Best Quotes from This Is Your Brain On Birth Control by Sarah E. Hill with Page Numbers

If even one of your ancestors had failed to survive long enough to reproduce, or simply failed to reproduce, you wouldn’t be here.

Traits that promote successful survival and reproduction get passed down from one generation to the next.

Women’s minimum level of investment in reproduction is much greater than men’s.

The way that we respond to men, children, snakes, spiders, mating opportunities, chocolate cake, and the face of our best friend each reflect solutions to adaptive challenges that confronted our ancestors.

You have inherited the traits that make you the person you are today because countless generations of women before you were able to successfully survive and reproduce.

To be a woman is to be an evolutionary success story.

Understanding women requires understanding the biological principles that make us who we are.

Each of us has in us the inherited wisdom of our female ancestors.

Acknowledging that men and women are different does not imply that all women will make the same choices our ancestors did.

Nothing about women makes sense except in the light of evolution.

Your hormones are about as misunderstood a group of chemical signals as you’ll ever meet in your life.

You are a biological entity. And not just in a 'you have inherited the psychological wisdom of your successful female ancestors' evolutionary-big-picture kind of way, but also in a 'your mind is a product of the goings-on in your brain'.

Biology is at the heart of everything that we do, that we feel, and that we are.

Every piece of information you have ever learned and every ridiculous, random thought you have ever entertained owes itself to electrical and chemical signals being released and transduced in your brain.

You are utterly, heartbreakingly biological.

Your hormones play a key role in creating the version of yourself that you have come to know as you.

The impact of hormones on the version of ourselves that our body creates is sometimes huge.

The version of yourself that your brain is creating right now is different from the version of yourself that would be created in the presence of a different set of sex hormones.

Women’s hormones are cyclical, but not fickle or capricious.

You deserve to make decisions about your health with your eyes wide open.

That crude and unflattering caricature obscures what is actually an amazingly well-designed system aimed at promoting conception and implantation.

Because estrogen is in charge of coordinating the activities related to conception, we should find that during the time in the cycle when it is the dominant hormone, women are the versions of themselves that help facilitate this activity.

The ovulatory cycle is, in many respects, the perfect way to illustrate the degree to which changing our hormones changes what we think, feel, and do.

Your hormones influence which version of yourself you are at a particular moment in time.

Women’s sexual desire is highest at times in the cycle when conception is possible.

It makes good old-fashioned evolutionary sense that our hormones promote sexual behavior during times when conception is possible.

Women feel sexier, are more open to new experiences, and put more effort into their appearance at high fertility than at low fertility across the cycle.

Sexiness is in the brain of the beholder. And the brain becomes particularly attuned to these qualities when estrogen is high.

Although prioritizing these types of traits will often mean that women have to compromise somewhat when it comes to the sexy traits they also desire, choosing long-term partners who are willing and able to invest has historically been the way to best promote the survival success of their children.

Only you can know what your hormones mean for you. And as you learn about how your different hormones make you feel, if there are parts you don’t like, you can change them!

"To understand what the pill does, we first need to talk about how it works."

"Understanding how everything works will help you understand some of the big question marks out there when it comes to the pill."

"Women’s hormonal changes across a natural cycle are dynamic and changing."

"The pill is able to cleverly work its magic by making the brain think that it is perpetually in a cycle phase in which FSH and LH aren’t necessary."

"Finding the right pill can take some time and will require a little patience. It can be well worth the trouble, though, to find one that you like."

"The specific way that your body will respond to the pill’s hormones depends on a whole bunch of things that are you-specific."

"You don’t have to wait for science to figure out all the details to be able to make educated decisions about what the pill might mean for you."

"The person you think of as you is a product of the biological processes going on in your body."

"Changing a woman’s hormones will change what she does. And when a woman’s behavior changes, it can also change what other people do."

"We know enough for you to be able to make more informed choices, not just about your health but about who you want to be."

Most of us would probably agree that attraction, love, sex, and marriage are the kinds of things that qualify for “big deal” status in a person’s life.

I don’t want to feel like I’m asleep anymore.

The birth control pill is made of artificial sex hormones and that sex hormones flip billions of switches on and off in cells throughout your body.

This is pretty provocative stuff, as it suggests that the pill may be changing the face of modern women’s relationships.

The idea that the quality and longevity of women’s long-term relationships might be impacted, for better and for worse, by their method of pregnancy prevention is just so . . . big.

If we naturally prefer men whose genes are well suited to commingling with our own, then it may be more difficult for women who met their partners on the pill to get pregnant.

Knowing what the pill does when it comes to choosing men means that you get to choose who you want to be and what you prioritize in your partner.

Despite my two decades of research looking at biological influences on women’s relationship psychology, I managed to be totally blindsided by the research we’re going to go over in the next couple of chapters.

If you chose your current partner while you were on the pill, this doesn’t mean that your relationship will fall apart if you go off the pill or that you and your partner are genetically incompatible.

In the grand scheme of things, the pill has undoubtedly done more good than harm for the quality of women’s relationships and marital satisfaction.

You’re not crazy and you’re not broken.

It’s hard enough being a woman, and it’s even harder being a woman without any sexual motivation.

Be patient with yourself (and your partner) as you both work together to troubleshoot your birth control options.

The solution may be as simple as finding a new doctor, a new pill, or a new form of birth control.

Although lacking an estrogen surge is a pretty surefire plan to avoid releasing an egg, it can also sound the death knell of your sex drive.

This is a huge compliment to females in these species, for whom a mounting attempt is high romance.

Sex is also shopping and makeup, exercising and creativity, and a whole bunch of other things that you probably haven’t considered until now.

Your T is important stuff; lack of usable T in the body can cause your sex drive to tank and your arousal response to diminish.

If you are suffering from sexual side effects on the pill, but you like everything else about it, troubleshoot.

Having a fulfilling sex life should not be mutually exclusive.

The stress response is something that most people don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about.

Our ability to respond to stress allows us to adapt to whatever type of situation we get ourselves thrown into.

Lacking this capacity isn’t a 'get out of jail free' card for stress. Instead, it means that when we’re stressed out, we’re less able to cope.

Chronic activation of the HPA axis wreaks havoc in the body.

Having dynamic bursts of HPA-axis activity is one way that our brain knows that we are living meaningful lives.

Lacking a stress response in contexts in which a stress response is called for could also potentially impair a woman’s ability to recognize compatible mates.

Too much cortisol exposure is bad news for the brain. It can cause structural and functional changes in areas of the brain like the hippocampus.

Just because the way you feel hasn’t been well characterized by research doesn’t mean that it’s not real or not important.

The overall message is hopeful.

You do deserve to know what you’re getting into.

Anyone who makes you feel like it is doesn’t have your best interests in mind.

Your mental health is a very serious and significant matter, and your desire to feel balanced and happy is not a character flaw.

If you have mental health concerns on the pill, you should absolutely talk to your doctor.

Getting depressed or anxious on the pill doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you or that you’re mentally unstable.

You are the only data point that matters when it comes to choosing what works best for you.

How do you feel? Each of us will have a somewhat different response to anything we take, so however you feel is your biological reality.

Failure to take it seriously can have the most tragic consequences of all.

If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of anyone else, either.

It can feel like we simultaneously know way too much and way too little about what the pill can do to our moods.

Sometimes the changes are for the better (the pill has been successfully used by women for decades to alleviate symptoms of PMS).

Nature is a finicky thing. And one reason it’s so finicky is that everything in it is interdependent.

Whenever you have an interdependent system—which, in nature, we always do—making one small change in point A can set off a chain of events that culminates in much bigger, widespread changes.

The pill changed the game for women by allowing them to feel confident that their training wouldn’t be cut short by an unexpected pregnancy.

When it is possible for women, they do.

The ability for women to postpone marriage to get an education has played a huge role in women’s growing representation in the workforce.

Women are achieving a lot more than they used to.

Removing this storm cloud has been particularly beneficial in terms of getting women’s faces and voices represented in fields requiring an advanced degree.

The world would be a much different, less brilliant place if these women weren’t able to restrict their fertility in a reliable way.

Nothing motivates and inspires boys to work hard to develop into respectable, financially independent men more than an unfailing commitment to the belief that to do anything otherwise would doom them to a life of involuntary celibacy.

The pill, in addition to the changes that it has on the timing and stability of marriages, could mean more fertility problems for modern couples.

To be a woman, no matter where you are in the world, means to be on the wrong side of social and economic gaps much of the time.

Until very recently... most of what we have been told about our bodies and our brains has come from research conducted almost exclusively on and by men.

Many things that you think you know about personhood and health are probably things that you know about men.

Although others might perceive the gender-equality landscape somewhat differently than I do, all else being equal, I think that most researchers would be just as inclined to study women and things that are important to women as they are to study things that are important to men.

The inclusion of females in research—done in such a way that accounts for cyclically changing hormones—is not something that should be left up to the goodwill of the researchers running the studies.

We have to have these conversations about potentially polarizing topics if we want to move women’s health forward.

When women and science work together, we can usher in a new era of understanding of who we are, on the pill and off it.

We need to stop blaming women for feeling bad on the birth control pill and start thinking critically about why they’re feeling bad.

We know enough to know that it is true. And we know that the pill is influencing women’s lives.

It is time to stop being okay with whatever science happens to provide for us and time to ask for what we need.

The right answers to these questions are deeply personal and can be determined only by a person who is an expert on your life. And that person is you.

You are a different person on the birth control pill than you are when you’re off the pill. And there’s no bigger deal than this.

For most women, these trade-offs make sense at some points in their life but not at others.

The organizational influence of our sex hormones doesn’t stop in utero or in childhood.

With time, patience, and self-compassion, you will be able to find something that works for you.

You might want to consider taking periodic breaks from the pill during the times in your life when you’re making choices that will affect you for the rest of your life.

No more women should lose their lives from their birth control pills, and the research suggests that taking them at the age of twenty or older is one way to significantly reduce the likelihood of the incredibly tragic outcome of suicide.

Whatever feels best for you and your goals is the right choice, whether this means being on or off the pill.

You can now make the decision with your eyes wide open.

It’s time for all of us to join together to ask science for some new choices and for more information about what happens to us with the choices we have.