Birth control pills do not make you fat

Most women believe that if they take the pill, they are going to gain weight. And a lot of women feel that they experienced a weight gain as a result of starting oral contraceptives. The concern among the social engineers is that women won’t partake of this highly effective birth control option because they think they'll get fat.

“A simple Google search will reveal that contraceptives and the possibility that they may cause weight gain is a very highly debated topic,” said Alison Edelman, MD, a physician and researcher in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at OHSU and lead author of the report, published in Human Reproduction.

Time for a study.

“Issues surrounding weight are hard to study in humans, and the research thus far ha been insufficient to demonstrate whether or not oral contraceptives cause weight gain or loss. But this is an extremely important question a concern about weight gain is one of the main reasons why women may avoid or discontinue birth control, which is turn places them at greater risk for an unplanned pregnancy,” Edelman continued.

So they studied monkeys. Their food intake could be controlled and meaningful data collected.

At the end of the eight month study, the normal weight monkeys remained stable and a second group of overweight monkeys lost weight. “This study suggest that worries about weight gain with pill use appear to be based more on fiction than on fact,” said Judy Cameron, PhD, senior author of the paper.

Source: Human Reproduction, ScienceDaily