Misinformation on TikTok: Contraceptive Myths & Social Media Impact | Ep. 592

Episode 592

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This is the Fertility Friday podcast, episode number 592.
Today I’m sharing a brand new episode in the FAM research series, and what we are
going to be covering today is this topic of, quote, “misinformation on TikTok.” A
recent paper came out, and the title of the article is, “Do you know what birth
control actually does to your body?” So it’s assessing contraceptive information on
TikTok. There has been a recent wave of studies like this one that I have taken an
interest in, and I’ve shared on the podcast throughout the year. There’s more and
more researchers specifically looking at social media and the impact of social media
on the information that people are deriving about their contraceptive choices and
hormonal health choices and there seems to be this general kind of fear of the
establishment losing the plot, right? So what the way that I look at it is that
for many, many years, the medical professionals basically had the final say.
They were the gatekeepers of all the information. What they said largely went
unchallenged and there was no real social discourse about their practices.
So you would go to your doctor’s office, your doctor would tell you what you need
to do and you would either do it or not, but you didn’t really have an open
social forum to discuss this critically and to kind of throw out those ideas.
And so with the landscape changing so much with the advent of social media, with
now the ability for women to go online and talk about what’s happening to them,
share videos. And regardless of your medical credentials, you can go out there and
say whatever you want. Now the medical professionals are starting to kind of see, oh
wait this is having an impact on the conversations that I’m having in my office.
Now all these women are coming in with these different ideas that we did not
provide for them and they’re having to contend with that. And so that’s one of the
reasons why I’ve been paying attention to this space and I’ve been sharing this
information in these papers because I think it’s important to see how they’re
responding to it and also what the implications are. whether you are a medical
professional, whether you’re a women’s health professional, whether you’re just trying
to live your best life and not have period pain and hormonal issues. I think it’s
really important to look at how these kind of bigger bodies are dealing with the
advent of social media. So we’re gonna dive into this paper today.
And so basically the way that they did it is they started by kind of acknowledging
the just what TikTok is and what it’s become. So they share some interesting stats.
I mean, according to what they are saying here, TikTok has over 2 billion users.
So they’re kind of stating some of this background information that since it
officially launched in 2017, it is now amassed an incredible just amount of users
and also that it offers certain kind of specific differences.
I mean, each social media platform is a little bit different. TikTok obviously
specializes in short form video. And one of the things that they said, so a quote
from the paper is quote, TikTok is well known for its recommendation algorithm, which
utilizes personal interaction data to suggest videos and keep users engaged with the
platform. So like a lot of different social media tools nowadays, if you watch,
it’s not even, what’s interesting is it’s kind of sinister. I don’t know if you’ve
noticed this, but if you like certain things and officially kind of like, you have
your idea of what you officially like, It’s not necessarily going to show you that
some of these algorithms seem to be designed to give you more of what you actually
look at So you might think like I like this kind of stuff But whatever you
actually look at and what when they’re clocking your every move and they can see
the videos that you spend the most Time on those are the videos that they actually
serve up more, right? So I think that is an interesting point But basically it’s
saying that it just gives you more of what you are looking at because of course
the app is designed to keep you on the app. So the algorithm wants your attention
because of course many of these platforms are monetized and so you are the product
and whoever is able to kind of keep the most attention of the users is then,
that’s the whole point. So that’s something to be aware have. But the researchers
bring this up because they’re saying that this whole thing, this whole system of
feeding you more of what you’re interested in, can create essentially a bubble for
you. And so there are problematic aspects of this. So for example, I’ve heard of
situations where perhaps a woman is on there looking at accounts that are talking
about anorexia, a highly problematic and potentially fatal situation. And so if you’re
on there and that’s the kind of content it keeps serving up and you’re in this
bubble, then you can end up with a very skewed view of the world. So while it can
be, I suppose, useful in some sense, because you’re seeing things that you’re
interested in, especially for, I think, younger people who have not necessarily had a
lot of life experience, it could be serving up a very narrow view of the world.
And this is something that outside of this study and this conversation, this is
certainly something that has come up in our programs, because when you’re working
with clients, if your client is following a very specific, limited dietary pattern,
for example, if they’re on social media, likely all of the people that they follow
or most of the information that they’re watching is from that specific narrow
viewpoint. And so there are obviously problems with this way that the world is and
I’m certainly old enough to have grown up without social media at all. And social
media didn’t even exist until I graduated from university. So I can certainly see
some of the potential issues with this. Okay, but that’s how they start the paper
by providing some background information and kind of showing why are looking at it.
And so basically what they’re saying is these platforms are huge. They also go into
how many views, you know, these videos are getting and how many likes and shares
they’re getting. So basically, they’re acknowledging these platforms are garnering huge
audiences. And so potentially their influence could be greater than the medical
establishment. Now, I don’t know if that’s necessarily true because we still have a
very well -established medical situation here. But I think the tide is essentially
turning a little bit, and so these papers are intended to kind of explore what they
can do about it, right? So that’s a little bit about the background. And one of my
critiques of these types of papers is how they’re designed. So basically, well, maybe
not how they’re designed, but I think my specific issue is with how they define
misinformation. So in this paper, they don’t directly define what they term as
misinformation or misleading information. But as has been the case in many of these
papers that are evaluating the validity of social media content, they generally define
misinformation as information that goes against the consensus. And so they’re looking
at what is the medical establishment’s point on this topic are these people online
posting information that matches with that kind of established viewpoint. And if not,
you’re often automatically put into this category of misinformation, regardless of
whether or not the information is actually true. So this term of misinformation or
misleading, typically is not necessarily related to the actual factual scientific
validity of that statement, but more so how closely it matches to their consensus of
what they say. So this paper in particular is looking at contraceptives.
So they’re looking at contraceptive information and they use specific hashtags. They
created a list of specific hashtags and looked for videos that had the highest
views. And so they examined 100 videos between a defined period of time based on
their kind of process of identifying hashtags that would be relevant to the topics
that they were looking at to determine then their, the validity according to them of
these videos and where it’s coming from, who’s creating them and all of that. So it
is a really interesting review of what is happening essentially on social media.
So I’ll give you a couple of direct quotes from the study just to get a feel for
some of the things that they’re highlighting. So one of the direct quotes from the
study is, quote, “Misinformation is especially prevalent in videos concerning hormonal
contraception when uploaded by self -proclaimed experts or non -health professionals
whose knowledge is often based on personal experiences or beliefs. In conjunction with
personal opinion videos that discuss negative experiences with the contraceptive pill,
such content may shape viewers beliefs and choices regarding contraception and foster
distrust in conventional health care, potentially increasing the risk of unwanted
pregnancies. Basically, the videos that they were looking at are videos that are
critical of hormonal contraception for the most part, and also videos that are
presenting other alternatives. So they’re looking at the pill, how people are talking
about the pill, and basically any video where a woman is kind of sharing her
personal experience of it, they’re concerned that it’s going to present it in a
negative light. And then they also specifically are looking at any accounts that are
talking about fertility awareness -based methods or other “natural contraceptive
methods.” And they don’t look at these situations favorably. So,
I’ll give you another direct quote just to give you a sense of how they’re looking
at things. So, quote, “Another example of how misinformation on TikTok may influence
reproductive choices through shaping contraceptive beliefs can be seen through the
millions of TikTok videos that promote the effectiveness of, quote, “natural birth
control methods such as fertility awareness -based methods, FAPMs, that aim to identify
the fertile window by tracking biomarkers for ovulation, including basal body
temperature and cervical mucus. The researchers go on to say, quote, “While these
methods can be effective “and are a valid choice for many people using contraception,
“the success of FABMs in pregnancy prevention “depends on several additional factors,
“including the method used.” So, dot, dot, dot. So this actually sounds pretty open.
I mean, when I was first reading through the paper, I was like, actually, that
sounds pretty reasonable, right? Like, while they’re valid, and so they’re kind of
acknowledging the validity. But if you go on further, that’s not really how they’re
looking at it. They don’t really consider fertility awareness based methods to be
effective. And the reason that I say that is because later on in the paper, they
make a different statement that is not as forgiving or not as balanced.
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The researchers go on to say that TikTok influencers who endorse these fertility
trackers, so they’re kind of conflating fertility awareness based methods with
fertility trackers, which I think is interesting, they didn’t really skip a beat
there. So TikTok influencers who endorse these fertility trackers often fail to
disclose the lack of evidence supporting their effectiveness when used incorrectly.
Furthermore, they also fail to mention that FABMs for pregnancy prevention are
generally ineffective as standalone methods, thereby misleading young viewers and
potentially contributing to unwanted pregnancies. So I find this interesting because
this was in one paragraph, so this statement here. So they’re saying like, it could
be an effective choice for people and whatever like that seems to be, like they’re
saying like it could be an effective choice, but then they’re simultaneously also
saying that they are ineffective as a standalone method. So they’re fully
contradicting themselves here, which is interesting. But I guess the bottom line is
that inherently anybody who is presenting non -hormonal birth control methods,
particularly fertility awareness based methods, that inherently is considered to be
misleading information or misinformation because of their stance that the methods are
ineffective. So that, I think, is a useful way to kind of frame how they’re looking
at these methods. And I think the bigger elephant in the room is that you can
never provide fully accurate and complete health information in a video that is like
three to five minutes long. So I do think that– and they do touch on this. So
we’ll get into that a little bit more as We go through what they found and their
conclusions about it. But ultimately, there’s an inherent issue with social media. I
mean, that’s something that I face. We’ve created a nine month practitioner program
where we spend, we meet our practitioners every week. We have online recorded
training modules as well as classes. I have written multiple books. We have
significant recommended and required reading for our practitioners. There is zero
chance that if you go to my Instagram account, even though I’ve been sharing
information about fertility awareness for decades, there is zero chance that you will
get a full education about how to use a specific method correctly from that post
video, any of that, because it’s a whole thing. You have to learn how to do it.
There’s books that you should read. There’s trainings you should watch. There’s
activities that you need to do you actually have to practice and you have to chart
your information You have to learn how to overcome some of the challenges when your
charts don’t match up or make sense you have to know how to handle it if your
cervical amicus is an optimal and what could be causing that and why the temperature
might be unreliable in this particular cycle or how to take your temperature
correctly so and interpret it correctly so that it can become more reliable and You
can have it like But there’s a whole thing that has to happen. So there’s zero
chance that any social media post is ever going to provide complete information about
any topic, it’s just not possible. So I do think that that’s worth looking at as
well because we have to be taking this for what it is, right? Social media gives
us snippets of information, it can spark our interest in certain topics, and it can
certainly provide some level of education, but it’s really the start of someone’s
journey. You would think that if somebody discovers something about fertility awareness
on TikTok, if they think that they’re going to look at a couple TikTok videos and
then start using the method, I mean, that’s obviously not going to be effective, but
I don’t know that is what the intention is for that information. And there also has
to be a consumer education so that when people are consuming this information, they
don’t actually think that it’s complete And they would recognize that they would have
to do a significant amount of personal research and kind of recon to figure out
what’s going on. So I want to say that as well. And I think the researchers do
touch on that. But it is interesting to read these papers because they’re kind of
highly critical of people putting out information and they’re kind of even in their
study design. They have this specific tool that they use to assess the validity of
these, the social media content. And I mean, The tool is pretty robust, like they’re
looking at all of these different standards in terms of whether they presented a
full definition of what they’re talking about and whether they stated the intention
of it and all this. None of that is happening in a one -minute to two -minute
TikTok video. Even the tool that they used to assess the validity of the social
media responses wasn’t designed to assess short -form social media content. It was
designed to assess written medical So I feel like there is something to be said for
that. So anyway, so we’ll keep going through this study. The researchers searched
TikTok for the most popular contraception hashtags. They picked the top 100 videos.
They looked at who made each video. They looked at what type of content it was,
like if it was advice, if it was a personal story, if it was an opinion. They
identified whether it showed distrust or trust in doctors or hormonal birth control.
They judged the quality of the information using that tool that I was talking about
that was not designed to assess social media content. And then they compared this
information. So again, what’s interesting is that they are in this paper singling out
as a criterion, whether or not you are promoting hormonal birth control,
Right, so that’s interesting in and of itself and they are looking at how the
information is presented This was interesting though. So they did have a fairly
narrow definition of what qualifies as a medical health professional So doctors nurses
midwives pharmacists. That’s it. So anybody who is not a doctor midwife pharmacist or
nurse They are not, I had a medical professional and they would be either lumped
into what they term general uploaders, so just random lay people, or they also kind
of made a specific distinction for people who call themselves hormone health coaches
or health educators. So they kind of have these three categories of people. And so
what they found was that the majority of the information uploaded on TikTok, zero
surprise here, is from general uploaders. And so that would be almost 60 % of the
videos. 15 % or about 30 % of the, if you add them together,
about 30 % of the videos were put out by individuals who considered or who called
themselves health coaches or health educators. And then they said that medical
professionals contributed 10 % of the videos. And then they identified certain
companies, maybe companies that are selling products that uploaded only 2 % of the
videos. So I rounded up. So if anyone’s doing math, you’ll notice that you would
have to add two, but that was the breakdown. So I think that’s interesting. The
videos that they looked at specifically because they were looking at some of the top
videos based on these hashtags, received a total of 4 .85 billion views.
So the median of that was about 300 ,000 views, and the views ranged from 5 ,000
views to almost 90 billion views. So that was kind of the range of the videos.
And the shortest video, four seconds. The longest video, 215 seconds.
So just a few minutes long. So I mean, again, if we’re looking at TikTok and if
we’re having a legit conversation about this, we’re looking at real short form
videos. short -form videos.
TikTok is not a place that I think anybody could really think, “I’m going to go to
TikTok and get a PhD. I’m really going to go there and get a solid understanding
and comprehension of anything.” I do want to say that because we have to look at
what it is. It is making an impact, but it lends itself to very short snippets of
information that provide just a of taste of something, but you’ll never get the full
story from a like a three, four minute video. Like it’s just not, it’s not a
thing. Okay. So a couple other stats that might be useful.
So these videos that they reviewed had a total of 14 .6 million likes and on
average they were shared about 244 times, favorited 1500 times. And then the average
person that they were looking at having these views on average about 76 ,000
followers. So obviously some of the influencers would have millions of followers and
then some would have like a few thousand. So that is interesting as well. I think
they’re trying to kind of establish how much influence do these people have? And
they’re looking at what is the information being presented, how is it being
presented? So a few kind of tenants of what they found. Of course, when they’re
looking at this type of content, they’re acknowledging that there is a general
distrust towards hormonal contraception, and they did have an interesting quote. One
thing I want to say is as I shift into how they interpreted the results, I was
actually pleasantly surprised. I was expecting to come in all guns blazing. While I’m
fully critical of the things that I’ve said so far, they looking at it.
So I feel like they came on really strong, like, oh, this information,
misinformation, and whatever. But then when they actually were discussing what they
found, what I think is they are really having to contend with this problem.
So you can either just get mad at these millions of people out there who are
clearly looking for alternative forms of information and clearly wanting to have this
social discourse about their experiences of hormonal contraception,
of their desire to potentially look towards more natural methods and their desire to
balance their hormones. And regardless of whether the medical system thinks that it’s
valid for women to want to adopt natural methods or whether they think it’s valid
for us to want to balance our hormones and feel better. These are like terms now
that of social media companies are identifying and downgrading reach of things like
balance your hormones, things like fix your periods, things like support natural
fertility. These are things that they’re actually clamping down on. But the reality
is that obviously there’s a huge population of women who are dissatisfied with the
standard of care. And so that’s why these videos are getting billions of views,
right? So like I said, I was pleasantly surprised to actually see them contend with
the reality of the situation, which is that obviously women are starting to want
more. So a couple of things that I want to point out here, they did say here that
53 % of the creators of this content did,
according to them, explicitly reject hormonal birth control. So they were saying like,
they were putting out messages that were, well, they say explicitly rejected, but of
course that’s, I don’t know exactly how they qualified that, but they’re saying that
they were rejecting it. They’re not promoting it.
And another thing that I thought was interesting that they said, they said, the most
frequently discussed contraceptive methods were fertility awareness and cycle tracking
38 % and the pill 35 % reflecting the dichotomy between quote natural birth control
methods and hormonal contraception. So they’re seeing this and I think that that is
interesting as well. So they’re saying like 38 % of these videos were talking about
fertility awareness based methods. Now this is especially fascinating to me because
when I started learning about fertility awareness, it was definitely not a thing and
absolutely not. There was not like millions of people talking about it. So it’s
growing. The interest is growing, right? And so it’s like the medical establishment
has, they’re at a crossroads here. It’s either we’re gonna keep saying it’s
ineffective and it’s stupid for anyone to use it and blah, blah, blah. Or they have
to actually learn about it and look at the evidence -based methods. You know,
fertility awareness based methods, there’s a lot of evidence behind them. So it’s
either you’re going to dismiss it at a hand and just pretend like it’s not
happening and put your hands in your ears and just la la la la, or you’re going
to look at the situation here. You’re going to start to look at the research on
different fertility awareness based methods and become familiar with the most and
least effective in terms of what the research has to say, the differences as to why
some are more effective than others and and actually start to understand it, right?
So that’s something I’ll also get to in a little while here.
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So there was an interesting quote, so when they get into the discussion, like I
said, I feel like this is where we actually get to see a more reasonable take on
this. That’s like I said, I was pleasantly surprised. So one of the quotes from
their discussion was, quote, “A general distrust towards hormonal contraception is,
according to this one researcher, fueled by health professionals persistent focus on
its safety and high effectiveness in preventing pregnancies rather than on the
potential side effects. They go on to say, “A provider -driven decision -making process
in contraceptive counseling, which fails to include information that reflects social
norms and concerns, has proven to result in decreased satisfaction with the final
chosen contraceptive method. So the researchers, after kind of blasting all of these
non -medical, professional, social influencers that are putting out this information,
they’re also having to acknowledge why it’s happening.
And so they’re having, like, they’re seeing it, right? It’s like, all of these women
are going online and they’re saying like, I had the side effect. I had the side
effect. This was bad. I don’t like contraceptives. And I mean, right? Like they’re
not being quiet about it. They’re also, a lot of content creators are trying to get
more views. So they’re also going to purposely say things in an inflammatory way so
that they can achieve their goals, right? But the point is that you have this whole
population of women that are saying like, I went to my doctor. I told them about
the side effects. They didn’t believe me. And so they wanted to put me on a
different one and a different one and a different one. They weren’t listening to me.
So now I don’t trust them anymore. And now I’m going outside of the medical system
to get my information. That’s basically what’s happening. And like I said, I was
pleasantly surprised to actually see them acknowledge this because what I think as
women, what we’re used to is us making a complaint and then them just ignoring it
or them just pretending like it’s not happening and us being gaslighted. But now
they’re kind of having to address it. There’s obviously a lot of women that are
unhappy, or there wouldn’t be, what was it, 400 billion views of these 100 videos
that were mostly not favoring hormonal contraception and also specifically favoring
natural methods. Not every single video, obviously, there was a mix, but there’s a
pretty significant percentage of videos that we’re specifically saying like we want
natural methods, right? So that’s interesting. So another quote from the paper, they
said, “When shared decision -making expectations are unmet, patients may perceive this
as a subtle form of coercion, favoring hormonal contraception and thus a violation of
their rights. They might feel pressured, dismissed, and even deceived by medical
professionals. Consequently, TikTok may serve as an important platform which gives
voice to women’s lived experiences of distrust in health professional advice and the
treatments they recommend.” Wow, right? That was a quote from the study.
I feel like that was the most clear acknowledgement of what’s happening.
They actually put it into words. Maybe they were surprised at how many videos there
were, how many views that these videos were getting, and what these women were
actually saying. And the fact that so many people were liking them and sharing them,
maybe they were like, whoa, we’re still classifying this as misinformation, but what
is going on here? That to me, this is why I was surprised by this section of the
paper, because this to me shows that they actually do know what the problem is,
right? This is like, like to say that women, patients may perceive this kind of
like, I’m not going to, like when they said, shared decision -making expectations. So
the patient is coming in saying, I don’t just want you to shove your prescription
down my throat. Like I don’t want you to just tell me what I need to do. I’m
coming here because I have this problem and I would like to have a conversation
about how I can solve the problem. But then when I say like I’m thinking about
these non -hormonal methods, when I say I want to balance my hormones and you tell
me that it’s a fairytale and that’s stop looking on Google, then it is no longer a
shared decision -making process. It now becomes a top -down parent -child. You tell me
that I need to do this thing and you’re not listening, so it’s not a two -way
conversation. And so that’s what they said. They said, “Patients may perceive this as
a subtle form of coercion.” And that’s exactly what it is. They just put it into
words. It’s refreshing when they actually put it into words. I feel like that’s more
powerful than what I would have said. Patients may perceive this as a subtle form
of coercion, favoring hormonal contraception, and that’s a violation of their rights,
their right to informed decision -making, their right to just getting information and
being able to decide what is best for them. They may feel pressure dismissed and
even deceived by medical professionals. Yes, that’s what we’ve been saying for
decades. And now you’ve put it in the paper. Yay. So where do we go from here,
right? There was something else I want to say along these lines, which I also found
to be very powerful. So I’m also going to read that. So this is a quote. So
quote, “For example, Multiple TikTok users express their disapproval of standard
contraceptive counseling practices instead of advocating for advice from hormone health
coaches or health educators over medical professionals. A simple Google search of
these terms yields numerous blogs and websites offering advice not typically addressed
a health care setting. Recent research suggests that this increasing reliance on
social media for health information from individuals, whether qualified or not,
is reshaping the patient -provider relationship into one where providers act merely as
gatekeepers for obtaining prescriptions. Again, Wow.
So this is the most powerful acknowledgement of what’s really happening that I have
read. A lot of the research that I have read is just more gaslighting. It’s just
more these people are going online and sharing their unqualified views and blah,
blah, blah, but not actually listening to what they say or trying to figure out why
they’re saying it, right? But here we have in black and white, in this research
paper, when they’re going through and discussing the results, they’re acknowledging
that women are going to health care professionals, they’re not being heard,
they’re not being listened to, their concerns are not being met. And so now they’ve
turned against the medical system away because they’re since they’re not getting the
answers that they’re looking for, they’re going to other sources, they’re going to
other sources of support to actually get their problems met. And they said that a
simple Google search of these terms, so the terms that they’re looking for, yields
numerous blogs and websites offering advice not typically addressed in a healthcare
setting. So I can guarantee you that in our practitioner program,
when we are teaching the nitty -gritty details about advanced menstrual charting and
charted interpretation. That is not a thing that you’re gonna get in your
conventional medical setting because it’s not taught in medical school. So therefore
you can’t have that there. It’s just not a thing. And so I feel like this is kind
of like the beginning of maybe a reckoning. They’re saying that if we don’t do
something about this, we’re going to lose a big part of our patient population.
They’re not going to come to us for support. They’re basically going to come to us
just as a pill pusher. They’re going to come to us only when they need prescription
medication. And that’s it. They’re not going to come to us for their health
information. So what I do find interesting about this paper is the discussion I
found was very meaningful. I did feel like they really did address, at least to the
degree that they can, I was impressed and that’s hard. But I was impressed by the
honest, like actual, like, they’re seeing what’s happening. They’re not completely
ignoring what the patients are saying. And they’re trying to actually provide a
meaningful assessment of what the implications are for the medical profession. And
ultimately, their recommendations and their conclusions are that…
So, I’ll go through just a brief summary of their conclusions. So,
obviously, they’re concluding that TikTok is a major source of contraceptive
information for young people. Now, of course, from their view, they’re saying that
the platform is dominated by, quote, “negative personal narratives,” misinformation,
right? So, they’re saying that it’s whatever it is, but that’s from their
perspective. They’re saying healthcare providers are underrepresented on these platforms,
and they feel that the healthcare provider’s information is more accurate based on
their tool that they use that was not designed to evaluate social media content and
is geared specifically that if anything goes against the conventional standard that
it’s automatically misinformation misleading, right? So they’re saying the healthcare
providers are providing more accurate information based on their standards, and they’re
saying that they’re underrepresented. But they’re also saying that there’s a pressing
need for health professionals and educators to engage on there, providing balanced
evidence -based information. But when you look at what they’re saying, the conclusion,
some of the things that they’re saying are that health care providers actually need
to understand the challenges that their patients are facing. They actually have to
start listening to their patients because if your patients are searching for certain
types of information that you don’t provide, you’re not equipped to provide, and
their needs are not being met, they’re going to go elsewhere. So I think that’s a
big part of what they came to. So specifically, what they say about this is first,
healthcare providers must acknowledge that young adults may obtain information about
contraceptive methods from social media platforms like TikTok, and it’s essential for
providers to incorporate this awareness into their contraceptive counseling, ensuring
that any biases regarding hormonal contraceptives are addressed. So from their
perspective, as usual, they’re wanting to go in there and like correct, like, oh,
you know, you, you heard on TikTok that birth control has all these side effects.
Like I don’t, it’s interesting ’cause I’ll link the previous, one of the previous
episodes that I recorded about these misconceptions about social, about birth control,
that they were kind of outlining. But when they went point by point, all of the so
-called misconceptions and misinformation were just literal side effects that are
reported. And it was kind of like, what’s the misinformation here? Like you’re
addressing all these side effects, but all of them are real and we have a lot of
research on them. So like I said, I was impressed by the quality of the discussion.
But at the end of the day, they’re still towing the party line that we need to
correct these misunderstandings that these women have. I think, though, for this
audience and for our fan practitioners or for any women’s health practitioner that is
concerned about women’s health, women’s hormone health, menstrual cycle health,
increasing awareness of fertility awareness -based methods for us in this field who
are looking to support our clients in a more meaningful way. I feel like there are
conclusions that we can take from what they found. So the conclusions that we can
take from this information are one that women really are dissatisfied obviously with
the care overwhelmingly. There is a huge portion of women out there who are becoming
aware of the limitations of hormonal contraception. I’ve always done my best to be
as neutral as I can when I talk about hormonal contraception. I talk about the side
effects in detail based on what the research has to say and acknowledge that for
many women, this is a valid and important choice. I would never want the
contraceptives to be taken away completely because I think that they are important.
I mean, I took contraceptives for a short period of time as well when I was a
teenager. So I can’t really say anything about that. And the way I’ve always
approached it is that if we give women information about the side effects in an
honest fashion, yeah, it has the potential to change how they would interact with
it. But I know everybody isn’t trying to be objective. So I know there’s a lot of
people out there that are just straight, like, I would never take it and it’s
horrible and no one should ever take it. And yeah, so, so I think one of the
takeaways as women’s health professionals or as part of this community, the fertility
Friday community here, is that we have to take the information online for what it
is. Everybody can talk, anybody can say anything on there. And if you are a women’s
health professional who is working with clients, then it is useful to just, if this
comes up and if your clients have concerns, there is something to be said for
having some level of understanding about what the platform is taking it for what it
is and doing our best to find valid sources of information. There is some risk in
getting primarily a lot of information from various social media platforms. At the
end of the day, anybody can go on there and say anything regardless of what
experience they have. And people can lie, people can lie about their expertise and
their certification. So people can say whatever they want. So I think as women’s
health professionals, if you are using social media, I would say that it’s time to
up your game. Let’s try to keep it as evidence -based as we can. That’s something
that I’ve tried to do. Of course, I include some fun in there. I have a sense of
humor, so I’ll include some funny reels and memes and stuff like that. But at the
end of the day, I’ve always tried to put out evidence -based information. I’ll cite
the sources. I always put those citations in there if anyone wants to verify the
information. I have always kind of, my whole career in this field has really
revolved around, don’t just take my word for it, we’ll provide the receipts and you
can take a deeper look into that if you want to. And so I think it is useful to
look for individuals who do stuff like that. Look for people who aren’t just saying
stuff, who actually are providing that reference so that you can go and look deeper
into that topic. So there is a huge like buyer beware component to this and to
interacting with social media, but I don’t think that it means we throw it all out
of hand. Also, as I touched on in the beginning, TikTok, hello, I mean, two minute
videos, like 30 second videos, we can’t be expecting more than that.
So if you have younger women in your life, if you work with a youth population, if
you have teenagers, it’s basically our responsibility to educate them. I did not grow
up with these platforms. And they do have the ability potentially to really skew
your young child and young adult’s views on certain things because it’s providing
such a narrow view and if the algorithm just keeps showing them whatever they’re
looking at, then they just may end up this very narrow view on a certain topic
without actually looking at the full information. So that is definitely one of the
takeaways that I had from reading this paper and thinking about, well, what can we
do about it? And so if you are involved in putting content out there, then do your
best to put out high quality content. Now, they’re not gonna call your content high
quality simply even if it’s evidence -based, even if you’re citing the research, if
it goes against the conventional narrative. But at the end of the day, if you are
taking that responsibility seriously of providing information for your clients, if
you’re a women’s health professional, or even just personally, I think it is useful
to think about that and to really strive to provide information at the highest
quality level possible. The other thing I would have to say for women’s health
professionals who might be putting content out for clients and things like that is
that even though they seem to try to be sort of impartial about fertility awareness
based methods, these researchers at least were not having a favorable perspective
about fertility awareness based methods at all. So it was definitely just out of
hand, they dismiss it as a legitimate method. It’s just out of hand. It’s not
effective, right? They’re just putting out all that information. So anybody who’s
working within that fertility awareness field, it is up to you to provide the
evidence -based information about fertility awareness -based methods. This is a small
field, and I’ve watched it grow since I’ve been in it, but it’s still a small
field. And obviously, within the medical profession, it is not their favorite thing.
It is this like inconvenient problem that they’re having to contend with as more and
more women come into their offices saying that they want non -hormonal methods and
asking about it. So there’s a huge, huge bias against fertility awareness -based
methods. There’s a huge misconception that they are ineffective in all circumstances.
And that is because it is not taught in medical school. So doctors are not reading
peer -reviewed research papers that have been published about fertility awareness based
methods, they may or may not be able to actually list even three or four of the
established fertility awareness based methods that have been extensively studied. They
may or may not likely not be able to actually talk about why certain methods have
a higher efficacy versus others and what would be the best practices if you had a
patient who wanted to use this method to gear her to the more effective strategies
for using this method successfully, right? So it’s just a lack of information,
a lack of training, a lack of knowledge. And so as women’s health professionals, it
is up to us to be able to provide evidence -based, accurate information and to move
away from our personal biases. If you have a personal bias gains birth control, but
you have a client who wants to use it for a period of time or has real reasons
for it. And sometimes it might be hard to do that, but I think that our goal
shouldn’t be to present opinions to people and try to force them to do what we
would do. I think the more professional thing to do is to actually provide research
and information and to understand and respect the choices that your clients might
make, even if the choices are different to what you would make. And the same thing
applies to fertility -oriented space methods. Providing the actual facts and
information, I think is where we start with this. So that women can know. The
problem is that we have not been provided with full and accurate information about
the things that we need. We’re going to doctors and they’re just telling us to use
these prescriptions, but they’re not necessarily providing us with a list of the side
effects. We’re leaving taking medications that we don’t even know the side effects.
And so then when women then Google to find out, “Well, why am I having these panic
attacks? And why do I have a libido? Why all of a sudden do I have painful sex?
Why, right? All of the things that happen, even some of the strange side effects.
Like why am I all of a sudden having gallbladder? Like there’s so many different
issues that are associated with pill use, but exactly like what zero women who leave
their doctor’s office with a prescription for the pill are provided with like a full
side effect profile. So from my perspective, the biggest issue is the lack of
information. And so if we’re out there, like I said, if you’re a woman’s health
professional, if you’re posting out information on social media channels, I think it’s
up to us to provide the accurate evidence -based information to the best of our
ability. And obviously it’s not going to be complete because it can’t be complete.
It can’t be complete in a social post, but we can at least do something to elevate
this conversation. So those are my thoughts on today’s paper. I hope that you
enjoyed it, it was, like I said, this topic has been really interesting to me
because I do see this growing amount of research in this area. So they really are
having to contend with the fact that women are going outside of the medical system
and the medical system is losing the narrative here. They have had this narrative.
They’ve been in there a little bubble for so long and now women are coming out
saying, “Look, I didn’t have a good experience with this. My doctor didn’t help me
when I asked about this. So it’s kind of like, what are you going to do about it?
Are you going to continue providing sub par advice and support for women? Or are
you going to actually look at what you’re teaching in medical school and try to
adapt to what women actually need? And we’ll see. So if you can think of somebody
who would benefit from hearing today’s episode, if there’s someone who comes to mind,
your first bestie that comes to mind, that’s like, oh man, I need to share this
with her. The share link for today’s episode is fertilityfriday .com /592. I just want
to thank everybody who has shared the podcast, who shared my books with a vital
sign, Real Food for Fertility, who has just spread the word about this podcast and
this community has largely grown based on word of mouth. It’s really been a passion
project for many, many years just to increase awareness about fertility awareness
-based methods, and just the importance of having information about how our body
works, how our cycles work, and how we can be empowered with that information to
improve our health. I mean, that’s, at the end of the day, we want to feel good.
We don’t want to feel badly. And if we’re not getting the support, like they talked
about in the paper from our medical professionals, where else are we going to find
this information? They’re leaving it up to us to figure it out because they’re
helping, right? So For those of you who’ve shared the podcast, I really appreciate
that. And if you have been listening to the podcast for a while, one of the best
ways that you can thank me is to leave a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts,
because of course that is how people determine if they’re going to listen to
something when we’re looking for something. We’re always looking to see what other
people are saying about it. So I would really appreciate for anybody who is leaving
a review or rating on Apple Podcasts, it is amazing. So thank you for everyone
who’s done that. So with that said, I’m gonna stop here. I hope you have a
wonderful weekend whenever you’re tuning into the show. And of course, as always,
until next time, be well and happy charting. If you’re loving the podcast and you’re
ready to apply fertility awareness strategies in your women’s health practice, then I
know you’ll love our Fertility Awareness Mastery Mentorship. It’s a nine month
immersive experience that will completely transform the way you work with clients,
allowing you to not only teach fertility awareness, but to use the menstrual cycle
as a vital sign and diagnostic tool in your women’s health practice. Our next class
starts in January, 2026, so there’s still time to reserve your spot. There’s no
other program like this offered anywhere. Transform your practice in nine months. Head
over to fertilityfriday .com /vamlive to apply now. That’s fertilityfriday .com /famlive.