The stress response during hormonal birth control use.

What is it about?

We tested whether the stress response differed during hormonal birth control use depending on position in the birth control cycle (when synthetic hormones are taken versus the "placebo" week). Overall, we found that the stress response did not differ between these timepoints in the birth control cycle. However, when we looked at the type of synthetic progesterone used in participants' birth control formulations, we found that the stress response differed between classes of synthetic progesterone and across the hormonal birth control cycle depending on class of synthetic progesterone used.

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Why is it important?

Research shows that women show different stress response magnitudes across the natural menstrual cycle and that women using hormonal birth control have smaller stress responses than women not using hormonal birth control. However, research often neglects whether or not the stress response remains stable across the hormonal birth control cycle even though hormone levels and hormone source change over the course of the cycle. To our knowledge, our study is the first to systematically examine whether or not the stress response differs across the hormonal birth control cycle or depending on class of synthetic progesterone.