Everyday science puts before us various theories and possibilities that give hope about curing a specific ailment that millions of people suffer every day. The hypothesis, although it requires us to wait some more until the results are promising until then, there is only so much we can do to combat the diseases.
Most of the time, diseases like cancer, which are rooted inside our body, become too stubborn to leave us so we could move towards recovery. The researcher’s various trials aim to study whether some hormone or medicine could work or maybe not, depending on our luck and the pace at which the disease is killing us inside out.
Like cancer, one of the other diseases that make an individual suffer, especially during the change of season, is asthma. Not all respiratory infections have a cure, and people who have asthma had significant risks to face during the pandemic period. Many people die due to their respiratory disease increasing to such levels of severity.
Like others, a new study threw some light on the problems of suffering from asthma and invented a hypothesis that women on hormonal birth control pills have a lower risk of asthma than those who do not take them. Women in their reproductive age with consumption of hormonal pill will reduce their chances of a severe asthma attack.
As more as we find the connection between asthma and hormonal birth control pills bizarre, sources have said that estrogen hormone level in a female’s body is why a disease like asthma or turns into a severe illness.
The research was conducted after referring it to various other factors that would determine the study’s accuracy to understand how and if birth control pills might become the answer to severe asthma attacks in women.
The various factors of the research and Expert’s view
The lead study author Dr. Bright Nwaru, an epidemiologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, mentioned that more boys have asthma during childhood; statistics have shown that more boys have asthma than girls. But as both the genders reach the age of puberty and the sex hormones become more active, the role of both these genders change.
The expert and researcher Dr. Bright Nwaru also mentioned that women were more suffering from asthma in a total significant population than men. It happens so because of the shift in sex hormones and the activeness during the puberty phase.
This particular result is the outcome of observation and analysis of Dr. Nwaru and the researchers’ team, as Everyday Health mentions tracked at least 80,000 women for the time of two decades. It was done to understand that apart from natural hormones, how do the synthetic hormones from the birth control pills impact asthma in a woman.
The researcher based their research on few factors; the types of hormonal contraception available or consumed by women, the time till which a woman was or is taking it, the effect of BMI, and smoking on asthma.
As the research progressed, researchers initially focused on hormonal contraceptives consumed by women and drew a theory to prove more effective in reducing asthma severity.
At the very beginning of the study, the figures of women who consumed contraceptives were 34 percentage out of which 27 percent women took combined contraceptives (the one which involves estrogen and progesterone hormone). The other 9 percent of women took the progesterone-only pill.
As these women advanced in age, had more pregnancies, or their BMI varied, it affected their asthma as it became severe. But it was more apparent that women who use to or still smoke were at higher risk of suffering from severe asthma. Researchers next analyzed and found confirmed somewhat to establish that contraceptive pills might help women reduce asthma symptoms.
The women who were regular consumers of contraceptives were less likely to experience severe asthma. Moreover, women who consumed combined contraceptives were at lower risk than women who were intakers of progesterone-only hormonal contraceptives.
The other factor was the time for which these women were consuming these contraceptives. Women who were intakers of the pill for more than three years were likely to have less risk of severe asthma. But the researchers have specified that there is no significant reason found as to why long term medication could only prove helpful.
The word of Advice
Since the entire research brought out that contraceptive pills might rescue a woman from severe asthma disease, but at the same time, not every woman is fit to consume these contraceptives.
Women who had prior conditions like cardiac problems, migraine with vision problems, or deep vein thrombosis should not go for hormonal contraceptives. Hormonal contraceptives have potential side effects. One of the researchers has also mentioned that women with breast cancer must not go for progesterone-only contraceptives.
Hence, before jumping to any conclusion and considering contraceptives as your savior, consult your physician to know whether you are fit or not to consume these contraceptives.
