If you think birth control is a modern development, you will be surprised to learn that the first forms of birth control date back to about 3,000 B.C. when condoms were made from fish bladders, linen sheaths and animal intestines. Then about 500 years ago, the linen sheaths were soaked in a chemical solution (the first spermicide) and then dried before being used as a condom. In 1838, condoms and diaphragms were first made from vulcanized rubber.

In conservative America, the growing popularity of these condoms were viewed as being evil. In 1873, Congress passed the Comstock Act which banned advertising and distribution of birth control. The act also gave the US Postal Service the authority to confiscate all birth control sent via the mail.

Feminist activist Margaret Sanger changed things when she opened her first birth control clinic in 1916 and then successfully challenged the Comstock Act in court in 1938. In 1950, Sanger raised $150,000 for research to develop the first birth control pill.

In 1960, the elderly Sanger saw her dream come true when the first oral contraceptive (birth control pill), Enovid, received FDA approval. Five years later, a historic Supreme Court decision of Griswold v. Connecticut, gave married couples the legal right to use birth control pills, although 26 states continued to make it illegal for single women to use birth control pills.

In 1972, the Supreme Court legalized birth control pills for everyone, in the case of Baird v. Eisenstadt, and the rest is history.

Since that time, millions of women have taken birth control pills to not only prevent unwanted pregnancies but to also help regulate menstrual cycles in many women.

At one time, there was a national scare when some researchers claimed that using birth control pills could increase the risk of developing breast cancer and possibly other cancers. Then it was claimed that using birth control pills could increase the risk of heart disease and other health complications.

Now, new research adds to the growing concerns of using birth control pills, as reported:

Researchers studying the brain found that women taking oral contraceptives, commonly known as birth control pills, had significantly smaller hypothalamus volume, compared to women not taking the pill, according to a new study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Located at the base of the brain above the pituitary gland, the hypothalamus produces hormones and helps regulate essential bodily functions including body temperature, mood, appetite, sex drive, sleep cycles and heart rate.

Structural effects of sex hormones, including oral contraceptive pills, on the human hypothalamus have never been reported, according to the researchers. This may be in part because validated methods to quantitatively analyze MRI exams of the hypothalamus have not been available.

“There is a lack of research on the effects of oral contraceptives on this small but essential part of the living human brain,” said Michael L. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., FACR, professor of radiology at the Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and medical director of MRI Services at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. “We validated methods for assessing the volume of the hypothalamus and confirm, for the first time, that current oral contraceptive pill usage is associated with smaller hypothalamic volume.”

It seems that many women are paying a price for their promiscuous ways and may want to start rethinking their use of birth control pills and save their sexual activities for the marriage bed.