Word: pills
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...some cases the Pill raises an unstable blood pressure so abruptly and severely as to cause a blowout in a brain artery-the hemorrhagic type of stroke. Another vascular disturbance is the migraine headache, which results from dilation of peripheral arteries in the head. Any woman who has ever had migraines is likely to find that they strike more often and more severely after she goes on the Pill. Others may suffer their first, alarming and hideously painful migraine when taking the Pill. Among other "contraindications," as doctors call them, are diabetes, liver disease, breast cancer and possibly rheumatoid arthritis...
...Medicine. Of all the reported side effects, the one of deepest concern to young women who have not had all the children they want, is that after they stop taking it their fertility may be reduced. Pro-Pill parenthood planners share this concern. There is indeed a definite suppression of fertility in some women who fail to menstruate or ovulate for a year or two after dropping the Pill. But the true incidence of Pill-induced infertility cannot yet be measured, Kistner points out, because if a woman has never had a child before going on the Pill and does...
...most glaring defect in discussion of the Pill has been the slight attention, if any, given to the failure of too many U.S. doctors to study their patients before prescribing it. When a woman aged 15 to 45 asks a physician for the Pill, she is almost invariably handed a prescription that is often, in practice, refillable indefinitely. This is bad medicine. A conscientious doctor will ask the woman, if he does not already know, whether she has had any blood tests, and whether they showed anything unusual about her blood sugar or clotting. Has she had high blood pressure...
Then the doctor can quickly decide whether the Pill carries an unacceptable risk for this particular patient. If it does, he is ethically obliged to refuse her the prescription and to suggest some other contraceptive such as a diaphragm or IUD. If all U.S. doctors followed these rules they could avert many, perhaps a majority, of the severe and fatal Pill reactions now being reported...
...other measures now under consideration could reduce the harmful effects still further. British research, cited repeatedly at Nelson's hearings, suggests that the risk of clotting is somewhat greater with the sequential pills. It is also directly related to the amount of estrogen in either type of Pill, and is markedly increased if the estrogen component is more than 50 micrograms (less than two millionths of an ounce). Britain has already officially discouraged the dispensing of pills with any higher estrogen content. By this reasoning, women in the U.S. would find themselves limited to seven...