My Weight and The Pill

Can a woman's body weight diminish the effectiveness of her birth control pills? Is this why some women are getting their Pregnancy On when they don't want to? Studies in the past have raised this concern: One found that the Pill takers who weighed more than 154 pounds (eve if they weren't overweight) reported more incidences of unintended pregnancy. But taken daily, oral contraceptives work as well in heavy women as in thin ones, even at the lowest doses, a new study shows. Among 150 women who took a low dose or an ultra low dose pill consistently for at leas three months ovulation occurred in 3 percent of healthy weight women and in just 2 percent of obese ones. Thus differences in pregnancy rates that have been seen in these groups must be explained by factors other than the physiological effect of the Pill, such as consistency of use, concludes the lead author Carolyn Westhoff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center in NYC. Obese Participants in the study who were given free food were more likely to take the Pill inconsistently, she found.