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May 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda TUESDAY, May 8 (HealthDay News) — Women who use an intrauterine
device (IUD) as birth control may not have to worry about gaining weight
after the device is implanted, new research suggests.
Researchers compared the medical records of 223 women aged 15 to 44 who
were using two different types of IUDs, following them for up to two years
later.
About half of the women had a non-hormonal IUD containing copper while
others used a hormonal IUD that released low levels of a progestin hormone
called levonorgestrel (LNG) every day.
Women in both groups appeared to lose about 1 percent of their body
weight in the first and second years of having an IUD.
The study was scheduled to be presented Monday at the American College
of Obstetricians and Gynecologists annual meeting in San Diego.
“We really expected to see weight gain, and we didn’t even expect that
there would be weight loss,” said study author Dr. Erika Kwock, an
obstetrician and gynecologist at Kaiser Permanente Northern California in
Santa Clara.
Although previous research has not found associations between hormonal
or non-hormonal IUDs and weight gain, Kwock thought that the women in her
study would put on pounds “just because over time people tend to gain
weight regardless of contraception,” she said.
However, Kwock pointed out that the weight loss among the women in her
study is probably not a reliable result. Her study did not include enough
women to allow for a statistical analysis to show that the women actually
shed pounds.
Still, “the numbers are encouraging that there is not a weight
difference for LNG IUDs and copper IUDs,” Kwock said.
Dr. Jill Rabin, head of urogynecology at Long Island Jewish Medical
Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y., said, “This study is interesting because it
opens the door for more questions and more research.”
But there were not enough women in the study to know if the IUDs were
associated with weight changes, Rabin added.
“People are always worried about weight gain whenever you mention a
hormone, even though weight gain is miniscule in our experience,” Rabin
said. “But I don’t think we’ve answered the question, certainly not with
the LNG, and not even with oral contraceptives.”
Many women in the study received Kaiser insurance through work, Kwock
said. Otherwise they were diverse and probably representative of the women
nationwide, she added.
Kwock and study co-author Dr. Julie Livingston looked at a number of
factors in the Kaiser medical records of these women, such as weight, age,
race, medical conditions that might cause them to gain weight (such as
diabetes and thyroid disease) and whether they were taking an
antidepressant.
They found no differences for any of these factors between LNG and
copper IUD users.
In addition, weight loss, albeit small, seemed to be similar between
the LNG and copper IUD users; however this result might not be real, Kwock
again cautioned.
Many women start on an IUD after they have had a baby, so Kwock and
Livingston compared the proportion of women in each group who had received
their IUD within two months of childbirth but found no differences.
The weight loss that the researchers saw in each group was not just due
to the fact that some of the women were losing their “baby fat”, Kwock
said.
“A lot of the doctors we work with really recommend IUDs for new moms
because they are busy and they don’t have time to remember to take pills,”
Kwock said.
“One of my favorite forms of birth control is the LNG because it has so
many benefits — women get lighter periods and have less cramping, while
the copper IUD can actually make periods more heavy,” Kwock said.
However, some patients prefer copper IUDs and it really depends on the
patient, Rabin said.
More than with IUDs, women really worry about gaining weight on the
pill, and while this cannot be ruled out, most research does not find this
to be the case, said Laureen Lopez, a family planning researcher at FHI
360 in Durham, N.C.
“We’ve concluded that women need to have more appropriate counseling. A
lot of people unfortunately gain weight over time, and you need to look at
dietary patterns and exercise and not blame a contraceptive for which
there may be little evidence,” Lopez said.
Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and
conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a
peer-reviewed journal.
More information
To learn more about IUDs, visit the American
College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
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