Oestrogen Expert: Birth Control Changes Who You Are...Would You Still Love Them If You Came Off It?! Oestrogen Makes You More Attractive!

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

Are you saying that you'd recommend that a woman looking for a partner gets off the birth control pill until they find one?

Dr Sarah Hill (0:05)

Yeah, I mean, researchers found when women who were partnered to attractive men went off hormonal birth control, they were more attracted to their partner. But for women who were partnered with less attractive partners, they became less attracted to their partners and reported being less sexually satisfied.

Steven Bartlett (0:21)

It's quite frightening.

Dr Sarah Hill (0:22)

Dr. Sarah Hill is a leading research psychologist and professor.

SPEAKER_3 (0:25)

Uncovering the shocking effects the contraceptive pill has had on women, relationships and society, and what we can do about it.

Dr Sarah Hill (0:32)

There's been nothing more instrumental to women's ability to be able to achieve independence than the birth control pill. And so we're very cavalier in just giving it to people. Oh, well, you should go on it for this and you should go on it for that. But it has huge costs. And when I started to dig into the research, I found there's at least five different things the birth control pill does to change who we are. And these risk factors, they're swept under the rug by their doctors who are prescribing it. First, it changes our emotional states. With increased risk for developing anxiety and depression. And then it influences our ability to put on muscle mass. And it can also affect our sexual function because it turns off that estrogen surge that makes us feel sexier and makes us want to have sex. And there's more. But we also know that it affects men in two different ways. And this has implications for society around us. I'll tell you why.

Steven Bartlett (1:22)

So, So what are the alternatives for women?

Dr Sarah Hill (1:25)

Let's dive down into that. First.

Steven Bartlett (1:34)

Dr. Sarah Hill, what is the mission that you're on? If you had to sort of encapsulate it into a couple of sentences, all of the work you're doing, into a couple of sentences, and the impact it has on people like me, but also my partners, my mother, my sisters, who read and understand your work, what is that mission?

Dr Sarah Hill (1:55)

It's to help women understand themselves. And I think that part of that is doing the science that helps to uncover the insights that help women understand themselves, and then also being able to communicate that to women. I think that for a very long time, because of the way that medicine has been set up, the focus has been primarily on men. And most of the things that we think that we know about health and functioning in the human body and brain is based on research conducted in men. And so it's taking that back and helping women actually understand themselves as themselves.

Steven Bartlett (2:30)

So would you say that this conversation is just for women?

Dr Sarah Hill (2:32)

No, absolutely not. No, this is a conversation for women, for women's partners and those who love women, right? And so I think that it's a conversation for everyone.

Steven Bartlett (2:40)

I have these conversations because I'm interested in the subject matter. And as I read through your work, at the top of your work, I saw that you really have a focus towards women's health and women's issues. But I can't explain how unbelievably fascinating and enlightening it was for me as someone who is a boyfriend and a partner to a woman. But also, when we talk about the evolutionary psychology that is intertwined throughout your work, I was able to understand so much about me as a man, and the way I am, and the way that I develop, and my testosterone, and all those kinds of things. And also attraction and mating preferences, and all these things from looking through your work. Why? Why are you so focused on this subject matter? What is it? What's the sort of in your heart?

Dr Sarah Hill (3:24)

I mean, for me, it's really fascinating to consider the way that hormones influence who we are. And then to think about something like the birth control pill, which almost all women are on at some point in their life. And understanding that this actually, by changing women's hormones, has the impact of kind of fundamentally changing some really important things about themselves. I mean, this is really huge. And this has consequences for everything ranging from who women are attracted to, and might be choosing as partners to women's mental health, right? And it could end up having consequences on the shape of the world around us. We already know that birth control has had an impact on women's ability to do things like go to school and get advanced degrees. And we see this played out when we look at college classrooms that are becoming increasingly female. And one of the big reasons for this is the birth control pill. It's like by allowing women to know with almost perfect certainty that they're not going to get pregnant. This has allowed women to make plans, which means that they can dream bigger and achieve more than most of us would have ever dreamed possible like 50 or 100 years ago. And so the pill changes everything. By changing women, we change the world. This has implications for women, this has implications for their partners, and this has implications for society around us.