The Pill and Weight gain
Comment from your online personal trainer Dean Piazza :
An interesting study that shows taking the pill or in fact any form of medication interferes with the body's natural metabolism- not for everyone but certainly for alot of people.
With the pill if it prevents the female from building lean muscle you can be sure it will also increase the rate of fat storage on the body and ultimately slow your metabolism and the end result is a gain in weight.
If you gained weight after taking a prescription drug from your doctor speak to your doctor
to see if there is a link.
Be careful of any long term medication unless it is absolutely essential as it will more than likely affect your metabolism .
Get a second opinion from another doctor to see if there is an alternative solution.
Dean Piazza - Your Online Personal Trainer
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Young women seeking a sculpted, muscular silhouette may want to avoid taking oral contraceptives, U.S. researchers said on Friday.
They found women who were not taking birth control pills gained 60 per cent more muscle mass after a 10-week weight training program than those who were.
The study, led by Chang-Woock Lee and Steven Riechman of Texas A&M University in College Station and Mark Newman of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, will be presented at the American Physiological Society meeting in New Orleans this weekend.
The researchers studied 73 generally healthy women between 18 and 31 who completed a whole-body resistance exercise training program. About half took the pill and half did not.
The women were encouraged to eat at least half a gram of protein per pound of body weight each day - about a third more than recommended by US nutritional guidelines - to ensure they got enough protein and calories to build muscle.
Both groups exercised three times a week under the supervision of exercise physiologists, performing the same number and intensity of exercises.
At the end of the 10 weeks, the women who were not taking oral contraceptives had built significantly more lean muscle.
And blood samples before and after the training period showed the women on the pill had lower levels of muscle-building hormones such as testosterone and far higher levels of muscle-breaking hormones such as cortisol.
In a statement the team said that oral contraceptives appear to have a negative effect on women's ability to build lean muscle, but they added that future studies were needed to explain why.
Reuters