Myth or fact? The truth about the combined pill
The combined pill is one of the most widely used forms of birth control, but it's been surrounded by myths and misconceptions. Especially online, most people will encounter misinformation when it comes to how the pill actually affects their bodies.
So let’s take a look at some of the most common myths about the combined pill. and find the facts you need to make informed choices about your health.
Fertility awareness is just as effective as the pill
It’s true that natural family planning and fertility awareness methods are 99% effective when used perfectly. But using them perfectly is not easy. Firstly you need to know that you have regular, predictable periods. Then track your fertility every day, taking accurate temperature readings at the same time each day, checking and identifying changes to your cervical mucus, and writing all of this down.
So to get a more realistic idea of how effective this method is, we need to look at what's called 'typical use', how most people will do it. This allows for human errors, like oversleeping and taking a reading late, or skipping a few days of temperature readings because you got ill. According to the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH), natural family planning is 76% effective when used this way. This means that in 100 people using this method for a year, 24 will get pregnant.
Compare this to the combined pill, which is 91% effective with typical use, and you can see that natural family planning is less reliable than it first seems.
The pill makes you depressed
This one is tricky because there's not a clear answer. Research into the effects of the pill has come to different conclusions. With mental health, some studies have found a clear correlation between low mood and the pill, and others finding no link at all. Either way, it’s something that many people have experienced.
I’m one of those people - when I tried the pill in my 20s, I ended up stopping after a few months because of the extreme changes in mood and heightened emotions I’d been feeling. And I’ve talked to friends who went through something similar.
So even though there’s no definite evidence to connect contraception with mood, hearing other people’s experiences might make you think twice about starting the pill. But it’s important to remember that not every pill is the same and not every person has the same experience.
There are different types of pill which have various types and amounts of hormones. These can have different effects on your body. In my case, after a bit of trial and error, I found that a pill with a smaller amount of oestrogen would work for me. You might find that a different type of pill works better for you too.
If you’d like to read more about the research, check our combined pill side effects information.
You need to give your body a break from the pill sometimes
This is not true. Although traditionally everyone was told to take a break between packets, it’s been proven to be safe to take the pill without a break. NHS guidelines were updated in 2019 to reassure people that taking the pill every day was safe and to give women more control over their periods.
When the pill was originally developed, back in the 1950s, the instructions were to take a daily pill for 3 weeks and then have a break with no pills for 7 days. During the break, you’d experience bleeding that was like a period. This advice was given to women for decades and is how many of us started on the pill. But it’s not the only way to take it.
Now you can choose to take a break if you want to. Or you can take the pill every day and not have a bleed at all. Both options are safe from harm and effective at preventing pregnancy.
The pill makes you infertile and causes cancer.
The short answer is: the pill will not make you infertile. It will not affect your long-term ability to get pregnant, and many people find their fertility returns within days or weeks of stopping the pill.
The pill does affect your menstrual cycle and your period because it works by stopping ovulation - an egg being released by the ovaries. When you stop the pill, it can take a while for your cycle to return to its usual pattern. But this has nothing to do with infertility.
The pill can affect your chances of getting certain cancers. But it does not make it certain that you will get cancer, and in some cases it even protects you.
The pill will lower the chance that you’ll develop ovarian, colorectal or endometrial cancer. But it can increase your chance of getting breast or cervical cancer. The pill increases your risk of these cancers by a very small amount. The research shows that using the pill leads to about 14 extra cases of breast cancer in every 10,000 women who take it.
If you are concerned about this or any other risk from taking the pill, take a look at our guide to the combined pill. Written by the contraception experts on our team, it explains everything from how exactly the pill works to the research on the side effects.
With the pill, it's always worth remembering that it will affect everyone's body differently. There's no easy way to predict what your experience will be - the only thing to do is give it a try and see if it suits you.
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