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National Documentation Centre

Women Health

Contraceptive Pill

‘Pill makes women smarter’ (The Times of India-19 August 2010)

London- Ladies, please note — popping the pill not only saves you from an unwanted
pregnancy but can also make you brainier, for a study claims that contraceptives help swell grey
matter needed for social skills and memory.

Researchers at Salzburg University in Austria have found that contraceptive pills increase the
size of certain parts of women’s brains, improving memory and social skills, and enhancing the
mind’s “conversation hub”.

The study found that the contraceptive of choice of 3.5 million British women — a quarter of all
16 to 49-year- olds — increases brain size by around 3%, which led to improvement in brain
function, the Daily Mail reported.

For the study, the researchers took high-resolution images of the brains of women taking the pill
and those not on it.

The women not on the contraceptive were scanned more than once to account for the hormonal
fluctuations that occur over the course of a month. Several areas of the brains of the women
taking the pill were larger than the brains of those not taking the contraceptive, the findings
revealed.

No matter which brand or formulation of the drug, or how long it had been prescribed for, the
results were same.

Belinda Pletzer, who led the study, said the sex hormones in the pill were clearly having a
“tremendous effect” on the female brain.

Just how the pill could have such an effect is not clear. But one theory is that the oestrogen or
progesterone used to stop eggs from being released also strengthens the links between nerve cells
in the brain. PTI