About Antibiotics and Birth Control

If you want to avoid an unwanted pregnancy, understanding how antibiotics and birth control react with one another will be vital to know. Studies have shown that although certain antibiotics will not make your hormonal birth control completely lose its effectiveness, there are several antibiotics that can cause a decrease in how effective your birth control pills really are.

What birth control and antibiotics which have been tested?

One type of antibiotic that has been tested and proven to definitely cause a loss of effectiveness of hormonal birth control is Rifampin.

Other antibiotics such as Penicillin, Amoxicillin, Ampicillan, Sulfonamide, Nitrofurantion, Cotrimoxazole and a few others have been shown to have an effect on different types of birth control. A symptom that these antibiotics may be interfering with your birth control method may include mid-cycle spotting or bleeding.

Always speak with your doctor if you have any questions regarding your birth control effectiveness while taking antibiotics in order to avoid an unwanted pregnancy.

Understanding birth control effectiveness

To understand better how antibiotics can affect the effectiveness of your birth control, knowing what happens when you use both may help. Birth control contains the hormone estrogen. Estrogen is the major hormone in a female’s body that is required for the development of sexual organs, regulation of the menstrual cycle, skeletal growth, and for the overall growth of a female body. Some antibiotics can trigger the enzymes in the liver to increase the break-down of the estrogens in the body and thereby decreasing the levels of estrogen in the body, not to mention the effectiveness of your birth control pills.

Doctor’s recommendation when taking antibiotics and birth control at the same time

Because some women may experience a decrease in birth control effectiveness while on antibiotics, many doctors recommend using a backup birth control method while on the antibiotic and for at least a week afterwards. These birth control methods should be barrier type, such as condoms, diaphragms, or cervical caps. The most important thing to do is to ask your doctor how long you should continue the backup birth control methods.

Some of the new lower estrogen types of birth control can be at a higher risk to lose their effectiveness, so it is extremely important that you have that conversation with your doctor about the risks of pregnancy while you are taking any type of antibiotics and birth control.