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Dr. Evans explains how smoking while taking birth control pills contributes to a woman's risk for strokes.
Dr. Evans:
Hi, I am Dr. Sean Evans. I am a neurologist and Assistant Professor of Neurosciences at UCSD.
The biggest issue for women is estrogen replacement therapy. This has gotten a lot of attention in the news, and it really breaks down into two categories. The first category is, younger women who are using estrogen as part of their oral contraceptive or birth control method, that does very slightly, but statistically increase your stroke risk.
For most women obviously the benefits of the ease and accuracy and reliability of the birth control method make oral contraceptive still the clear choice, but the critical thing is the interaction between smoking and the oral contraceptives.
By themselves, birth control pills make a teeny, tiny increase in the risk of stroke in young women, but when combined with smoking, especially significant amounts of smoking, daily smoking and ongoing smoking, that actually starts to significantly raise their risk and so, while there’s lots of reasons not to smoke for any age group, certainly young women who use oral contraceptives or birth control pills should definitely not be smoking.
About Dr. Evans, M.D.:
Dr. Evans joined the Neurosciences faculty in July 2005. Dr. Evans received a BS in Chemistry, Magna Cum Laude, from the University of Southern California, and a MD from UCSD. After a year of Internal Medicine training at Loma Linda Medical Center, he returned to UCSD for his residency in neurology. He has received several awards for academic excellence during his training and was the 25th Anniversary Scholar for the UCSD School of Medicine. He was named the valedictorian of UCSD’s National Center of Leadership in Academic Medicine’s class of 2006. He is a full-time clinical neurologist at the UCSD Neuroscience Center at Alvarado Hospital Medical Center.
Visit Dr. Evans at Alvarado Hospital