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A good friend of mine developed a serious case of pcos from birth control medication which started in her teen years. It's impacting her fertility, growing facial hair, pre-diabetes symptoms, and impacting weight gain/loss. Her doctors just "shrug" and suggest to get back on birth control as a solution. Imagine allowing your teenage daughter to be on a semi-permeant dosage of hormone altering poison.

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I didn’t think PCOS could be triggered by birth control - doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence to support this either. Looking at the mechanism of action of COCs, I can’t think of a mechanism of why COCs would cause PCOS. Oral contraceptives are usually first line in treating PCOS which makes this anecdote even more weird. Can you provide any more information?

Its not an officially supported theory, but there's alot of anecdotal evidence out there that going off of BC after many years can cause these symptoms with some women.

If using OC is a possible treatment, wouldn't the likelier explanation be that using it suppressed the preexisting condition and quitting just revealed the symptoms?

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