Birth Control Pill for Men

If a published research in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism is to be believed, then yes. The male contraceptive pill could soon be a reality.

It is indeed a cause for surprise that while women have had the option of oral contraception for several decades now, an equivalent has not been found for men. This may be because of the pretty potent contraceptives available to men already.



Thumb down for the pills?


But not everyone thinks contraceptive pills for men are a great idea. According to Rakesh Sinha, a Delhi based entrepreneur, “Why even research something that we don’t need? If they can come up with hundred percent effective condoms; that will be something! I’m not comfortable ingesting pills to suppress he production of sperm...”

That is how a male contraceptive pill would work, though. As Dr. A. S. Bhatia of a leading Delhi hospital explains, “A male contraceptive pill would have to be something which stops on ingesting or reduces the production of sperm in males for a specified amount of time, much like the female contraceptive pill. But, given that women produce one egg a month and men produce about 3 600 000 sperm cells an hour, the modalities of any pill will have to be carefully considered.”



Injectable testosterone can be effective in male birth control


This scepticism has not deterred scientists, though. Some Chinese researchers claim to have performed experiments and conducted tests that have shown that injectable testosterone can be effective in male birth control. Once a month for 30 months, these doctors injected over a thousand healthy, fertile Chinese men, 20 to 45 years old, with 500 milligrams of testosterone undecanoate mixed in tea seed oil. The paper published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism claims that the contraception was effective and the resulting pregnancy rate was found to be just 1.1 per 1000 men in two years.

But the research is still under way and it may still be a while before men could go and buy contraceptive pills over-the-counter.

Study: Birth Control Pills Affect Memory

According to a new UC Irvine research, women who take birth control pills experience memory change. This research basically studies the influence of hormonal contraception on memory. Nielsen (researcher) is of the view that medication doesn’t damage memory. It only changes the type of information that the brain remembers.



In spite of the fact that birth control pills are used by more than 100 million women across the globe, till now there are only a handful of studies that have studied the effect of birth control pills on memory.



Researcher, Larry Cahill has contributed these changes to suppressed sex hormones such as estrogen and progesterone to prevent pregnancy. Previously, these hormones were linked to strong ‘left- brain’ memory.



In this study, a group of women on contraception and another one not on any form of hormonal contraception were shown photographs of a car accident, that of a mother and her son. The audio narratives were different for some women. Some were told that boy was critically injured after the car hit him, while the others were told that car hit the curb. After one week, all the women were asked to recall the story. Results showed that women who were on hormonal contraceptives for less than a month clearly remembered the main steps in the traumatic event. But women who were not using hormonal contraceptives remembered more details.



Women on oral contraceptives remembered different elements of the story. This shows that estrogen had in fact affected how these women remembered emotional events.