The Pill linked with increased incidence of artery plaque

The researchers said the "finding turned up by chance", even though it's been well-known for decades that birth control pills increased the risk of blood clots.

Don't blood clots cause heart attacks?

Study links birth control pill to artery-clogging plaque USATODAY.com

A study of 1,301 women ages 33 to 55 suggests that the likelihood of finding plaques in key arteries increased by 20% to 30% for every 10 years of pill use, Ernst Rietzschel, of Ghent University in Belgium, told an American Heart Association meeting here.

The study also links the pill to potentially artery-clogging plaque in women who no longer use oral contraception, he says, noting that 81% of women in the study took the pill, on average, for 13 years. Doctors cautioned that the study is small and should be confirmed by more research.

The pill is the world's most popular form of contraception. About 12 million U.S. women take it, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

Despite the widespread use of the pill, researchers have never linked it with heart attacks or strokes, though it's well known to increase blood pressure and raise a woman's risk of getting blood clots. Many of the women in the study used pills with higher doses of estrogen than are used today.

"We don't know whether effects will be the same for women taking the pill today," Rietzschel says, adding, "There's no reason to stop taking the pill abruptly; the study needs to be replicated."

"I think it's a wake-up call," says Jennifer Mieres, of New York University School of Medicine. "If you're going to take birth control pills, you need to be aggressive about reducing your other risk factors: smoking, high blood pressure, cholesterol, diet and lifestyle."

Comments

[Catherine Adago]

This is not a surprise. Young womens fertility is the big business of the western world.Childbirth, the true completion of a womens sexuality,is completely disassociated with the act of sex. Women are used(knowingly or not)and then damaged or worse, trying to protect themselves from that use. The best way to keep someone stupid is to convince them that they know everything. Which the media and feminists have suceeded in doing to women. Meanwhile the suferring continues. Young women especially, need to wakeup and not continue, like sheeps on the way to the slaughter. Go back to the roots of your religion. If you are Jewish return to your orthodoxy. If you are Catholic or Christian read John Paul's Theology of the Body.Every women should read the information from the Couple to Couple league, based in Cinn. Ohio. It is time for women to come out of the wilderness,and live lives that are filled with the health, happiness and joy of their womenliness.