting. What's golespo? And then
1:25
Speaker 3: I started reading. I went, oh, this is significant. This
1:27
Speaker 3: baggage up to page and when I don't have time
1:30
Speaker 3: for this, and then I read it all and it's
1:33
Speaker 3: just awesome. I'm just going to read the first bit
1:36
Speaker 3: because I want to set it up.
1:38
Speaker 1: And then I'm going to get out of the way
1:39
Speaker 1: for you to do your thing.
1:41
Speaker 3: Sure, I like doing this because it gives people a
1:43
Speaker 3: bit of an insight in the human era of a
1:45
Speaker 3: Puerto Rico click and I have fifty six. A handful
1:47
Speaker 3: of women unknowingly stepped into a medical trial that would
1:51
Speaker 3: change the world. They were the pioneers of a hormonal revolution,
1:54
Speaker 3: the vanguard of a movement that we grant women unprecedented
1:57
Speaker 3: control over their bodies and then destinies.
2:01
Speaker 1: But like all revolutions, this.
2:02
Speaker 3: One had unintended consequences, hidden costs that would ripple through generations.
2:08
Speaker 3: This is the story of the pill, a triumphant scientific
2:11
Speaker 3: innovation and social activism, and the silent crisis it has
2:15
Speaker 3: ignited in the vulnerable lines of teenage girls. Yeah, so firstly,
2:23
Speaker 3: what was the catalyst for this? And you know what
2:26
Speaker 3: I love is we haven't gone in this space before,
2:28
Speaker 3: and you and I had a lot of chats, so
2:30
Speaker 3: I like the fact that it's a different area. But
2:33
Speaker 3: what prompted this.
2:34
Speaker 2: Article, I Ah, it's a long path, but I'll I'm
2:41
Speaker 2: trying you this short version of it. When I was
2:44
Speaker 2: writing Free Schools, which is the book I wrote about
2:48
Speaker 2: the Australian education system, I noticed that there was a
2:51
Speaker 2: dramatic shift in the way Australian households were organized when
2:56
Speaker 2: you're compared just after World War II to modern day.
3:02
Speaker 2: And often writers talked about, oh, that's because so what
3:06
Speaker 2: happened was the average household just after World War two
3:09
Speaker 2: had four and a half five kids. I can't remember
3:11
Speaker 2: the exact statistics, but it was a lot, and it
3:17
Speaker 2: didn't have any labor saving devices. It had kids, so
3:21
Speaker 2: it had the mother usually at home. She was the
3:24
Speaker 2: labor saving device or the person doing all the work,
3:27
Speaker 2: and the kids were there and they were expected to
3:29
Speaker 2: get out of the way or help, and there was
3:33
Speaker 2: no concept of entertaining or indulging kids at that time.
3:37
Speaker 2: It was just they were extra labor. But that shifted
3:42
Speaker 2: dramatically when you compared that time to now where where
3:46
Speaker 2: the average household is full of labor saving devices. So
3:50
Speaker 2: the average homemaker in nineteen forty five, I don't know,
3:54
Speaker 2: was doing sixty seventy hours a week of labor. Now
3:58
Speaker 2: they're doing about fourteen. And the difference is all the
4:02
Speaker 2: devices and so on. But also it changed the status
4:04
Speaker 2: of the kids. You know, now I have one point,
4:07
Speaker 2: whatever it is, you know, we're not even at replacement
4:10
Speaker 2: levels in Australia at the moment. And that dramatically changed
4:14
Speaker 2: the way we treated kids. Kids were no longer the
4:18
Speaker 2: labor force, you know, and expected to get in there
4:21
Speaker 2: and help. They became the prodigies that you know, had
4:27
Speaker 2: to be indulged at all costs and no horrible things
4:30
Speaker 2: could ever happen to them, you know, especially the word no.
4:35
Speaker 2: And you know, it was a dramatic shift, and I
4:38
Speaker 2: noticed it, and I didn't really draw much attention to
4:40
Speaker 2: it in writing that book, but it stuck with me.
4:43
Speaker 2: That's a very big change. And so when I was
4:47
Speaker 2: writing Teen Brain about changes in the teenagers' brains that
4:54
Speaker 2: occurred because of adolescence and the way the hormones work
4:56
Speaker 2: in puberty. I came across this massive study in in Denmark,
5:01
Speaker 2: and you know, a little bit of a spoiler alert
5:04
Speaker 2: at the end of this article, is I finished or
5:07
Speaker 2: towards the end of this article I talk about this study.
5:10
Speaker 2: And what blew me away about this study is it
5:13
Speaker 2: was massive, a million women between the ages of fifteen
5:18
Speaker 2: and thirty four a million, And what they had studied
5:23
Speaker 2: was the effect of birth control on these women's mental health,
5:29
Speaker 2: So was the incidence of anxiety and depression and obviously
5:35
Speaker 2: other things like suicide, self harm, etc. Was it in
5:39
Speaker 2: any way related or correlated with whether or not a
5:43
Speaker 2: woman was taking hormonal birth control, that is, the pill
5:48
Speaker 2: or the longer acting versions of it like IUDs and
5:52
Speaker 2: so on and injectibles. And the answer was pretty damn
5:57
Speaker 2: shocking as far as I'm concerned. When this study came
6:01
Speaker 2: out twenty sixteen, which was about when I was writing
6:03
Speaker 2: that book, and it said what they found was that
6:09
Speaker 2: women between the ages of fifteen and thirty four who
6:12
Speaker 2: were on the pill were twice as likely to be
6:16
Speaker 2: diagnosed with anxiety and depression, not a little bit more likely,
6:20
Speaker 2: not a little bit here or there, or you know,
6:23
Speaker 2: bit hard to call twice as likely. And worse than that,
6:31
Speaker 2: when you look at a particular age group, the fifteen
6:34
Speaker 2: to nineteen year olds who were on long term or
6:38
Speaker 2: monal birth control, it was three times as likely. So
6:44
Speaker 2: the group who are most likely to have severe adverse
6:49
Speaker 2: outcomes from anxiety and depression, which is teenage girls, were
6:55
Speaker 2: three times as likely to have those outcomes if they
6:59
Speaker 2: were on birthnroll. And I thought, Wow, this is a
7:03
Speaker 2: shocking statistic, and I kind of slipped it into teen brain,
7:07
Speaker 2: but not really. It doesn't really have a home in there.
7:08
Speaker 2: It's just it's in there. And I've always wanted to
7:12
Speaker 2: really drill in to the pill and write the story
7:17
Speaker 2: of the pill and understand how we got to this
7:21
Speaker 2: place where we are happily giving a hormonal steroid medication
7:30
Speaker 2: to young girls, often not for birth control, which we'll
7:36
Speaker 2: talk about later, and we're happily doing that and blithely
7:42
Speaker 2: ignoring major studies that say this is really dangerous to do. Yeah,
7:50
Speaker 2: I mean I've never come across that. I've never come
7:53
Speaker 2: across that in everyday media, in people talking, but no
7:57
Speaker 2: one says anything about, Hey, I'll by the way, you know,
8:01
Speaker 2: the pill significantly increases the chances of anxiety and depression
8:05
Speaker 2: in teenage girls, well not just teenage girls, in any woman,
8:08
Speaker 2: but particularly in teenage girls.
8:11
Speaker 3: And not just significantly, but like fucking astoundingly.
8:16
Speaker 1: Like when you say significantly, like.
8:18
Speaker 3: In normal science would go, oh, it increases by twenty Yeah,
8:23
Speaker 3: we'd go, well, that's significant.
8:25
Speaker 1: No, it's free.
8:27
Speaker 2: That's right, that's bizar.
8:30
Speaker 1: That is not a big conversation.
8:32
Speaker 2: So what I wanted to do with this article is
8:35
Speaker 2: I wanted to go back in time and really tell
8:38
Speaker 2: the story of how we came to have this thing
8:40
Speaker 2: in the first place. And I mean it's for all
8:43
Speaker 2: the right reasons, all the right reasons. In the nineteen thirties,
8:49
Speaker 2: they were just starting to get the hang of hang
8:51
Speaker 2: on a sec there's these thing called steroid hormones in
8:56
Speaker 2: male and female bodies that seemed to have a lot
9:00
Speaker 2: to do with, you know, whether or not we get
9:02
Speaker 2: pregnant and so on, And they were just discovering that
9:06
Speaker 2: progesterone did affect a female's ability to reproduce. So if
9:13
Speaker 2: it was added, you could it made periods less painful,
9:20
Speaker 2: It could be used for all kinds of gynecological and
9:22
Speaker 2: obstetric treatments. Trouble was it was hideously expensive because it
9:27
Speaker 2: had to be extracted from animals, and so it wasn't
9:32
Speaker 2: much uptake for it because only really very rich people
9:36
Speaker 2: would have had any real access to it. And that
9:38
Speaker 2: sent a doctor, well actually he was more of a
9:44
Speaker 2: research scientist than a doctor, out on the hunt, a
9:48
Speaker 2: fellow by the name of Russell Marker on the hunt
9:51
Speaker 2: for he felt he'd heard rumors, you know, and read
9:55
Speaker 2: some things about some types of yam, in particular one
10:00
Speaker 2: growing in Mexico, which is bloody huge. I've put a
10:03
Speaker 2: photo of it in the article.
10:06
Speaker 3: It's gone the Diascoria Mexicana. Yeah, I'm like shit, how
10:12
Speaker 3: does that translate to the pill? But anyway, I love
10:15
Speaker 3: it so much.
10:16
Speaker 2: Yep, these things are huge. Like imagine a pineapple now
10:19
Speaker 2: multiplied by twenty right, those are what it looks like,
10:23
Speaker 2: but it contains There had been local folklore amongst the
10:29
Speaker 2: native people's in Mexico for centuries that eating these yams
10:34
Speaker 2: could control many of the same problems that they were
10:38
Speaker 2: trying to do with progesterone in western medicine, and so
10:43
Speaker 2: this had peaked his interest and he'd gone looking for them.
10:46
Speaker 2: He actually found a local shopkeeper and together they managed
10:49
Speaker 2: to harvest ten tons of these yams and extracted eventually
10:57
Speaker 2: extracted progesterone from it, and well produced it from the
11:02
Speaker 2: things they extracted from. Boy with the details, but anyway,
11:05
Speaker 2: the result was that you could produce progesterone extremely cheaply
11:10
Speaker 2: using these dams. And when the doctors who were out
11:16
Speaker 2: looking at progesterone studies heard about this, they thought, well,
11:20
Speaker 2: hang on a sec. Now there's a bit of a market.
11:23
Speaker 2: Now we can actually get the raw ingredient we need
11:27
Speaker 2: at an affordable price. So all those sorts of things
11:31
Speaker 2: came together along. But that's just science that on its
11:34
Speaker 2: own doesn't make the pill. What made the pill was
11:40
Speaker 2: in fact a suffragette, a famous suffragette who who by
11:46
Speaker 2: the name of Margaret Sanger, who had been campaigning for
11:49
Speaker 2: the better part of thirty or forty years by the
11:52
Speaker 2: time this all happened, for the right for women to
11:58
Speaker 2: choose when they got pregnant. Now, Margaret was a nurse
12:03
Speaker 2: and she'd seen the results of endless unwanted pregnancy. You know,
12:10
Speaker 2: essentially the birth control was not under the control of
12:14
Speaker 2: the women. The wife often in these situations, and they
12:19
Speaker 2: had as many children as nature would allow, And it
12:23
Speaker 2: meant that a woman's lot at about that time, up
12:27
Speaker 2: to the end of World War two was really controlled
12:31
Speaker 2: entirely around an endless cycle of having children. So that's
12:35
Speaker 2: all the free labor came from. That, I noticed when
12:36
Speaker 2: I was writing the other book. And she campaigned on
12:41
Speaker 2: the basis that, look, this is not fair, this is
12:45
Speaker 2: not right. A woman should be able to say when
12:50
Speaker 2: either when she's getting pregnant in the first place, or
12:53
Speaker 2: when she's had enough children. And so she had been
12:58
Speaker 2: advocating that for a long time. She'd started one of
13:00
Speaker 2: the first birth control clinics, which was essentially handing out
13:03
Speaker 2: pamphlets on when to have sex in the month and
13:07
Speaker 2: things like that, sort of timing things. And she'd managed
13:12
Speaker 2: to get arrested for that, by the way, because it
13:14
Speaker 2: was illegal to tell women how to control their pregnant
13:20
Speaker 2: their fertility. Wrested, she got thirty hours in the workhouse
13:27
Speaker 2: for that one thirty days in the workhouse for that,
13:30
Speaker 2: But it didn't stop her. She had been campaigning fiercely
13:35
Speaker 2: for these rights for a long time. When she heard
13:38
Speaker 2: about the possibility that there might be a way to
13:43
Speaker 2: create a pill that you could take that would control
13:48
Speaker 2: your fertility. She was all over it. She put the
13:52
Speaker 2: scientists together with the doctors. She even arranged the funding.
13:57
Speaker 2: Another famous suffragette who Catherine McCormick, who was in fact
14:04
Speaker 2: an heiress to the International Harvest of Fortune and had
14:08
Speaker 2: had piles of cash. But she was very, very famous
14:12
Speaker 2: in the Suffragetta the Votes for Women Arena. She put
14:18
Speaker 2: up the money. Dr Pinkus, who was the one that
14:23
Speaker 2: Marca was introduced to, started the research. They even got
14:28
Speaker 2: involved with the condition by the name of doctor rock. Now.
14:32
Speaker 2: He was an interesting addition to the whole thing because
14:34
Speaker 2: he was a fierce Catholic and he actually smoothed the
14:40
Speaker 2: way from an ethical perspective. He campaigned endlessly for the
14:47
Speaker 2: Capital Church to change its stance on birth control to
14:50
Speaker 2: at least permit the use of a hormonal contraceptive. He
14:54
Speaker 2: didn't succeed, but his involvement sort of I don't know,
15:00
Speaker 2: church washed the whole thing, and it also meant there
15:03
Speaker 2: was a bit of an ethical shield. Nothing untoward was
15:06
Speaker 2: going on here. This was all totally above board, with
15:10
Speaker 2: absolute good intent. The end result was that by the
15:14
Speaker 2: mid nineteen fifties are ready to do some experiments. They
15:18
Speaker 2: are on humans, you know, as was the case in
15:22
Speaker 2: those days, they did an experiment on Western humans. They
15:26
Speaker 2: found some impoverished humans nearby and went to Puerto Rico
15:29
Speaker 2: and did their experiments. But it was astoundingly successful, so
15:38
Speaker 2: that the pill worked. It did control birth most of
15:43
Speaker 2: the time. It's not one hundred percent effective, but.
15:47
Speaker 3: Goods everything else they had at their disposal.
15:51
Speaker 2: It was revolutionary and seemingly no downside. It achieved exactly
15:58
Speaker 2: what Margaret said I wanted it to achieve. It gave
16:02
Speaker 2: women choice. Now, remember that the women she was talking
16:06
Speaker 2: about were usually women who'd already had their children and
16:11
Speaker 2: just didn't want any more. So they'd had their one
16:14
Speaker 2: or two or three kids that they and their husband
16:17
Speaker 2: had decided they wanted, and then they wanted control over
16:20
Speaker 2: whether or not they had more. So these were often
16:23
Speaker 2: older women who were further in their path in life,
16:30
Speaker 2: and that was how it was really marketed at the
16:33
Speaker 2: time in the early nineteen sixties, as were sold it
16:36
Speaker 2: was a revolution. It fundamentally changed swung the pendulum the
16:41
Speaker 2: other direction about who had control over whether or not
16:45
Speaker 2: a woman became pregnant. It was the revolution Margaret Sanger
16:49
Speaker 2: thought it would be. It was the revolution she'ds bought,
16:52
Speaker 2: fought most of a century to have. And that's all terrific.
16:58
Speaker 2: The downside come when we start handing these things out
17:04
Speaker 2: to teenage girls. Now that's where the problem comes. Now
17:09
Speaker 2: you might say, well, why are we handing these things
17:10
Speaker 2: out to teenage girls? If you know anything about teen
17:13
Speaker 2: sex statistics, you definitely say why are we handing these
17:16
Speaker 2: things out to teenage girls? Because in the last twenty years,
17:20
Speaker 2: teenage girls are having fifteen percent less sex than their
17:24
Speaker 2: mothers were. The incidence of teen sex is actually dropping
17:29
Speaker 2: like a stone. We've probably talked about this, but I'll
17:32
Speaker 2: just mention it again. The reason for that is because
17:37
Speaker 2: it's very hard to have sex with someone if you're
17:39
Speaker 2: spending the whole day in your bedroom on your iPhone.
17:42
Speaker 2: So people are getting dopamine stimulation from programs written to
17:50
Speaker 2: manipulate their dopamine rather than from interacting in real life
17:54
Speaker 2: with real people who could get them pregnant. So that's
17:59
Speaker 2: a big part of it. Since the when you look
18:01
Speaker 2: at the statistics for teen sex, they're actually trending upwards
18:06
Speaker 2: until twenty eleven, and then from twenty eleven till now,
18:09
Speaker 2: they've they've fallen dramatically, and that's because.
18:15
Speaker 3: The first smartphone, or I find.
18:17
Speaker 2: The first, first first iPad I think I think the
18:20
Speaker 2: iPhone was two thousand and seven, but the iPad really
18:24
Speaker 2: did it. So anyway, so.
18:29
Speaker 3: That lady what's her name, the suffragette, the like she
18:34
Speaker 3: was macco, Yeah, no, saying that she was. So there's
18:38
Speaker 3: a picture in the article of here in twenty seventeen
18:41
Speaker 3: when she got her thirty days in the.
18:43
Speaker 2: Workout nineteen seventeen.
18:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, nineteen seventeen.
18:46
Speaker 3: Sorry, And then in the sixties she was still there
18:50
Speaker 3: just banging the drum.
18:52
Speaker 2: That's right.
18:53
Speaker 1: Yes, that's such a commitment. I mean, god, that's nearly
18:56
Speaker 1: half a century later.
18:57
Speaker 2: Yep. Absolutely, And she achieved what she wanted to achieve,
19:03
Speaker 2: but it went a bit wrong, and she couldn't possibly
19:05
Speaker 2: have anticipated what would ultimately become of the pill. I mean, so,
19:11
Speaker 2: notwithstanding that a lot less teenage girls are having sex,
19:15
Speaker 2: the prescription rates for the pill are going through the roof,
19:19
Speaker 2: So you know, it's increased by I think I put
19:22
Speaker 2: the number in the article there is it's some twenty
19:24
Speaker 2: five percent. Yeah, twenty five percent increase over the same
19:28
Speaker 2: period that we've had a fifteen percent decrease in people
19:32
Speaker 2: having sex. So less people are having sex, well, less
19:36
Speaker 2: teenage girls are having sex. Yes, we're selling a quarter
19:40
Speaker 2: more of the pill to those people in that period.
19:45
Speaker 2: What are they doing with it if they're not using
19:48
Speaker 2: it for sex? The answer is acne. The thing that
19:55
Speaker 2: the iPhone and the iPad brought along was a whole
19:59
Speaker 2: lot of curated perfection. There's you wouldn't I mean, eighty
20:06
Speaker 2: five percent of teenagers get acne. You wouldn't know it
20:09
Speaker 2: from looking at the average Instagram feed. No one has acne. Now.
20:17
Speaker 2: The thing about it is that the pill is an
20:19
Speaker 2: extraordinarily effective treatment for acne. It is very effective, and
20:26
Speaker 2: so it's often the reason why a teenage girl is
20:30
Speaker 2: on the pill. There are other reasons which have nothing
20:34
Speaker 2: to do with sex as well, which is, you know,
20:37
Speaker 2: difficult or regular or painful periods. It helps there too.
20:42
Speaker 2: So when they've done surveys of who why are people
20:47
Speaker 2: on the pill? Four out of five teenage girls are
20:50
Speaker 2: on the pill or something that some reason other than
20:53
Speaker 2: to prevent themselves becoming pregnant. Remembering that the target market
20:58
Speaker 2: for the pill was never teenage girls. The tiger market
21:02
Speaker 2: for the pill was married women, often who'd already had children.
21:08
Speaker 2: So but now this thing that the market has crept
21:11
Speaker 2: out and the pharmaceutical companies don't mind. I'm sure that
21:13
Speaker 2: there's a much bigger market for this thing, and it's
21:17
Speaker 2: now being given for a lot of reasons that have
21:19
Speaker 2: nothing to do with getting pregnant, and but you know,
21:24
Speaker 2: also have the side benefit that you know, if I
21:26
Speaker 2: don't know, if accidents happened, then you probably won't get
21:29
Speaker 2: pregnant either. So that's an issue. And you might say, well,
21:35
Speaker 2: that's a bit terrible. But what about this thing about
21:38
Speaker 2: the study that I mentioned before about the depression? Why
21:41
Speaker 2: would that be the case? Have we got to have
21:44
Speaker 2: we got to buy a chemical explanation for that? Why
21:47
Speaker 2: would teenage girls be more depressed and anxious if they
21:52
Speaker 2: are on the pill. What on earth does progesterone have
21:56
Speaker 2: with anxiety and depression. That's the interesting question that I
22:00
Speaker 2: like to come back to, which is what's going on there?
22:04
Speaker 2: And some really interesting science has been done in this
22:07
Speaker 2: area because we know some stuff about the teenage brain.
22:11
Speaker 2: We know that when males and females anto puberty, a
22:16
Speaker 2: hormone called GABA. Well, GABBA gets turned off, or more accurately,
22:24
Speaker 2: it gets turned off so we can enter puberty. Gabba
22:28
Speaker 2: is a breaking system in the body. It's what stops
22:31
Speaker 2: us entering puberty the day after we're born, so it
22:36
Speaker 2: holds us at that state of pre puberty for ten
22:40
Speaker 2: twelve years before the rest of the body is in
22:44
Speaker 2: a position to allow us to go that last ten
22:48
Speaker 2: years of building a human which actually builds the higher
22:53
Speaker 2: order parts of the thinking in human brain. So that
22:57
Speaker 2: hormone gets dialed right down and puberty commences. Now, the
23:03
Speaker 2: problem is that that hormone is a general purpose shutter
23:07
Speaker 2: down er of things, and one of the things that
23:10
Speaker 2: shuts down is addiction. So it actually when it's dialed up,
23:15
Speaker 2: as it is in children or people over the age
23:17
Speaker 2: of about twenty two, it's much harder to become addicted.
23:22
Speaker 2: It's also much harder to be anxious and much harder
23:25
Speaker 2: to be depressed. This thing is like a breaking system
23:29
Speaker 2: that stops those things happening. But there's particularly vulnerable period
23:33
Speaker 2: of human development that you have to go through called puberty,
23:37
Speaker 2: where we turn off the thing that stops that happening,
23:40
Speaker 2: and so we become more likely to be addicted anxious depressed,
23:43
Speaker 2: which is of course why adolescents are the people who
23:47
Speaker 2: become addicted anxious depressed most addictions, Almost all addictions start
23:53
Speaker 2: during that period because that's the point when the human
23:57
Speaker 2: brain is most susceptible to it. It's also why allmost
24:02
Speaker 2: all anxiety and depression starts during that period. Okay, so
24:08
Speaker 2: what's they got to do with the pill? Well, what
24:11
Speaker 2: the pill does is jam us in, well, jam jam
24:15
Speaker 2: females in what's called the luteal phase of you know,
24:20
Speaker 2: the ovulation phases. And that's how it works. It's basically
24:24
Speaker 2: convincing the brain, oh, ovulation has already finished, it's over
24:28
Speaker 2: and done with. We're cool. So the brain thinks it's pregnant.
24:32
Speaker 2: It thinks the body is pregnant. And therefore that's how
24:36
Speaker 2: the pill works, you know, in the shortest possible way.
24:39
Speaker 2: I do go to a bit more detail on the
24:41
Speaker 2: article for those of you who are interested or don't know,
24:44
Speaker 2: but it the end result of that is that it
24:48
Speaker 2: just so happens that the luteal phase is the phase
24:52
Speaker 2: where GABBA is totally suppressed.
24:56
Speaker 3: Yeah.
24:57
Speaker 2: So whilst if we think about, say in puberty, we
25:01
Speaker 2: might drop from one hundred percent gabba functionality to say
25:04
Speaker 2: thirty percent, just to gett into puberty. In the luteal phase,
25:09
Speaker 2: we drop that thirty percent down for maybe ten percent
25:12
Speaker 2: or five percent. So it's a temporary thing, and if
25:17
Speaker 2: a woman isn't on the pill, it happens every month anyway,
25:20
Speaker 2: but only for that short part of the ovulation cycled
25:23
Speaker 2: the luteal phase where they're particularly susceptible at that moment.
25:29
Speaker 2: What the pill does is jam them in that phase permanently,
25:33
Speaker 2: so there is your connection. That's why the study is
25:37
Speaker 2: showing that women who are on the pill are more
25:42
Speaker 2: susceptible to anxiety and depression than women who are not,
25:46
Speaker 2: and in particular women between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.
25:51
Speaker 4: So it kind of puts them in this perpetial hormonal
25:54
Speaker 4: state where they are wildly more likely percentage wise to
25:59
Speaker 4: become a dig that depressed and anxious.
26:01
Speaker 2: Yes, and than that just being.
26:05
Speaker 3: Once a month thing for a few days that becomes aw,
26:08
Speaker 3: this is your date, your this is your holding pattern,
26:13
Speaker 3: your Hohomonal hole in pattern.
26:15
Speaker 1: This is where you're at.
26:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow. Now, the reason there was a difference between
26:19
Speaker 2: the effect on fifteen to nineteen year olds, and the
26:22
Speaker 2: effect in women who are older in that study is
26:25
Speaker 2: simply because that underlying GABBA level does start to come
26:29
Speaker 2: back up as you go through puberty and you reach
26:31
Speaker 2: your early twenties, that starts to come back up to
26:33
Speaker 2: normal levels, but you still have the suppressing effect of
26:36
Speaker 2: the permanent luteal face. So as you get older, the
26:41
Speaker 2: less affected by it you are. But the particularly dangerous
26:46
Speaker 2: time is that early part of puberty where gabber is
26:50
Speaker 2: suppressed anyway, and then you're suppressing it with the pill.
26:54
Speaker 2: So none of this was contemplated by the Hugaret Sayer
27:01
Speaker 2: or any of the folks I talk about in the article.
27:03
Speaker 2: How could it be? They didn't even have in mind
27:06
Speaker 2: that you would be giving this to fifteen year old girls.
27:09
Speaker 2: What they were thinking about was women controlling how many
27:13
Speaker 2: children they had, usually married women who'd already had children.
27:19
Speaker 2: And for those women, whilst there still is a risk
27:22
Speaker 2: because you are still putting them into a permanent luteal
27:25
Speaker 2: phase which suppresses GABBA, their risk is much much lower
27:30
Speaker 2: than doing it to a teenage girl. And so we
27:33
Speaker 2: are in the midst of an epidemic of anxiety and
27:36
Speaker 2: depression amongst teenagers in general, but also in particular amongst
27:40
Speaker 2: teenage girls. And we are prescribing a steroid hormone that
27:46
Speaker 2: we know has these effects to those girls, not generally
27:52
Speaker 2: to stop them becoming pregnant or for them to plan
27:55
Speaker 2: how many pregnancies they have, but to stop them having acne.
28:02
Speaker 1: It's bloody.
28:05
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking, like when we're talking about anxiety, depression,
28:08
Speaker 3: addiction in the media generally, like there's been and we've
28:11
Speaker 3: had a lot of conversation around you know, screens and
28:15
Speaker 3: phones and iPads and technology and the addiction to that
28:18
Speaker 3: and the relationship between all the stuff that happens online
28:22
Speaker 3: and the bullying and then the propensity or the potential
28:26
Speaker 3: for you know, depression, anxiety and all of that mental
28:29
Speaker 3: health issues out of that. But I've never heard maybe
28:32
Speaker 3: it has been had, but I've never heard this conversation
28:36
Speaker 3: we had in mainstream media once. And then you go
28:41
Speaker 3: fifteen to nine year olds three hundred percent more likely
28:46
Speaker 3: to suffer from like just that's enough, Just let's start there.
28:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, And which is why it amazed me when I
28:54
Speaker 2: first came across, as I remember I came across in
28:57
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen just about I think when it as it
28:59
Speaker 2: was released and I was writing the book Teen Brain,
29:01
Speaker 2: and I do mention it in that book, but it
29:04
Speaker 2: just struck me as wow, this is incredible, and I
29:08
Speaker 2: was just waiting for something to come out, you know,
29:12
Speaker 2: publicly about this. I would have thought, well, that's going
29:15
Speaker 2: to start making all kinds of warnings about whether or
29:18
Speaker 2: not the pill should be being used, particularly by teenage girls.
29:22
Speaker 2: But I haven't seen anything. And I wonder then why
29:27
Speaker 2: we're not seeing that kind of thing. Because it's hard
29:31
Speaker 2: to say that this is nonsense. You could if it
29:35
Speaker 2: were just that study, you could just say, oh, well, yeah,
29:39
Speaker 2: correlation does an equal causation, could be minion things that
29:41
Speaker 2: explains that who knows sure, but correlation andy not equal causation.
29:48
Speaker 2: But it does raise a flag that says, look at
29:50
Speaker 2: this closely because something might be going on that we
29:53
Speaker 2: need to know about. And when you can come up
29:56
Speaker 2: with a reasonably well justified mechanical explanation for why what
30:02
Speaker 2: you're observing is occurring, that's when you really need to
30:05
Speaker 2: pause to think. And all of the things that I've
30:08
Speaker 2: given you today about gabba suppression, a luteal phase, all
30:11
Speaker 2: that sort of thing that is all undisputed, uncontroversial statements
30:17
Speaker 2: that we know to be true, and it provides a
30:21
Speaker 2: very reasonable explanation for what that study observed, which is
30:25
Speaker 2: that there is a significant risk with these steroidal pills
30:34
Speaker 2: during those phase for teenage girls. Now, there are often,
30:39
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are teenage girls who must be on
30:44
Speaker 2: the pill, and I don't want to stand here and
30:47
Speaker 2: diss the pill for that, right, I mean, there are
30:51
Speaker 2: always medically justifiable reasons for this, But its use is exploding.
30:58
Speaker 2: It has increased by a quarter in the last fifteen years.
31:02
Speaker 2: And why it is being used is not necessarily for
31:08
Speaker 2: birth control or even to deal with difficult periods, but
31:13
Speaker 2: for things like acne. Now, the other thing that I
31:16
Speaker 2: briefly touch on in the article is one of the
31:19
Speaker 2: longer term consequences of putting people on the pill is
31:23
Speaker 2: that have nothing to do with the things we talked
31:25
Speaker 2: about so far, is that it masks symptoms of something
31:28
Speaker 2: that is starting to become a very very real problem
31:35
Speaker 2: in society, and that's endometriosis. The difficulty is it's often
31:42
Speaker 2: first diagnosed when a woman comes off the pill in
31:49
Speaker 2: her mid thirties, and the reason she's coming off the
31:51
Speaker 2: pill is because she's decided she wants to have children
31:55
Speaker 2: and then can't have children, and they discover that, oh, well,
32:00
Speaker 2: your fertility has been affected by you know, many many
32:04
Speaker 2: years of undiagnosed endometriosis. And that's a difficulty because you've
32:13
Speaker 2: got the pill masking symptoms that would have alerted a
32:17
Speaker 2: physician much much earlier on that there was something that
32:20
Speaker 2: needed treatment.
32:22
Speaker 1: Yeah.
32:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, Such, it's such a multifaceted conversation and issue, and like,
32:36
Speaker 3: this is what I think everyone for what it's worth,
32:39
Speaker 3: it is just two blokes having an interesting conversation by
32:42
Speaker 3: one way.
32:42
Speaker 2: And that and that in itself is a bit problematic.
32:45
Speaker 3: Well about to say this is clime two blokes, and
32:52
Speaker 3: like David said, correlation not necessarily causation, but at the
32:55
Speaker 3: very least, Like my intention with this is not on
32:59
Speaker 3: any level for me to pretend or David for that matter,
33:03
Speaker 3: that we're experts in this. But the evidence is the evidence,
33:07
Speaker 3: The data is the data, the research is the research.
33:10
Speaker 3: And so while I just think it's maybe a good
33:13
Speaker 3: conversation to keep having, and I just I wish that
33:18
Speaker 3: the mainstream media would go, hey, could you know that
33:22
Speaker 3: article you wrote, could we have a chat about that, because,
33:26
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the challenges with having conversations like
33:28
Speaker 3: this that are deeply personal and affect people like birth
33:33
Speaker 3: control and all of the myriad of hormonal and psychological
33:36
Speaker 3: and emotional issues that happen it can happen to women
33:40
Speaker 3: young and older, is that obviously there's emotion around it, right,
33:44
Speaker 3: and people like, who the fuck are you, Craig Harbert,
33:47
Speaker 3: I'm saying I'm a nobody. I'm just a bloke with
33:49
Speaker 3: a podcast, so there's no you know, I'm not making
33:54
Speaker 3: any statements other than this is when I read this.
33:58
Speaker 3: When I read this article, I just went, this is
34:00
Speaker 3: a really articulate, well researched, well thought through for me,
34:04
Speaker 3: this is just an important thing to open up to
34:09
Speaker 3: further discussion. So mate, well done. I'll let you have
34:14
Speaker 3: the final say in a moment. But just reminding you everyone,
34:17
Speaker 3: it's on substack. The name of the article is just
34:20
Speaker 3: follow David on substack anyway of subscriber, whatever you want
34:23
Speaker 3: to do in pay a bit or pay nothing. The
34:25
Speaker 3: Price of Liberation The Pills Sitting Toll on teenage Girls.
34:30
Speaker 3: It was out March one, twenty twenty five. Any kind
34:34
Speaker 3: of wrap up thoughts.
34:35
Speaker 2: Mate, I really just want to underline the thing that
34:39
Speaker 2: both you and I have said is that this is
34:41
Speaker 2: a couple of old men talking about something that they've
34:44
Speaker 2: never experienced. And I don't want to presume to understand
34:52
Speaker 2: the situation that a teenage girl is in when she
34:55
Speaker 2: desperately needs to be prescribed the pill to manage things,
34:58
Speaker 2: for example, like period pain or regular periods or things
35:01
Speaker 2: like that. I don't want to pretend I understand that,
35:05
Speaker 2: or that I have a right to have a say
35:07
Speaker 2: about it. What I do want to draw people's attention
35:12
Speaker 2: to is that there is solid research here which to
35:15
Speaker 2: me is concerning and it should be getting more attention.
35:23
Speaker 3: Well, mate, hopefully this will start the wheels of conversation turning.
35:27
Speaker 3: At the very least, we'll say goodbye affair. But thanks
35:31
Speaker 3: for taking this on short notice. I sent the Great
35:34
Speaker 3: Man a message an hour or two ago and said
35:37
Speaker 3: would you do a and inn prompt you chat?
35:41
Speaker 1: And he said yes. So I appreciate that a lot.
35:44
Speaker 2: MANE absolute pleasure. Thanks Boddy. All right, so yeah,