Welcome to the Doctor Burg, Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Now, your host, the man taking your health to a whole new level.

Doctor Eric Burg.

I'd like to talk to you about the dark side of the birth control pill.

Now, this is fascinating because there actually is no real estrogen or progesterone in a birth control pill.

What you do have is a synthetic version altered in a way to mimic estrogen and progesterone, okay?

But it has some slight minor complications.

It comes with a package.

You can increase your risk of heart attacks, high blood pressure, stroke, blood clots, breast cancer, dementia, depression, acne, mood swings.

It can even trigger autoimmune diseases, especially lupus.

It can cause you to gain weight by increasing cortisol and insulin.

It can also deplete you of zinc, selenium, magnesium, B12.

Another side effect it could create is something called melasma, which is like a hyperpigmentation of your skin, where your...

The pigment of your skin is darker in like a rash form.

Also, it can alter the microbiome not only in your gut, but in the vaginal canal as well.

Now, when you think about the reason why women take the pill mainly to prevent getting pregnant, but they also might take it to prevent heavy cycles and have you bleeding, okay?

So there's various reasons why women take it.

So the birth control pill basically tricks the brain and shuts down ovulation.

Ovulation is usually about right around day 14 when there's a release of the egg.

So by taking the birth control pill, you shut down ovulation, and you also shut down menses.

So you typically don't have bleeding even though some women still do spot.

But what a lot of women don't realize is when you take this pill,

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