Hormones and Birth Control

[name_m]Hi[/name_m] all. This question is for a friend (who does not have an account). She writes:
“Hello everyone. I have been on the birth control pill (I believe the brand is called Sprintec) for the last year and a half. I am finishing my prescription in the next week and would like to be able to naturally restore my hormones to balance. We are looking to TTC as soon as possible. [name_f]Do[/name_f] any of you have any advice (ways of eating, excercise, etc) to bring the hormones into balance?”

The only advice that I have is for your friend to know that the hormones from a birth control pill can stay in your system for 6 months to a year depending on body type and length of time on the pill.

That’s not true. The hormones from the birth control pill will be out of your system in a matter of days.

[name_m]Blade[/name_m] explained this on an earlier thread - it may take longer than a month for normal menstruation to start up again, but this is because your body needs to start its own hormone production, which was suppressed by the hormones from the pill, and it might take longer to do that. Not because anything from the pill is still in your system. I’m going to copy paste the explanation from [name_m]Blade[/name_m]:

“Sure-- the pill is a big healthy dose of exogenous hormones. Taking hormones suppresses endogenous production (your hypothalamus sense the hormone in the bloodstream and does not make the pre-hormones necessary for in-house production). The whole estrogen-progesterone-withdrawal-bleeding cycle when you’re on the pill is 100% synthetic, and your hypothalamus is kind of sleeping through it all. Once the exogenous “brakes” are withdrawn you have to begin manufacturing your own gonadotropins again, and it’s a variable amount of time until that begins happening in the proper sequence and at physiologic levels which allow both a menstrual cycle and follicle recruitment, ripening and ovulation.” [my bolding]

I wouldn’t expect that there would be anything you could do to speed this along in terms of diet or lifestyle, but if I were your friend I would ask a doctor if I were concerned.

P.S. I would also say that if your friend is keen to start TTC, there is no reason to wait. Take the last pill, and then stop using other protection right away. If your friend is one of those who take longer to sort out their hormones then it might not work, but it might and there is no increased risk of anything bad happening to her or the baby from getting pregnant right off the pill. I got pregnant straight off the pill, and when I miscarried all the doctors said most emphatically it had nothing to do with the pill. It was just bad luck.

When I stopped taking the pill I got pregnant the month afterwards, and we weren’t even trying. I think coming off the pill made me extremely fertile because we had had “accidents” during the four years we had been together without me on birth control and nothing happened, but after taking birth control for six months and then stopping I got pregnant right away. So I guess it varies from person to person.