Contraceptives

Today, on the advice of my daughter, I am taking a slight detour from a focus on low dose birth control - to vaginas.  As part of the ongoing research I carry out for the latest birth control information, I visit women’s forums where I see women sharing their experiences of the many common problems we goddesses have with our vaginas. Often suffering in silence before a chronic condition  forces a visit to the doctor, young women and women in varying stages of menopause, are embarassed, anxious and distressed by their vaginal problems.  Identifying vaginal discharges comes close to the top of the list (” is this discharge normal?”) but discomfort during sex, tearing and vaginal tissue in a fragile state are the ‘hushed’ topics obviously still wreaking havoc with couples sex lives and emotional states. 

Our faithful and long serving vaginas deserve as much TLC as our faces do.  If you don’t relish a dry, medical tome for your bedtime read and prefer to give yourself a bit of  an ‘at home’ self check before going to the doctor, my little instant reference book will be an indispensable addition to your bathroom cabinet.

Tossing medicalese language out the window and addressing ONE issue per page, I have put together a little 64 page, light hearted self help guide for $11.95 called “Happy Vaginas for the Over 40s…how to resuscitate your aging asset and protect her from menopausal meltdown!”   (my pen name is Claire Preston) While the vaginal issues are no fun, the easy to read symptom lists, tips and remedies will quickly help you to clear up a problem yourself or give you the confidence to talk to someone about it. There’s even a few sensuous music titles included for those of you who fancy a flirt in your nightie with a hot chocolate!

Feedback: After a thorough ‘pulling to bits’ reading session, my daughter’s friends said that I should not have put “Over 40s” in the title as they said the problems I covered were common to women of all ages and some young women could miss out! The B/W cartoons were done to keep the cost down. Overall, they loved it and would you believe that I have sold as many books to MEN as to women, I didn’t see that one coming? If you do buy a copy I would love to have some feedback- you never know Claire Preston may have another little book in her.

“CatSper “ and nanoparticles could be the vital link in the development of a new contraceptive gel or birth control pill - for women AND MEN.

What is CatSper? CatSper, discovered and named by David Clapham, a researcher at the Boston Children’s Hospital, is the key element in sperm that influences its swimming capacity.  Researchers in Germany and the US have discovered that progesterone around an egg seems to activate ‘CatSper’ or in other words, turbocharge sperm to give them that extra little swimming boost once they get close to an egg. With their ‘motor’ severely disabled, the sperm would lose the energy to make that last minute dash to the finishing line.

 With the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funding David’s research team, there is an 18 month window to develop a prototype drug which will block CatSper (‘disable’ the little motor in the sperm’s tail so to speak) at the time of sexual activity. With the aid of nanotechnology, we could then see the birth of a completely NEW type of contraceptive.“Sperm are the only cells known to make CatSper, so such a drug is unlikely to have many side effects. It would also, presumably, work regardless of whether it is men or women who take it because it could act on sperm regardless of their location”, says Polina Lishko,  a reproductive biologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

What’s nanotechnology got to do with it? I’ll explain this as simply as I can. Nanoparticles would be used to carry the CatSper blocking‘drug’ to ‘bomb’ the sperm. The nanoparticles would also be coated with specific antibodies which are ‘sperm seeking’ so the drug would be released only on reaching the ‘target’ (the sperm) and would not be left in any mucus or on the wall of the vagina. “Twenty million of these missiles (sperm) are released at once, and you have to get all of them before they make it to the target (egg),” says Clapham….“(CatSper) It’s an anti-missile device that doesn’t cause any collateral damage.” 

If Clapham and his team successfully develop a blocking compound, a trial with animals is likely which could then lead to a new contraceptive gel or oral birth control pill for men or women. Hands up if you’d vote for the bombs to be dropped BEFORE the missiles leave the factory! To avoid or reduce the cocktail of synthetic hormones currently found in low dose birth control pills has to be a step in the right direction. As to the lack of ‘collateral damage’ anticipated with this new form of birth control, well, any synthetic/chemical substance which is absorbed into the body has the potential to cause side effects so let’s keep the jury out on this one until the proof is in the nano pudding.

References: Strünker, T. et al. Nature 471, 382-386 (2011).Lishko, P. V., Botchkina, I. L. & Kirichock, Y. Nature 471, 387-391 (2011).