Revised for its tenth edition, "The Pill Book" remains the bestselling and and most trusted consumer reference to the most-prescribed drugs in the United States. 32-page color insert. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

"The average woman concerned about pregnancy spends approximately thirty years trying to prevent conception. She largely does so alone using prescription birth control, a phenomenon often taken for granted as natural and beneficial in the United States. In Just Get on the Pill, Littlejohn draws on interviews to show how young women come to take responsibility for prescription birth control as the "woman's method" and relinquish control of external condoms as the "man's method." She uncovers how gendered compulsory birth control-in which women are held accountable for preventing and resolving pregnancies in gender-constrained ways-encroaches on women's reproductive autonomy and erodes their ability to protect themselves from disease. In tracing the gendered politics of pregnancy prevention, Littlejohn argues that the gender division of labor in birth control is not natural. It is unjust"--

An eye-opening book that reveals crucial information every woman taking hormonal birth control should know This groundbreaking book sheds light on how hormonal birth control affects women--and the world around them--in ways we are just now beginning to understand. By allowing women to control their fertility, the birth control pill has revolutionized women's lives. Women are going to college, graduating, and entering the workforce in greater numbers than ever before, and there's good reason to believe that the birth control pill has a lot to do with this. But there's a lot more to the pill than meets the eye. Although women go on the pill for a small handful of targeted effects (pregnancy prevention and clearer skin, yay!), sex hormones can't work that way. Sex hormones impact the activities of billions of cells in the body at once, many of which are in the brain. There, they play a role in influencing attraction, sexual motivation, stress, hunger, eating patterns, emotion regulation, friendships, aggression, mood, learning, and more. This means that being on the birth control pill makes women a different version of themselves than when they are off of it. And this is a big deal. For instance, women on the pill have a dampened cortisol spike in response to stress. While this might sound great (no stress!), it can have negative implications for learning, memory, and mood. Additionally, because the pill influences who women are attracted to, being on the pill may inadvertently influence who women choose as partners, which can have important implications for their relationships once they go off it. Sometimes these changes are for the better . . . but other times, they're for the worse. By changing what women's brains do, the pill also has the ability to have cascading effects on everything and everyone that a woman encounters. This means that the reach of the pill extends far beyond women's own bodies, having a major impact on society and the world. This paradigm-shattering book provides an even-handed, science-based understanding of who women are, both on and off the pill. It will change the way that women think about their hormones and how they view themselves. It also serves as a rallying cry for women to demand more information from science about how their bodies and brains work and to advocate for better research. This book will help women make more informed decisions about their health, whether they're on the pill or off of it.

A Chicago Tribune "Best Books of 2014" • A Slate "Best Books 2014: Staff Picks" • A St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Best Books of 2014" The fascinating story of one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. We know it simply as "the pill," yet its genesis was anything but simple. Jonathan Eig's masterful narrative revolves around four principal characters: the fiery feminist Margaret Sanger, who was a champion of birth control in her campaign for the rights of women but neglected her own children in pursuit of free love; the beautiful Katharine McCormick, who owed her fortune to her wealthy husband, the son of the founder of International Harvester and a schizophrenic; the visionary scientist Gregory Pincus, who was dismissed by Harvard in the 1930s as a result of his experimentation with in vitro fertilization but who, after he was approached by Sanger and McCormick, grew obsessed with the idea of inventing a drug that could stop ovulation; and the telegenic John Rock, a Catholic doctor from Boston who battled his own church to become an enormously effective advocate in the effort to win public approval for the drug that would be marketed by Searle as Enovid. Spanning the years from Sanger’s heady Greenwich Village days in the early twentieth century to trial tests in Puerto Rico in the 1950s to the cusp of the sexual revolution in the 1960s, this is a grand story of radical feminist politics, scientific ingenuity, establishment opposition, and, ultimately, a sea change in social attitudes. Brilliantly researched and briskly written, The Birth of the Pill is gripping social, cultural, and scientific history.

Millions of healthy women take a powerful medication every day from their mid-teens to menopause - the Pill - but few know how this drug works or the potential side effects. Contrary to cultural myth, the birth-control pill impacts on every organ and function of the body, and yet most women do not even think of it as a drug. Depression, anxiety, paranoia, rage, panic attacks - just a few of the effects of the Pill on half of the over 80% of women who pop these tablets during their lifetimes. When the Pill was released, it was thought that women would not submit to taking a medication each day when they were not sick. Now the Pill is making women sick. However, there are a growing number of women looking for non-hormonal alternatives for preventing pregnancy. In a bid to spark the backlash against hormonal contraceptives, this book asks: Why can't we criticize the Pill? ,

Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use reviews the medical eligibility criteria for use of contraception, offering guidance on the safety and use of different methods for women and men with specific characteristics or known medical conditions. The recommendations are based on systematic reviews of available clinical and epidemiological research. It is a companion guideline to Selected Practice Recommendations for Contraceptive Use. Together, these documents are intended to be used by policy-makers, program managers, and the scientific community to support national programs in the preparation of service delivery guidelines. The fourth edition of this useful resource supersedes previous editions, and has been fully updated and expanded. It includes over 86 new recommendations and 165 updates to recommendations in the previous edition. Guidance for populations with special needs is now provided, and a new annex details evidence on drug interactions from concomitant use of antiretroviral therapies and hormonal contraceptives. To assist users familiar with the third edition, new and updated recommendations are highlighted. Everyone involved in providing family planning services and contraception should have the fourth edition of Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use at hand.

This document is one of two evidence-based cornerstones of the World Health Organization's (WHO) new initiative to develop and implement evidence-based guidelines for family planning. The first cornerstone, the Medical eligibility criteria for contraceptive use (third edition) published in 2004, provides guidance for who can use contraceptive methods safely. This document, the Selected practice recommendations for contraceptive use (second edition), provides guidance for how to use contraceptive methods safely and effectively once they are deemed to be medically appropriate. The recommendations contained in this document are the product of a process that culminated in an expert Working Group meeting held at the World Health Organization, Geneva, 13-16 April 2004.

Women are major consumers and highly proactive when it comes to attending to their health care. In the tradition of the mega-bestseller, THE PILL BOOK, comes a medication guide just for women—a book that addresses their needs, concerns, and questions about the plethora of prescription and over-the-counter drugs available. A mix of narrative and reference, THE WOMEN'S PILL BOOK is speaks directly to the specific health challenges women face: Unique Reproductive Chronic Pain Autoimmune Disorder Heart Disease Hormonal Challenges Prescription Drug Abuse Plus profiles of hundreds of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, including generic and brand name, benefits, side effects, and alternative treatment options.

In this hard-hitting indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, Ray Moynihan and Allan Cassels show how drug companies are systematically using their dominating influence in the world of medical science, drug companies are working to widen the very boundaries that define illness. Mild problems are redefined as serious illness, and common complaints are labeled as medical conditions requiring drug treatments. Runny noses are now allergic rhinitis, PMS has become a psychiatric disorder, and hyperactive children have ADD. Selling Sickness reveals how expanding the boundaries of illness and lowering the threshold for treatments is creating millions of new patients and billions in new profits, in turn threatening to bankrupt national healthcare systems all over the world. This Canadian edition includes an introduction placing the issue in a Canadian context and describing why Canadians should be concerned about the problem.

From breast cancer and blood clots to depression and debilitating autoimmune disease, the health of millions of women has been sacrificed to chronic and deadly diseases In the Name of The Pill. This book highlights many of those ailments and examines the role hormonal birth control plays in each. Chapters devoted to individual diseases and conditions include lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, Crohn's disease, infertility, migraines, blood clots, diabetes, hair loss, thyroid and gallbladder disease. Yet, with significantly increased risk for all these conditions, the drug industry still tells us the benefits outweigh the risks. To understand the disconnect, In the Name of The Pill explores the history, economics, and politics that gave us birth control before it was proven safe, and exposes the powerful forces working to keep us in the dark.