Once again, let’s stop with the misinformation. Hannah, it’s great that you’re all about educating women and teens about their cycles. It’s important. But teen pregnancy almost guarantees that a woman won’t go to college and will probably live around the poverty level. Is that worth forgoing hormonal birth control? I took birth control pills as a teen and if they did leave any lasting effects I honestly don’t care, because those ‘possible unknown side effects’ do not outweigh the fact that I didn’t have a child as a teen. Yes, some teens do get pregnant for underlying reasons. But in many cases teens just don’t have enough education (which you rightly state) and access to effective birth control. It is well known that teens’ frontal lobes are not fully developed. Do you really expect a teenage girl, who isn’t fully developed in terms of rational thinking, to diligently chart temperatures and cervical mucus at the same time each day? Of course teens are capable and some may be able to do it perfectly, but I doubt most would comply every single day of every single month.
Rebecca, you may be an anomaly but Mirena does not cause weight gain. If it does, it’s not more than 5-10 lbs. Most women who blame weight gain on Mirena usually have something else going on (most likely eating more than they realize). Clean eating doesn’t matter if you’re eating more calories than you burn in a day. Also, completely anecdotal, but I’m on Prozac and have lost weight. It’s one of the few SSRIs that doesn’t have weight gain as a major side effect (it’s still a possible side effect but not significantly. Again, maybe you’re an anomaly).