And it makes me wonder whether or not if on the one hand , oral contraceptives are protective in women . It's ovarian cancer , but then they have these other issues . Yeah , there's one other .
Um The question of what are some of the symp earliest symptoms that people can recognize without a blood test . So , is o ovarian cancer , is it gonna be pain ? So , the problem is , the symptoms are so vague and they're so non-specific .
We know that if you take the oral contraceptive for about five years , it reduces your risk of ovarian cancer by 50% . And that's significant because we're so poor at diagnosing ovarian cancer early . There's really no method that's really effective .
So I'll speak first into the benefits because uh I'm gonna get on a soapbox a little bit about the risks . So we know that it reduces the risk of ovarian cancer . So there's something about this idea of incessant ovulation that is not good for the female body .
So there's something about this idea of incessant ovulation that is not good for the female body . So if you look at , for instance , women who are nuns who uh don't take oral contraceptives and they have a period every single month of their reproductive lives , they have a greater risk of ovarian cancer . So if you look , then at women who have uh several babies and they've got a period of time when they're pregnant that they're not ovulating and then they breastfeed for some period of time , they have a lower risk of ovarian cancer .
