Using BCP to control cysts?????

[kadams13104]

Hi Ladies-
This is my first post here. I was dx with PCOS sept. 2004. I have been on Met. since then and have done three rounds of Clomid. I got pregnant on two of those rounds both ending in losses. My last round (50 mg) resulted in an ectopic pregnancy that was removed on May 27, 2005. When my OB removed the pregnancy, she also removed two cysts from my right fallopian tube. She brought up BCP when I went for my post op but my husband and I were going to try again in July.

Now we have decided to not try until jan 2006. My doctor is willing to put me on the Patch again. My main concern is the cysts. Will BCP help shrink and control the number of cysts that I am having?

As you can imagine, it has been a very emotional year and I am just looking for some answers.

Thanks ladies,
kadams13104

[sockmonkey]

I just decided to go back on the pill and I asked my ob that same ques. She said that the bcp will not get rid of the cysts that you currently have but it will prevent you from forming new ones. I also can tell you that I know quite a few people that conceived immediately after going off the pill. It might provide your ovaries with a break and in turn allow you to get pg.

[Alliance]

I know that when I'm on th epill..I have no cysts. But I have been off of them for a month and boy are they back and so is my hot flashes. I have been off of htem b/c I;m try to find one that doesn't effect my sex life.

[Rozlynn]

Not sure if this will help...I was told that if you keep going on and off of BC you will actually cause more cysts. I think with BC It controls the amount of hormones being produced...not letting the follicles make the "string of pearls" cysts.
When I went off my BC A huge cysts was developed and needed to be removed.

[RunnerDuck]

There are women who says it worked for them and women who said it didn't. I never had a before and after sonogram to see if BCPs helped me... but I am hoping they do, I am currently on a 9 week straight regimin hoping to clear up my ovaries so I have a shot at getting pregnant. (Although last time I got pregnant I was on Yasmin so that was kind of a side effect I was hoping for but alas I don't think it's gonna happen again...)

ANYWAY here is my understanding - someone tell me if I have this wrong. But the "cysts" we get are actually failed ovulations. In a normal woman, her ovaries will start trying to develop, say, 4 or 5 follicles/eggs a month. One egg will win the race and become the biggest and that egg is the one that pops out. For the rest of her cycle after ovulation, the ovaries are no longer trying to ovulate. Over the next 60 days or so, the follicles that didn't make it dissolve. So NORMAL women probably have a few cysts at any given time - they are called functional cysts. Now with PCOS it's like our bodies are constantly TRYING to ovulate but they can never quite push any of the eggs over the hump because our hormones are all wrong. So it's like our ovaries just keep picking new follicles to try to develop, but they never can develop fully, and since none of them ever ovulate, the process never takes a break. We just keep producing cysts. Then the kicker is, the cysts themselves produce hormones, such as androgens, that make our levels even more screwed up and in turn make it even harder for our bodies to ovulate.

I assume that the cysts die off like any normal woman's cysts, but since our body keeps making more of them, they never go away. It's like continually pouring sand into a cup with a hole in the bottom.

In THEORY, since the pill halts ovulation, this should give the cysts in our ovaries a chance to disappear as they are supposed to and give our ovaries a break and a chance to clear up.

In PRACTICE, I don't know if it always works.

Personally I found I never did have normal ovulation/periods after BCPs until I learned about PCOS and started taking Glucophage, too. So I think there may be more to it than just the cysts and controlling them. You have to work on getting rid of the cysts as well as what's behind the cysts.

These failed ovulation cysts do not usually cause problems in and of themselves, pain or whatever. The type of ovarian cyst that gets really big and requires surgery is another sort of cyst and I am not sure what causes it. I'm also not sure what sort of cysts you would have had on your fallopian tubes. But everything down there is hormonal so I'd guess BCPs (which are hormones) is bound to have some effect on all of it.

[Rozlynn]

I'm gonna go with Runner on this one.

Yeah That sounds alot better than my cheapo explaination...I think you hit the nail on the head! I'm having flashbacks now from what the doctor explained to me - -

[kadams13104]

Thanks Ladies!!!!! Runner your explantion makes a great deal of sense. The only thing that I know about the cysts I had removed from my fallopian tubes is that they were called benign paratubul serous cysts. (that is what the Pathology report said).

Thanks again,
Kelly

[starlite]

(Although last time I got pregnant I was on Yasmin so that was kind of a side effect I was hoping for but alas I don't think it's gonna happen again...)

.

You mean that you actually concieved while taking Yasmin? I'm just courious because I am currently on the same thing and I am not trying to get pg yet. I've had 2 losses while on BCP's and 1 off. I thought that Yasmin was supposed to be better than most other BCP's. One of the reasons I wanted to be on Yasmin is because I thought it would work better at protecting aginst concieving so I don't have to go through another loss.

[RunnerDuck]

You mean that you actually concieved while taking Yasmin? I'm just courious because I am currently on the same thing and I am not trying to get pg yet. I've had 2 losses while on BCP's and 1 off. I thought that Yasmin was supposed to be better than most other BCP's. One of the reasons I wanted to be on Yasmin is because I thought it would work better at protecting aginst concieving so I don't have to go through another loss.

Yes... I got pregnant on Yasmin. It seems that a lot of cysters who get pregnant on the pill get pregnant on Yasmin. I think it may be the anti-androgen properties of the pill can have the effect of increasing our fertility. In the past, I took spironalactone for ~1 month, went off it due to sidee effects, and had normal periods for the next few months. I think that blocking the effects of androgen has a very positive effect on my body's ability to ovulate. The progestin in Yasmin is derived from Spironalactone - it is equivalant to a 25mg/day dose. That's a low dose, but perhaps it still has some effect. I really don't know. But I am hoping the I actually ovulate for a while after going off of these pills.

By no means is this a GUARANTEE that Yasmin will fail as birth control if you have PCOS. I am basing this purely on anectodal evidence. It seems when a cyster mentions a BCP failure, more often than not she was taking Yasmin.

Yasmin is supposed to be "better" than other BCPs in that it's not supposed to cause the bloating and weight gain BCPs can cause (due to the diuretic effects of the spiro/progestin component, i guess) and it's also the only BCP available in the US that actually has an anti-androgen component. In other countries they have Diane-35 which contains an anti-androgen and seems to really help women with hormone issues, but it's not available in the US. But I have never heard of any BCP being better or worse than any other in terms of how effective they are. All pills are supposedly between 97% and 99% effective. (Well, all combination pills, that is - the mini-pill which is progestin only is not as effective) But these are averages and every woman's chemistry is a little different so she may need a stronger pill (some have higher estrogen components) or she may be OK with a lower dose pill (some have less estrogen.) The mid-range standard amount of estrogen is 30-35 units. Low dose pills (such as Alesse) have 20 or so and high dose pills (such as Ovcon50) have 50. Yasmin actually only has 30 which makes it more or less standard but at the lower end.

Yasmin may work just fine for you. While it seems most cysters who get pregnant on the pill do so on Yasmin, this is not the same as saying that most cysters on Yasmin get pregnant. Most do not.

[Bert]

I have been on the pill since I was 18 and I only went off twice and that was to have children. I have had pain in my pelvic area and when they did an ultrasound they found numerous follicles around the periphery of each ovary. My question is if I am on the pill should I even be ovulating? I am on Apri. It is a generic form. It is very low dose since I do have high blood pressure and cholesterol levels. I also have a very low progesterone level <0.2 so I don't even know how I am ovulating. I do know that when I was younger and on the pill I always had this heavy slimey, clear disharge in the middle of each month. I never have that anymore. I probably haven't for a few years now. I don't know if that was part of ovulating or not. I am so confused. I know that we should have some follicles on our ovaries and the lady that did my first suspected PCOS and the lady that did my second said it was normal for our ovaries to have cysts and that they look (our ovaries) like chocolate chip cookies. Mine did too. It had black spots all over it. So anyway I guess the point of my post is that I have been on BCP and I still have cysts the largest has only been 1.3 cm in diameter. Sometimes I feel like doctors just contradict themselves and one another when they put us on one thing to take care of the other and that causes something else or causes the first symptom to get even worse. A vicious cycle of confusion.