Fitness Coaches, this is what you should know about birth control
If you train women, chances are that you have clients on birth control. And in your research you might have found that birth control impacts how your client feels, their nutrient needs and even the way they metabolize fat.
This video isn’t for you to change your client’s mind about their medication, but to support and empower your clients to be the healthiest they can be. So this lesson is going to be a deep dive into:
Oral birth control’s impact on nutrient depletion and how you can support your clients
Birth control’s impact on estrogen
Birth control’s impact on fat utilization and exercise capacity
Birth control’s impact on bone mass over time
And if you don’t know me yet, I’m Omega and I’m the founder of the Confident Menstrual Cycle Coach Academy where I empower personal trainers to balance and optimize their own hormones while supporting them in building the confidence to do the same for their clients. This is an application-only program, so if this sounds up your alley, you can learn more here.
This is one of my clients who came off birth control, she says,
“I have been doing a lot of reflection on looking at the cyclical health assessment now vs when I was on birth control. And when I was on birth control I struggled with an estrogen balance (cramps, depression, mood changes, irritability). And not even joking, ever since coming OFF of birth conItrol, everything has been so much more level. Crazy to reflect like that ”
And while I’m not here to promote a pro or anti-birth control lifestyle, I am here to help educate and empower! first off: the birth control we’ll be talking about today is the oral hormonal birth control. All birth controls work differently and for the sake of making this video concise and applicable, we’re focusing on one of the birth control options today.
Oral birth control depletes nutrients. This 2013 research article by Palmery et. al. states: “It has been shown that the key nutrient depletions concern folic acid, vitamins B2, B6, B12, vitamin C and E and the minerals magnesium, selenium and zinc. Most research has focused on the levels of these vitamins and minerals in the blood of women who take OCs compared to women who do not.”
The researchers go on to advise that these vitamins and minerals should be supplemented within an oral contraceptive users diet. The supplement that I recommend that people on OBC get on especially when deciding to get off is Ova Moon, which I’ll link to here (use my code omegafitlife for a discount), but I want to also empower you with foods rich in all those nutrients too. Food sources your clients on birth control or coming off birth control would need:
-B2- brewers yeast, calf liver, almonds, wild rice
-B6- sunflower seeds, walnuts & lentils
-B12- sardines, salmon, swiss cheese & eggs
-vitamin C- red chili peppers, grapefruit, kale & parsley
-Vitamin E - sunflower seeds, almonds, spinach & dried prunes
-Magnesium - kelp, almonds, cashews, barley & molasses
-selenium - brazil nuts, tuns, swiss chard, oats, brown rice & salmon
-Zinc - oysters, pumpkin seeds, ginger root, pecans & split peas
Birth control impacts overall estrogen levels too!
In Stacy Sims Research she says that women on birth control have 6-8 times the estrogen when compared to women with a normal cycle. In addition to that, high estrogen symptoms that we can experience include PMS that my Academy student was dealing with (cramps, depression, mood changes & irritability).
Now for bone density - Every woman past their 30’s is thinking about bone density as they enter peri-menopause. And we as trainers help address that by doing weight bearing exercise. This study looked at adolescent and young adult women and found:
“Both OC use and discontinuation were associated with BMD losses/smaller gains relative to nonusers (differences < 2% after 12–24 months for all skeletal sites).”
This study also showed that fit college aged women had less bone mineral density and bone size.
Authors say, “Women who had ≥ 10 menstrual cycles in the year prior to BMD measurement had higher BMD at all sites as well as a greater tibial mineral content and cortical thickness than women who had oligomenorrhea/amenorrhea (≤ 9 cycles in the prior year; all p < 0.05). Oral Contraceptive (OC) users had significantly lower BMD in the spine (p < 0.02) and calcaneus (p = 0.04), smaller tibial periosteal circumference and lower tibial mineral content (p < 0.02) than non-OC users.”
Now, when you got your personal training certification or went through school for exercise science you probably remember learning about female athlete triad, which is now called RED-S, which stands for Relative Energy Deficiency in Sports.
One of the key markers of female RED-S include loss of bone mineral density. And while almost all women are offered oral birth control from their doctors and about 14% of women are on oral birth control, it’s important that we as trainers know how to combat loss in bone mineral density with nutrition. This study tells us that Vitamin D and Calcium are essential for bone health. Those are the obvious ones. While you can encourage your client to supplement, you can also encourage then to get food sources of vitamin D and Calcium too.
Good food sources include: Vitamin D - cod liver oil, sardines, salmon, mackerel & tuna.
Sources of Calcium include - kelp, chedder cheese, carob (which tastes similar to chocolate), collard greens and kale.
The not so obvious micro-nutrients (shown in this study) to support bone density include Vitamin A, B,C E, K, folate, magnesium, potassium, silicon as well as antioxidants such as vitamin C and carotenoids. And I’d love to get into which foods contain those foods, this lesson would be way to long so please look that up! The last important topic we as trainers need to be aware of is lipid metabolism / how well our clients on BC use fat!
This study shows us that a certain ingredient in HBC decreases insulin sensitivity. A decrease in insulin sensitivity results in insulin having a hard time delivering excess carbohydrate to the liver and muscles, resulting in adipogenesis or the creation of fat cells. Now if you or your client are considering coming off of birth control, I highly recommend following the nutrition recommendations I made here.
If you want to go from having to constantly reference hormone health facts and just doing to basics to support your own cycle to being confident in helping your clients optimize and balance their hormones with and without birth control, learn about the Confident Menstrual cycle Coach Academy.