4 ms·

It's unfortunate how there are not better birth control options available by now. Condoms are intrusive and make sex significantly less pleasurable for many peo

It's unfortunate how there are not better birth control options available by now. Condoms are intrusive and make sex significantly less pleasurable for many people. The pill has a number of well documented side effects and many women anecdotally report a variety of other problems and reactions that make them unwilling to use it or other hormone based methods. IUDs are effective but also can have side effects for some women that in my experience are under reported / downplayed that make them not an option. All the other options I'm aware of have issues with effectiveness, side effects and practicality that make them not compelling options. The temporary 'vasectomy' based on injecting a gel seems promising but needs more study and hasn't yet been approved in the US to my knowledge. Given all this there's a reason natural methods like the rhythm method and withdrawal are still used despite lower than desirable effectiveness. People often talk like contraception is a solved problem when it's really not for many couples. Maybe this app is not as effective as would be desired but if it's improving on the unaided rhythm method it's still valuable.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago
Has anyone just made a bunch of poly-SMA and RISUG-ed themselves? Given that bodybuilders/"neurohackers" arrange for group buys of pretty complex peptides and steroids this one should be relatively easy
NickM 8y ago
Great points. I think it's also important to consider the statistics when you combine multiple approaches to contraception. It may not be a good idea to solely rely on natural methods, but natural methods can be combined with other contraceptives to yield a much, much greater effectiveness than most contraceptives can provide by themselves. Since failure rates are typically stated as odds of getting pregnant within an entire year of usage, combining two methods that each have only 90% effectiveness can potentially yield an extremely high level of effectiveness: it's already unlikely that both methods will fail in the same year, but when you consider that both have to fail at the same time in the same year then the odds start to look pretty good, despite neither method being that great on its own.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

Has anyone just made a bunch of poly-SMA and RISUG-ed themselves? Given that bodybuilders/"neurohackers" arrange for group buys of pretty complex peptides and steroids this one should be relatively easy

NickM 8y ago

Great points. I think it's also important to consider the statistics when you combine multiple approaches to contraception. It may not be a good idea to solely rely on natural methods, but natural methods can be combined with other contraceptives to yield a much, much greater effectiveness than most contraceptives can provide by themselves. Since failure rates are typically stated as odds of getting pregnant within an entire year of usage, combining two methods that each have only 90% effectiveness can potentially yield an extremely high level of effectiveness: it's already unlikely that both methods will fail in the same year, but when you consider that both have to fail at the same time in the same year then the odds start to look pretty good, despite neither method being that great on its own.