There was an interesting article in yesterday's New York Times about the birth control pill Yaz. Apparently Bayer, their parent company, has been running ads setting the record straight about false claims they originally advertised about the pill getting rid of acne and PMS (remember all those ladies all up in the club who just happened to be chatting about birth control and its side effects in super serious and technical terms?). They didn't come clean out of the goodness of their own hearts, mind you:
As part of an unusual crackdown on deceptive consumer drug advertising, the Food and Drug Administration and the attorneys general of 27 states have required Bayer to run these new ads to correct previous Yaz marketing.Regulators say the ads overstated the drug's ability to improve women's moods and clear up acne, while playing down its potential health risks. Under a settlement with the states, Bayer agreed last Friday to spend at least $20 million on the campaign and for the next six years to submit all Yaz ads for federal screening before they appear.
I was especially fascinated because when I was helping Elaine Tyler May do research for her book on the birth control pill (thank you so much to all of you who answered our call for stories!), I found that so many young women swear by Yaz as their birth control of choice. Apparently our anecdotal experience was representative of the actual numbers: "Yaz is the best-selling oral contraception pill in the United States, with sales last year of about $616 million or about 18 percent market share, according to IMS Health, a health care information company."
Many respondents to Elaine's survey had struggled for years with all sorts of nasty side effects from other pill brands, but swore by this particular concoction. To hear that the advertising was so overstated as to have warranted an FDA response (and we know how much that takes because they've dropped the ball on a lot of unsafe drugs in the last few years), alarmed me. Reading further it looks like women on Yaz don't have a tremendous amount to be worried about: "Yaz contains drospirenone, a progestin that can cause excess potassium production in some patients, its side effects include an increased risk of serious heart and other health problems." That's fairly normal for any oral contraceptive.
It is nice to see the FDA holding big pharma's feet to the fire about accuracy in advertising, especially for a drug that affects women.
Oh and for funsies, check out this hilarious parody video of the whole pharma commercial genre by Upright Citizens Brigade duo Sara Chase and Caitlin Tegart:
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Good. The Yaz ads have been annoying me for years since I had a bad response to it. What I'd like to see are disclaimers that everyone's body chemistry is slightly different and that some people will have bad reactions to some kinds of birth control pills. Of course, I'm sure that's never going to make it into the ads.
Yaz is good for some people but not all. I was on it for several years. At first it was fine, but after losing weight I began to get a lot of side effects related to the potassium imbalance. (Mind you, I was fat when I started taking Yaz and about average weight when I started having problems) I got leg cramps in the middle of the night, had to pee all the time, had difficulty wearing contact lenses, got a lot of eye infections, had really bad dandruff, etc. All these went away when I switched to a different birth control pill. Apart from the contact lens issue, none of these are the kinds of side effects one would expect from birth control and it took me a while to make the connection. In surfing the web I discovered that a lot of women had similarly bad responses.
Agreed. (here is my anecdotal evidence) I only know of two women who have had positive experiences with Yaz, both of whom had fairly light periods to begin with. The rest of the experiences that I am aware of have been awful, including my own. I have been on the higher dose version, Yasmin, for years and my doctor accidentally refilled my scrip for Yaz. Shorter, lighter periods? I'll give you shorter...I had my entire period in about 14 hours - it almost required a trip to the emergency room since I was afraid I was hemorrhaging the pain was so intense.
From the NYT article:
"In one of the commercials cited by the F.D.A., with the song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister playing in the background, a series of young fashionably dressed women kicked away or punctured floating signs with labels like “irritability” and “feeling anxious.”"
I always thought it was weird that those Yaz commericals focused on these secondary reasons for taking birth control instead of the primary reason: pregnancy prevention. I have seen barely any birth control commericals that highlighted pregnancy prevention, I assume because it makes advertising the pill more "acceptable" to those who are uncomfortable with women using the pill for birth control.
Cue Sarah Haskins period prevention video
I felt terrible when I was on Yaz! As a lesbian, I don't really care if my bc is preventing pregnancy. I really look at it as hormone therapy, to manage the dangerous mood swings and debilitating cramps. Well, it lightened my periods a tiny bit, and my cramps weren't so bad, but I was tired all the time, I was constantly depressed, and I started to have inexplicable panic attacks (among other things). In short, it f***** me up. I'm so glad Yaz is coming out with what a lot of women, myself included, have already figured out. I'm sure it works for some people, but it is not the miracle drug it's marketed as either.
Oh yeah, it didn't do anything for my skin either.
Holy crap, that's been happening to me! I've had several near panic attacks in the past week or so. Damn, I had no idea shitty birth control could cause that. I have a hormone imbalance so, my moods are crazy and the Yaz didn't help at all.
I need to switch brands, stat!
And yes, I was tired and bummed out all the time on it, too, but I assumed that was because it kept waking me to pee!
For me, it had the most unacceptable side effect possible: it completely destroyed my libido. (That's one way to prevent pregnancy, huh?)
Yaz and Yasmin both knock the testosterone out of you (they are very anti-androgenic, equal to a low dose of spironolactone, an anti-testosterone drug). And too low testosterone is linked with low libido.
I was thrilled that it was the only pill that didn't make me gain weight, or feel bloated, etc. And it made me hair very healthy. But at the cost of being a eunuch? No way!
Oh, and since it has diuretic properties, I woke every night to pee unless I took the pill first thing in the morning.
Boo and hiss to women's b.c. options being so lacking!
The actual problem is that direct consumer advertising is even legal in the US. It's an absurdity.
Agreed. It drives up the cost of medication, too, preventing many people from getting the medications they need.
All combination birth control pills use estrogen, but they do not all use the same progestin. YAZ contains the estrogen ethinyl estradiol and the unique progestin, drsp, or drospirenone. Whereas other combination pills have a progestin that is made from the male sex hormone testosterone, the drsp in YAZ is made from spironolactone. Ask your healthcare professional web hosting
about the unique properties of drsp and what that may mean for you.
Kevin