[Fertility] the contraception interaction question, with the actual label wording
Posting this as a discussion rather than a claim: the contraception interaction question, with the actual label wording.
Why the evidence base here is thin, which is not your imagination.
The major trial programmes were designed around endpoints that do not answer most of the questions this board asks: cycle interactions, contraception, fertility, perimenopause. The populations were not enrolled to answer them and the endpoints were not chosen to measure them.
So when you search and find nothing, that is usually the actual state of the literature rather than a failure of searching. What follows practically: be precise about your question, take the pharmacology parts to a pharmacist who can look up product-specific information, and treat confident answers on this board — including the ones that agree with you — with more caution than usual.
The one practical change that makes this board’s hardest questions tractable: annotate your log with the cycle.
Hormonal variation affects appetite, fluid and symptom intensity in its own right. Without the annotation, a log shows a dose, a week and a set of symptoms that appear to move at random. With it, patterns that were invisible become obvious in about three months.
Members here who have done it consistently report the same thing: the same dose feels genuinely different at different points, and knowing that in advance converts a confusing fortnight into an expected one. It also makes a much better document to bring to an appointment.
Brought the cycle-annotated log to an appointment and it changed the conversation completely.
If somebody has the same thing measured a different way, post it next to mine and we will see whether they agree.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Hormonal variation across the cycle affects appetite, fluid retention and subjective symptom intensity independently of anything else, which is why an unannotated log can look mysterious.
I would not read one person’s cycle-linked experience as a general pattern. The variation here is enormous.
Where in the cycle does this fall, if you are tracking it?
the trials were not designed to answer most of the questions asked here
Standing reminder: nothing here is medical advice, and pregnancy questions go to a clinician without exception.
fertility can change with weight loss and that surprises people
Fertility can change with weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity. That is a well-described phenomenon and worth knowing about in advance rather than discovering.
The hair shedding was the thing that frightened me most and the thing that mattered least. It stopped.
Is this a PCOS diagnosis or an insulin resistance finding?
PCOS is a diagnosis, not a description, and it matters which you mean