Hey guys, this has to do with you too, since if you have a lady friend who’s on this there may be potential for danger here, so listen up.  The birth control patch that was hailed as a great new invention just not too long ago, is now “on trial” from many doctors and consumer advocates who claim that the risk of the patch vs. the traditional birth control pill for women proportionately outweighs it’s convenience too much, making it a much riskier choice for women who want birth control without taking a pill, and are calling for the product to be removed from market.

The patch, which I gather is made by juggernaut Johnson and Johnson, has been shown to have a much higher risk factor for women when it comes to blood clots in the lungs and the legs, because it releases almost 60% more estrogen into the blood stream, which is the primary risk factor for blood clots in women, than the pill does.  This is because it is in patch form, and the body absorbs more apparently this way, than it does if the pill is swallowed with the pregnancy preventing estrogen hormones in it.

The FDA has received many complaints about the birth control patch, and yet it has remained on market, so I’m not sure how severe the complaints and the evidence has to be for them to pull a product from market or make the manufacturer voluntarily pull it, although I’m sure they’re deluged with these types of requests on a dailly basis since we are a medicated society now unfortunately.

Good news is the the demand for the birth control patch has gone down considerably ever since word of mouth and bad publicity started occurring for the patch somewhere just a few years ago. 

The demand was cut more in half, with less than half the amount of prescriptions being written for it now than there were just a few years ago, so probably both patients are wising up to the risks and are not willing to take that extra risk for the convenience of a patch, and/or doctors are not willing to put their female patients at risk because they personally believe this link is critical enough to not put them in harms way. 

Of course the same warnings against smoking go for anyone on the patch as they do for women on the pills, since smoking patients can greatly increase their odds of blood clots when on the birth control pill.  This is a clear warning on all birth control oral and patch, and shots usually.