1031: Sarah Hill | How Birth Control Rewires Women’s Brains Part One

1031: Sarah Hill | How Birth Control Rewires Women's Brains Part One

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show,

[00:00:03] Sarah Hill: they worked with women who were working as dancers at a strip club. And in particular, what they find is that that five or so days prior to ovulation and then the day of ovulation itself, that period of time was marked by having really high tip earning. So they earned the most money across the cycle.

And what this is showing us is that men are just, you know, instinctively responding to these cues that are related to the probability of pregnancy from sex.

[00:00:34] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission on this show is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional drug trafficker, former jihadi, rocket scientist, or war correspondent.

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Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today. An episode all about birth control and the hormones involved. I really had no idea that hormones from the pill and a lot of the birth control stuff, it goes all over your body, right? So if it affects everything, the immune system, hair.

Mood, anxiety, et cetera. There can be extreme side effects. We're gonna dive into some of those here today. It's like dropping a bomb on your house to blow out a candle. It'll do the job, but it won't only do that job. Today we'll explore why you shouldn't choose a life partner or make any really big decisions while you're on birth control and what to do Instead, we'll discuss how to defend yourself against depression or other mood stuff that might actually be caused by birth control.

Why and how to take breaks from birth control. And when it's time to give your body and your mind a break and a whole lot more. This episode is a must if you're a woman who is interested in how her body works and if you're a guy and you're interested in how women's bodies work. Gig Getty. All right. No, but for real, I wanted to do a show on birth control because a lot of young women, well, a lot of women, period, are not using it because of influencers on social media who are hawking, frankly, alternative health nonsense.

That doesn't really work. And one of the reasons they're citing is, is there are extreme side effects, which are super rare, like. Two outta three in 10,000 people and they wanna make it seem like it happens to everybody on social media. So cognitive bias, availability, heuristic and all that stuff kick in here.

And it seems like if you take birth control, you're just a coin flip away from becoming infertile or getting cysts on your uterus or whatever. But guys, this is for you too. If there are any women in your life who might be affected by this, it affects you too. And besides, you can't tell me this stuff is not absolutely fascinating.

Alright, here we go with Dr. Sarah Hill.

As a guy, I really didn't think that I would do a show on slash love a book about birth control, but here we are. And I guess because as a guy, and I'm sure you've heard this a million times, I kind of grew up just being like, well, I don't ever, I mean, this isn't something I really need to know about. If, if you get a girlfriend and you're sexually active, she takes a pill or something and you just kind of like, that's it.

It's not really my, I hate to say not my problem, but it's like not really my concern, even though obvi for obvious reasons. All men who date or are active with or partnered up with women should be concerned about this or are related to women or have, are raising women or have women in their lives. It just, once you think about it, once you read this book and think about it, it just permeates sort of the whole society in a way that I hadn't thought of before.

[00:03:49] Sarah Hill: Yeah. You know, I didn't really think about it either, honestly. Um, I mean, it's so normalized, it's so common that women get on it and their doctors recommend it for everything ranging from acne to period cramps to just about anything else. And so even when I was on it. I didn't think much of it. It was just like, oh, okay.

I take this, then I don't get pregnant. That's great.

[00:04:10] Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

[00:04:10] Sarah Hill: And then I just kind of was going on with my life, and it wasn't until I went off of it and I realized how different I felt when I was off it compared to when I was on it that I really started to ask the questions of like, well, wait, what am I actually doing?

Mm-Hmm. Like, what have I been doing? And even though I'd always appreciated, just because of my research background in psychology, and I study women and I study hormones, I'd always been aware of the fact that hormones are really instrumental in terms of shaping behavior. And I'm sort of nudging our behavior this way in that way.

But I never even connected the dots to think twice about the fact that my hormonal birth control, because it was affecting my hormones. That means it was gonna affect me,

[00:04:50] Jordan Harbinger: right. My whole body.

[00:04:51] Sarah Hill: Yeah. Yeah. So I don't, you know, I don't think that being a a guy, you're not really thinking too much about I, there's also a lot of women who just really don't think too much about it because it's so normalized.

[00:05:01] Jordan Harbinger: I think that's probably true. There's also this thing that people like me do where we think this is a pill that does one thing to one organ at one time when I want it to not Like this goes into my whole body and into my bloodstream and it happens to do the right thing over here. And we don't really have any idea what it does all the way over here and in your brain.

And then in this other area, it's like, ah, we. If somebody doesn't die or like their ears don't fall off the FDA's like, Hey, cool, this looks fine. You know, you don't end up with cancer right away. Something, but side effects are real and some of those side effects are, are kind of invisible and I want to talk about some of those.

I mean, maybe they're not traditional side effects, like your ears falling off, but side effects like you choose a different partner or you find that you like or feel a certain different way, that that's certainly something that we should pay attention to. I. It seems like the pill almost changes the version of our personality that we express, which is a hell of, of a side effect.

And also something really hard to measure because if they're asking you on the questionnaire, do you feel different? You might just be like, sure. I guess unless you have depression, but you're not like, oh, I suddenly don't like my boyfriend as much. That's not something you're gonna even put together necessarily,

[00:06:14] Sarah Hill: right?

Well, no, because your brain tells yourself a story about things, right? It's like you think, wow, my life is worse than it used to be. Or My boyfriend is sure gotten annoying. Like, we don't really like, tend to equate things to, to whatever it is that we're putting into our bodies. That might

[00:06:29] Jordan Harbinger: also be true.

Just FYI, I mean it's, these aren't exclusive things. He might also have gotten more annoying.

[00:06:35] Sarah Hill: Yeah. But it's like the way that it affects our, our brain isn't something that our brain is able to think about. It's like our, our brain just thinks that it's doing its thing and it doesn't realize that some of the inputs that are creating the version of yourself.

That your brain is creating is, is something that's different. And so in these ways we have these invisible side effects that can also be really profound, where it can do things like affect your mental health and just sort of like your general take on the world, like whether you feel positively or negatively.

[00:07:03] Crosstalk: Mm-Hmm.

[00:07:03] Sarah Hill: And as you noted, even like whether you're attracted to your partner or not, because attraction is something that is profoundly affected by our hormonal states. And research has been showing that for several decades now. And then when you add, you know, a different hormonal milieu into the picture, then of course that can have the effect of nudging you in and out of attraction with different types of partners.

[00:07:25] Jordan Harbinger: That is a great use of the word milieu, by the way. Thanks.

[00:07:28] Sarah Hill: I've been working on it for months.

[00:07:30] Jordan Harbinger: It's funny because I'm like, wow, you unironically use that word and my transcriptionist is gonna be like, I have no idea what you said here. Can you tell me how to do spell that? And I'll say, I'll be right back because No, no, actually I cannot, I'll be right back.

Um, so you, you mentioned your own experience of stopping the pill. Tell me about that. Because, and, and I'm sure this is maybe a few years ago, uh, it's not a new book. And by the way, if people buy the books, please use the, the links in our show notes that help support the show. But I read this book quite a while ago and reread it a little more recently.

You describe it quite dramatically. This isn't like, oh, one day I'm off this and it's like, oh yeah, things are slightly different. I mean, you kind of, this is a bold, underline kind of change in your life.

[00:08:12] Sarah Hill: Yeah, it was, so I, I'd gone off it for, uh, little periods of time, like when I had my children, I was off it, I got pregnant right away with both my kids and then when I was breastfeeding, I wasn't on it.

But other than those little blips of time when I was having children and feeding them, I was on it almost nonstop for about 12 years. Wow. And so, yeah, like a really long time. That was

[00:08:34] Crosstalk: a long time.

[00:08:34] Sarah Hill: Yeah, it is. Then I went off of it and I didn't really think anything of it, honestly, until, it was about three months after I discontinued and I was thinking, I was just feeling really energetic and I was thinking to myself, I.

I feel alive, like I feel really alive. And I, I was thinking like I started downloading new music recently. I listening to new things for the first time in a really long time, I'd started going to the gym again, which is something that I used to love when I was like in high school. And I'd kind of fell off of it.

I would still exercise, but it wasn't like, like I wasn't loving it. It wasn't something I really enjoyed. And I was enjoying that. Again, I was cooking and just like doing things that gave me pleasure. I was noticing wow, men, I was noticing my husband. I was like wanting to have sex more frequently. And I just felt like I had this level of dimensionality that I didn't have before.

Like I just felt like all of a sudden I could like feel the full amplitude of being alive.

[00:09:31] Crosstalk: Yeah.

[00:09:31] Sarah Hill: And in some ways it was like really good things, like, you know, sexual desire and music and pleasure. But it was also like I noticed that I felt more emotional. I could also get more upset, like things would make me more upset.

It was really interesting for me because it felt like, and I, and I describe it this way in the book, but it very much felt like I went from my life as a gray scale, one dimensional drawing, and then all of a sudden I like crawled off the page into like a three dimensional color filled reality. It was just like, oh,

[00:10:06] Jordan Harbinger: yikes.

[00:10:06] Sarah Hill: Yes. And it was, once I sort of recognized how I had felt, I mean, it really struck me how different that was. And you know, since the last time that you and I met, I mean, I had only been off the pill for, I don't know, like maybe three years or so, and you and I had met, but you know, more time has passed now 'cause that that book came out at the end of 2019.

Another thing that I've really realized in recent years, just because it takes a while to build a narrative about yourself. Sure. You know, like trying to understand who you are and how you respond to things. But I remember all through my college years and graduate school years and early assistant professor years, I, I'd always had this belief about myself that I was somebody who was anxious and became really easily overwhelmed by things.

Okay. And that turns out to just not be true. Wow. It's just not true of me. And it's been over the last, you know, several years that I've realized that that's not a personality trait that I have. Wow. It was something that was the result of my birth control. It had to have been because it, I don't feel that way anymore.

That's

[00:11:11] Jordan Harbinger: a little scary. 'cause you spent 12 years on it. Right. If you'd spent like six months on it, you're like, okay, well, oh, now I forgot how I feel. 12 years is a long time to. Not have Spotify, I mean whatever. Yeah, no, it's a long time.

[00:11:23] Sarah Hill: I know. So here's just an example of this, and it used to be that when I was cooking dinner, 'cause even though I wasn't really loving cooking, I was always cooking.

Um, 'cause I'm, I'm into food and I couldn't like cook dinner and have music on in the background. It was just too much. It was overwhelming. It felt overstimulating. And now, you know, I always have to have music. I have music on all the time, like always in the house and when I'm cooking and I can have it on and have a conversation.

And I remember I used to just get overwhelmed or if we were having a party at the house, I'd have to go back in my bedroom and sit alone for a little while, for like 20 minutes just to like decompress. 'cause it felt too peopley.

[00:11:59] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:11:59] Sarah Hill: And I still don't love, you know, when it's way too peopley, but it's like, I don't feel that feeling of like overwhelmed and anxiety that I felt when I used to be on it.

And I thought that that was who I was. And it's not

[00:12:11] Jordan Harbinger: what it, it's such an identity level shift, which is the scary part, I guess.

[00:12:15] Sarah Hill: Yeah.

[00:12:16] Jordan Harbinger: And again, like birth control pills are what hormones and receptors for these hormones are all over our body and our brain. So it doesn't just affect your brain. Sure. It switches something off in the ovaries or whatever, but like, it also changes your, that the personality thing is just wild because I, I'm guessing virtually nobody who goes to get a prescription for this.

Is even thinking about how their personality might change. They're like, oh, I might get acne. Or like, it says depression. So if I feel really awful, maybe I'll switch out of this. But I don't think people are thinking about these little nuanced things like, you know, they're gonna start to hate Taylor Swift.

I mean, that's horrifying.

[00:12:55] Sarah Hill: Right? That is horrifying. Mm-Hmm. Yeah, no, I mean, but just the, the, that it makes so many little nudges in our body. Right? It is profound. And when you think about the number of different systems in the body that have receptors for hormones, I mean, it's really astounding. And it's because as women, everything in our body and everything that our body does has to change a course a little bit when we're pregnant.

It's like our circulatory system has to do a different thing. Our respiratory system has to do a different thing, so we have to take more oxygen in. Our immune system has to do something different because it can't attack a developing baby. I mean, there's like all of these things that have to change what they're doing in response to pregnancy.

And the result of that is that our body from head to toe is wired for sex hormone reception. It's like all the cells on all major systems of the body have receptors for hormones. And so when you have all these systems that are like listening for a hormonal message and all of a sudden you give it a new one, I mean that's changing everything that your body does.

And so, you know, one of the things that we recently published is we did a paper looking at differences between naturally cycling women. So women who are not on hormonal birth control and are experiencing regular ovulatory cycles. And we looked at them and then we looked at, uh, pill takers. And we were interested in the inflammatory response to stress because when we're feeling stressed out, in addition to releasing stress hormones, our body also releases inflammation.

And it does this because stress is something that can indicate that you're gonna be hurt, right? That you're gonna be physically harmed and so your body prepares for that. We were really interested, given that you get differences in, uh, stress response between pill takers and non, which we can talk about in a moment.

We were interested in whether that also leads to differences in inflammatory activity or the activities of the immune system. Sure. And it does, you have these very different immunological profiles and response to stress between women who are U using hormonal birth control and women who don't. And one of the things that we know about birth control is that it can increase women's risk of developing autoimmunity.

And we think that this might be one of the ways that it does this is by changing their inflammatory response.

[00:15:02] Jordan Harbinger: I see. And then, um, putting the micro greater risk. The autoimmunity by the way. Is that like when your immune system starts attacking your own body? Is that what that is? Because you hear about inflammation, it's inflammation's, almost buzzwordy these days, right?

It's like, oh, you gotta eat this, reduce inflammation, don't eat that. It inflames things at the core level. Is this kind of cortisol response or is it wider than that?

[00:15:23] Sarah Hill: I think that it probably is wider than that. Initially, we were really interested in that process just because of the cortisol response, because what research binds and what research has been finding for several years is that women who are using hormonal birth control tend to have a blunted or dysregulated cortisol response to stress.

And so like the rest of us, like you and I, if we get stressed out by something like we have to give a public speech or whatever it is, generally our body will start releasing cortisol. Cortisol kind of gets a, has a bad reputation. It does, just because if you have constant cortisol release, it's not good for you.

Like what cortisol actually does. Is, it is a, a rear arranger of metabolic priorities. And so when your body releases cortisol, it is telling your body, we are under stress right now. Stop doing everything that you're doing, so don't invest in the immune system. Don't invest in cell repair. Don't invest in growth.

Instead, we need to take all of those resources and devote them to potentially having to get away quickly and birthing new neurons in our hippocampus to remember what's going on. Because when stressful things are happening, it usually means it's important and we need to remember it. And so our body essentially stops doing everything that it normally is doing to maintain itself.

And then it diverts all of those resources to managing the stressor. Oh, interesting. And in the short term, that's really good. Sure. Right. 'cause in the short term, it's helping you deal with the stressor, and so your body's like ready to go. You've got fat and sugar in your bloodstream. So that way, if you need to run away, you can.

All of that's also fueling your brain to be able to think and remember and know what you're doing and be really quick on your toes and focus your attention. But in the long term, if you're releasing cortisol like at high levels for a long period of time, then your body is constantly dumping all of its resources in stress management, and it's not able to do things like protect itself from germs.

Or grow or you know, just do regular cell repair. And because of this, if we have cortisol constantly being released, our body just shuts down the stress response and it says, no more stress response for you. And it actually blunts the cortisol response. And this is why for people who have post-traumatic stress disorder or who've experienced any sort of trauma, what you tend to see is that they have this really blunted cortisol response to stress.

So you and I, if we give a public speech, we have this big rise in cortisol because our body is preparing ourselves to deal with something stressful. But for people who've experienced trauma, you have no stress response. 'cause our body told them, no stress for you.

[00:17:50] Crosstalk: Hmm.

[00:17:51] Sarah Hill: What we see with women on birth control pill is that they look like people who've experienced chronic stress or trauma and they have that blunted cortisol response to stress.

And this has led researchers to think that when we take hormonal birth control, when we're first on it. That the progestins or that synthetic progesterone that's in them might be activating our glucocorticoid receptors or the receptors in our body that usually pick up cortisol and making our body think that we're under chronic stress.

And as a result, the body starts to shut down the stress response. And this is something that is obviously not good. No. And it's something that's related to having problems with regulating your stress response so you're less able to cope with stress. Um, because that's one of the things that cortisol does, is it helps us adaptively deal with stress.

And so hence your

[00:18:43] Jordan Harbinger: anxiety issues maybe?

[00:18:44] Sarah Hill: Well, exactly. I mean, you know, I think about the fact that I used to get so easily overwhelmed where it was just like system overload. Mm-Hmm. Where I was like, oh my gosh. Like there's just too much going on. There's too much stimulation, too much whatever. And have to go into another room.

And I'm thinking to myself when I'm reading this research that finds this blunted cortisol response to stress that this was undoubtedly playing a role. The other thing that's probably playing a role, when I think about my own experiences and the experiences that so many women have, because there's like a ton of research that shows that women who are using hormonal birth control, that they're at a greater risk of developing anxiety disorders, anxiety problems, and depression, especially teenagers.

So women who go on it when their teenagers have the highest risk of these things. One of the things that's undoubtedly a contributor is that blended cortisol response to stress that we just talked about. But another thing that researchers have been paying a lot of attention to and is likely a, a really big contributor to this increased risk of anxiety and depression is that you don't get the release of, there's this neurosteroid called allopregnanolone.

And when, which is really long word, but when a naturally cycling woman is going through her regular cycle, which just for people who aren't familiar with what this looks like, an average cycle, so let's imagine that there's a 28 day menstrual cycle. The first day of your cycle is the day that you get your period.

And at that point, levels of hormones are very low. So you have low levels of estrogen and low levels of progesterone. And then as the egg follicles begin to get stimulated and your body's preparing for the possibility of ovulation, that leads to the release of estrogen. And so estrogen levels increase in, increase in increase in increase as egg follicles are maturing and one is getting ready to get released.

Right? When that egg is mature, you're at these peak levels of estrogen and then the egg gets released and is out in the world and pregnancy is possible, and then the empty egg follicle starts releasing this other hormone progesterone. And progesterone is the hormone of the second half of our cycle. So it generally gets released after ovulation, which happens around day 14 until you get your period and that hormone, when it gets broken down in the body, when it gets metabolized, it releases a neurosteroid called allopregnanolone, which is a really potent stimulator of our brain's GABA receptors.

And this is a lot of big words, and it's okay. It's like GABA receptor allol alone, neurosteroid. But essentially what this does is this wonderful little neurosteroid that gets released from progesterone being broken down in the body, is it causes a neuro transmission in our brain that calms the brain down.

So GABA activity in the brain is chill out activity. So things that tend to stimulate GABA release in the brain are things like yoga, meditation, cosing up by the fire in your jammies. Other things that stimulate GABA receptors or alcohol, I was gonna

[00:21:44] Jordan Harbinger: say wine and benzodiazepine. Yeah, Xanax.

[00:21:47] Sarah Hill: Yeah, exactly.

Xanax does the same thing. And so all of those things work on that same pathway. And so progesterone actually allows us to create our own internal Xanax, and that calms the brain and releases it or, or relaxes it. And women who are using hormonal birth control because they're not getting actual progesterone, they're getting this synthetic progestin that doesn't get metabolized the same way.

'cause it's actually made out of testosterone instead of being made out of progesterone. Oh,

[00:22:13] Jordan Harbinger: I see.

[00:22:14] Sarah Hill: Yeah. And so when it gets broken down in the body, there's no allopregnanolone release. And so your brain never gets that big chill out effect that we get from real deal progesterone. And so there's a lot of research looking into the role that lack of that activity, lack of that neurosteroid, contributes to the increased anxiety and depression risk that we get in women who are on the pill.

[00:22:34] Jordan Harbinger: Man, that stuff is fascinating. Uh, don't worry, I have a smart audience. I'm usually the weak link when it comes to understanding these things, so I appreciate you explaining like, I'm five, it's the, the audience usually gets all this stuff. We do have foreign listeners though, who are gonna be like Neurosteroid and they can Google it.

This is the, it's 2024. You mentioned in the book that parental investment is higher for women than men, and that kind of goes without saying, but tell us of course, why this is just for people who are, you know, jogging and not necessarily critically thinking about everything we're saying, and also tell us why it's important for what we're discussing with respect to birth control.

[00:23:07] Sarah Hill: Yeah, so a parental investment, um, I mean, when we're talking about the minimum, bare minimum levels of investment that a male versus a female have to make in an offspring, um, females are actually defined as females, um, in part because they make a larger investment. And that that investment difference begins even before a man and a woman meet.

A female has already invested more in reproduction than the man has because eggs are so much more metabolically expensive than sperm. And so females are born with, you know, a finite number of eggs. Each one is a. I forget what it is. It's something like a thousand or a million times larger than a sperm cell.

So it's like metabolically a lot more expensive. And so females before they've already, their initial investment, which is just their gametes or their sex cell, is larger and more costly than what gets invested by a male, right? And so you get that initial difference in investment. But then for a human, you know, we're mammals and females internally, gestate.

And so a woman, you know, if there's gonna be a pregnancy, the minimum amount of investment that a woman has to make in order to reproduce is nine months. And the minimum investment that a man has to make to reproduce is like, what? Like the time of, I mean, you know, we all know it's about

[00:24:25] Jordan Harbinger: 35 seconds. Right?

Right guys? Yeah.

[00:24:28] Sarah Hill: Say, yeah, say, right. If you do it twice, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so there's just a, a really big difference. There's a big asymmetry in the minimum amounts that have to be invested. And this is important for the current conversation because one of the things that makes biological males and biological females different from one another is these differences in investment.

And historically, throughout our long history as a species, females have been the ones who have to invest more in reproduction. And so for women, sex historically has been something that's very costly for us because anytime that we have sex, it could potentially lead to having to invest in, you know, not only a nine month pregnancy, but then subsequent time spent lactating.

And there's a possibility that this guy that just knocked you up isn't gonna stick around right. And care for this child. And so women have had to, over the course of history, be a lot more choosy and discriminating and also, you know, sort of delay sex and be a little bit more sexually coy just to try to figure out whether or not this person that they're with.

Is somebody who's going to be able to help them care for an offspring. Mm-Hmm. Because human offspring are notoriously like a black hole of need, right? Yes. I'm going

[00:25:41] Jordan Harbinger: through that right now.

[00:25:41] Sarah Hill: Yeah, no kidding. I mean twice. Yeah. No, and trust me with teenagers, it gets even worse. Oh, don't tell me this. Some ways I

[00:25:47] Jordan Harbinger: was like, I can't wait till they're older and then they don't need me to.

Yeah. No, maybe not.

[00:25:51] Sarah Hill: Yeah, no, it's a little bit of a, it's a different set of problems, but it's so hard to raise, especially young children, like as you noted. Yeah. I mean they require so much investment and so Sex for Women historically has been something that is very costly and is going to necessitate a lot of investment.

And the same has not been true for men. That's true.

[00:26:10] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I mean, guys are giving this stuff away, right? Like anywhere that they'll take it, we're giving it away. It's like, take it off the lot right now. And yeah, women not so much. That's why Yeah, I'll leave that there.

[00:26:21] Sarah Hill: Right? I mean, 'cause it sets up all of these asymmetries between the sexes because it's like, you know, all of a sudden the cost of sex, you have this big asymmetry between the and the cost of sex.

Right. For women, because pregnancy is a possibility, sex is very costly for men. It's not, it's just not costly. There's also differences in the like sort of reproductive opportunities that you're gonna be passing up if you would agree to sex with this person compared to that person. And if you're a woman, if you have sex with this person, and that ends up not to be your person,

[00:26:50] Crosstalk: right?

You're

[00:26:51] Sarah Hill: stuck with nine months with this, you know? And this other person, you know, if you're a man, you can have sex with 10 different women and have 10 different children, you know, in the course of an afternoon. Yeah. You

[00:27:00] Jordan Harbinger: need 10 minutes in a washcloth. Yeah. And the washcloth is optional. Yeah, I

[00:27:04] Sarah Hill: know. It's like, it's like the course of an afternoon.

So you get all of these big differences between men and women that ultimately stem from the fact that we have these differences in the minimum level of investment.

[00:27:14] Crosstalk: Yeah.

[00:27:14] Sarah Hill: And why this is interesting in the context of the current conversation. Is that the birth control pill creates a context where the costs of sex all of a sudden are much lower because we can feel very certain that we're not gonna end up getting pregnant.

Right? And all of a sudden that big cost that women have had to shoulder over history as a consequence of their sexual behavior that has made their sexual behavior and the way that they behave so different than that of men all of a sudden is removed. It's like taken off the table. And so that's like a really interesting question, and it is something that we've been looking at in my research lab recently, is really trying to understand how does taking the pill, which is something that makes the cost of sex so much lower for women than what it was historically, how does that change their mating related behavior?

So how does that change women's sexual psychology and how does that change their sexual behavior? Does it make them behave just like men because all of a sudden, you know, sex is something that's not as consequential as it used to be. Or did they still, because they're operating with that sort of stone age brain that we've inherited from our ancestors who didn't have birth control.

Like do women still prioritize things like investment and are they still sort of really cautious about having casual sex to a greater extent than men? Just simply because we're operating with this really old brain that we've inherited from ancestors who didn't have access to birth control.

[00:28:42] Jordan Harbinger: I don't know much about hormones, but I do know about dopamine and I get a rush of it.

Whenever you support the fine products and services that support this show, we'll be right back. This episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show is brought to you by booking.com. Booking dot. Yeah. It's finally time for summer travel. We're looking forward to taking a couple months off to spend with the kids, and booking.com offers so many possibilities across the us.

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[00:30:52] Jordan Harbinger: If you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing people, these authors, thinkers, creators, every single week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like and trust.

And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over@sixminutenetworking.com. I know you're not booking for a podcast. I know you might be retired, you might work in an industry. I think you need this anyway. This course is all about improving your relationship building skills. If you're already great at that, it's got systems to put things in place.

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Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Dr. Sarah Hill. Our I got a feedback Friday letter. This is our advice segment that we do every Friday. This woman had been like cheating with a bunch of people, and she used this excuse that she had hormones implanted in her hip.

Somehow they put this little grain of rice, a hormone releasing thing, and she was just like, sex crazy. Other people wrote in and they were like, I've had that Yes. To the sex craze thing. No, to the cheating with like anybody who looks at you twice thing, but all these other women wrote in and they were like, oh yeah, you get that thing in there in your hip.

And I don't know what this is, this is apparently some hormone therapy for women who might be a little bit older. I'm not totally sure. And it just turns you into a, a demon if they get the dosage wrong, I think, or maybe that's the point. I don't know.

[00:32:31] Sarah Hill: Right. Yeah. No, I think that it's gotta be the testosterone implant.

Maybe. That's my guess. 'cause they, they do these. Welcome to my

[00:32:37] Jordan Harbinger: world, lady. Yeah.

[00:32:38] Sarah Hill: Yeah. Well, well, I was gonna say, so does essentially turns them into men. Mm-Hmm. And so men are like, yeah, no, like girl. Like, like we don't get to do that. Yeah. You don't get to do that either. I'm pretty sure it's 'cause there's this pellet, it's a testosterone pellet.

Mm-Hmm.

[00:32:51] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:32:52] Sarah Hill: Yeah. That's what it's gotta be. That's really funny. So it's essentially like turning women into men and they're having to realize how hard it is to Yeah.

[00:32:59] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This women were writing in and they're like, I've never been unfaithful to my husband, but I will tell you, my personal trainer was stretching me out and you know, yada.

And I'm like, okay, let, let's leave it there lady. Right.

[00:33:09] Crosstalk: Yeah. But it's, yeah. That's so funny. Funny. But it's quite funny

[00:33:11] Jordan Harbinger: because any guy who you're friends with, you'd have that exact same type of conversation. Like, oh man, my trainer would stretch me out, you know, and she pushed on my back. I gotta go. I gotta go.

It's just like, what? But it's so interesting what hormones do. Your book mentioned something also, I found really interesting children. 'cause when I first talked to you, I didn't have kids, right? So there's a, a line in the book that I noticed this time, which was children that look more like their fathers tend to get more investment from dad, which makes total sense, right?

Paternity tests are new, but you didn't need one. If your son, my son looks just like me. He, and so my buddy even said something like, wow, it's a little, you And my producer was like, guess you don't need a paternity test. You know, like elbowing me and the, it just, people are saying, wow, it's like looking at you from 1984 and he's just like my little clone.

And it totally makes sense, right? Because if it's a thousand years ago. You might not have been totally, totally sure. Or if it's a hundred, I don't know, 10,000 years ago you might not have been totally sure. But if you are in your little tribe and there's a little, you running around, you're like, I'm pretty sure that one's mine.

He looks exactly like me.

[00:34:19] Sarah Hill: Yeah, no, for sure. It's really interesting 'cause what the research finds is that for women, there's absolutely no relationship with physical resemblance or personality resemblance or any type of resemblance. And degree of like closeness. I mean just, you know, sort of like psychological closeness, like how close you feel.

But then also even caregiving and like preferential treatment. Like there's none of it because women's psychology does not need to be sensitive to that. 'cause we've always known that any child that we have is ours. And so women can have children that look or act nothing like them and they still invest in them all kind of more or less the same.

And probably based on other things, other qualities. For men, what you tend to see is that there's this like a little bit of favoritism. It's all unconscious for sure. Yeah. I mean, and maybe there's some conscious level stuff that goes on too where you're like, I like you, you look like me. Mm-Hmm. We're, you know, we're cool.

You're so

[00:35:07] Jordan Harbinger: handsome,

[00:35:08] Sarah Hill: but yeah, you're so handsome. Look at you. And showing that, that men are really sensitive to those cues and that the more phenotypic similarity you get, so the more, uh, similarity you get in appearance and even personality traits, they tend to get greater psychological closeness and um, sometimes even greater investment.

[00:35:25] Jordan Harbinger: It seems like men's testosterone is all over almost like a dice roll. Well, maybe not quite that, but it seems fickle, right? You see some women, I think you wrote something in the book about you see women, your team wins in sports or you win an election and I mean you like the person you voted for wins an election or, which I thought was funny.

You're around weapons, which is actually explains a lot I think. And if you're a guy, if you wanna elevate your hormone levels, you go watch hockey vote, and then go to a strip club and then polish your rifle or whatever, and uh, and you're good, right? You just watch that spike.

[00:36:01] Sarah Hill: Yeah. No, testosterone is definitely, it's a reactive hormone.

And so what we tend to see is that men's testosterone levels will decrease if they like lose, if their team loses, if they're just feeling submissive, like in a situation where they have to submit. Um, it makes the, their testosterone, lower testosterone increases if their team wins. If they're favorite political candidate wins.

Yes. If they're around weapons.

[00:36:25] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's so weird. I

[00:36:25] Sarah Hill: know, it's so funny. A beautiful woman or anything sort of, even with the slightest hinting of sex. Men's testosterone will increase and all this is for good reason. Having children, so like you get to be in the position right now where your testosterone is probably lower than it would be.

So there's like parallel universe Jordan, who's got higher testosterone than you 'cause he has no children. When we have children, as men's testosterone level decreases and it does this for a good reason. It's like when you have kids and or if you've got a long-term partner that you're investing in, it's not always a good thing to have your foot on the gas pedal of testosterone for the reasons that we talked about with the women with the implant.

I mean, it can be a kind of counterproductive hormone sometimes. And it doesn't lower your testosterone to the degree that you're gonna get pushed around and you know, just all of a sudden become a meek underling. But rather it just like sort of prevents maximization of testosterone because it is really adaptive to channel your energy towards your children and towards your partner and not toward looking at the next door neighbor.

Right. And thinking about, you know, vivid sexual fantasies with strangers. That's what

[00:37:32] Jordan Harbinger: parallel universe Jordan is doing is going to the gun range after Yeah, exactly. Looking at some pornography or whatever. Yeah.

[00:37:38] Sarah Hill: Yeah. And so women, you know, we get a hard time about our hormones because they cycle and they fluctuate.

But men, you know, their primary sex hormone, testosterone is something that also changes and fluctuates and it's got a circadian rhythm and it's highest in the morning and then decreases during the day and respond to all of those things that we talked about. And so our sex hormones are part of what creates the experience of being who we are.

And all of it is helping to guide our behavior in ways that are actually really adaptive and functional. And so when we mess with that like we do with the pill or with that implant that we were just talking about, I mean it can really change behavior in ways that can not always be necessarily what we want.

[00:38:18] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. The, some people have reported like manic, you're really turning something up to 11 when it was supposed to be turned up to like five or six and it's hard to control. It's really uncomfortable. Some of that though, I have to guess is just women being like, oh, I've never experienced this. I think other stuff is clinical where it's like they just can't control themselves.

That's like maybe a combination of things, but it, it's very, it was really interesting reading the email after this particular letter. There's a lot of trade-offs when choosing long-term versus short-term partners for women especially. Of course. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because of course for men, you know, choosing a lot of partners is not good for your marriage, but it's good for spreading your genes and we're kind of evolved.

Probably spread genes. I mean, to some degree, but it seems like you don't wanna mess with that if you're a woman, especially, right? You don't wanna have your short-term switch flipped if you're trying to do the long-term thing, which I think a lot of women are. Right? Husband and kids.

[00:39:14] Sarah Hill: Right? Yeah. I mean, I think that when we're talking about mating, you know, we can think about the types of benefits that we get from our different types of partners as.

Kind of falling in the immediate genetic benefits that you get. Like if I'm just having a one night stand with somebody, the only thing I'm gonna get from them, like if we're talking about things in terms of reproduction, is going to be their genes, right? So I'm just like having a one night stand with you.

All I'm getting from you is your genes. That's gonna lead to the prioritization of cues that are related to genetic quality. And some of the things that we know are related to genetic quality are things like physical attractiveness. 'cause generally the types of things that our brain perceives as attractive are things that are related to health immune function.

And when we're looking at attractiveness in men is also related to testosterone levels. And our brains, women's brains see these things, these types of qualities as attractive because of course, over the course of history, women who zeroed in on those qualities and said, I want that as my mate, they would've had a greater number of successful offspring than women who preferred different traits.

And so what we tend to see is that when women are short-term mating or just having like a casual sexual relationship with somebody, that's usually what they tend to zero in on is like sexiness, right? Like how sexy is this person? And sexy is just really, it's the what our brain is perceiving as things that are related to good genes.

Now, when women are choosing a long-term partner, there's a balance between wanting good genes for your offspring. So wanting somebody who's gonna be sexy, but then also wanting somebody who's going to be somebody who cares and is going to contribute to provisioning and caregiving of yourself during a time of pregnancy and their, you know, soon after.

But then also the care of your offspring. And so women have to balance their preference for sexiness and good genes, types of qualities, with also qualities related to provisioning, willingness to invest, willingness to be faithful and mono, you know, invest resources only in you and your children. Not also the next door neighbor's, children, right.

And so on. And so, you know, when women are in like long-term meeting, I mean, most women would, ideally in an ideal world, would have somebody as a partner who has so much sexiness and then also all the resources and caring and provisioning. But unfortunately there's not a lot of people out there that have all of those qualities.

[00:41:38] Jordan Harbinger: Yes, we are. Very few and far between. Yes.

[00:41:41] Sarah Hill: Well, what's really funny about that is. There's a lot of research that finds that, you know, men who are like super sexy, they tend to not always be great at fidelity, and they tend to engage in more short-term meetings. So men with higher testosterone levels, we know that they tend to have more casual sex.

They tend to have more extra pair fantasies. They tend to have more extra pair relationships when they're in relationships. There's a balance that you have to make if you're a woman and you're looking for somebody who's going to be giving you good genes and then also giving you investment. It's all about trying to figure out where you're going to be putting your chips, essentially.

Yeah, it's like, you know, you've got so many chips you can cash in, in terms of choosing a partner, and where are you gonna put those? Are you gonna skew them towards sexiness or you're gonna shift them over this way and have it more balanced between sexiness and investment, or, you know, somewhere in between.

[00:42:30] Jordan Harbinger: You see that problem with, well, Hollywood or popular I, I should say powerful men, right? There's a dis, I think the research shows that I could be wrong. That there's just a disproportionate number of affairs with powerful guys because they have more options typically.

[00:42:47] Sarah Hill: Yeah, no, totally. And what's really funny about this is, you know, we see it with humans, but they've done really cute experimental work with birds.

I. Where they'll take like a species of songbird where, for example, if the females really like, um, males who have bright plumage, where they'll take kind of an average male and they'll follow his mating behavior over the course of a season and then they'll dye his feathers and make him have like these qualities that all of the females like, and all of a sudden all the females are like, and these males just become absolute philanders.

I mean they're just, they just are having sex with everybody and then they take out the die the next season and then, you know, he's back to being the really good dad. Oh my gosh. But yeah, so as songbirds you see that there is faithful as there options. And I mean, I think that in some degree, you know that, that there's an element of this with humans.

Obviously there are some men, right, who have all the options in the world and are faithful. There are some men who have very few options yet nonetheless. Managed to have a lot of extra pair of sex and you know, and, and everything in between. But definitely the number of options available to you is a contributing factor into the decision of fidelity.

[00:43:55] Jordan Harbinger: In the book, you discuss that when women see other ovulating women at high fertility, they often won't like that the men they're with are interacting with her. But that means that women can detect other women who are ovulating. Did I read that correctly?

[00:44:09] Sarah Hill: Yeah. So this is actually really fascinating and it's obviously not something that we think about consciously because I don't think that, like if you showed me a hundred women, I don't think I would be able to say, oh, she's ovulating and she's not.

And she's not, and she is, right? But instead our brain, again, our brain sees things in a way that are very much geared toward getting us to do things that historically would've helped to promote genetic replication, right? So reproduction. And so if I see a hundred women, I can tell you who the most attractive is or who the sexiest are, and who the most beautiful are.

And our brain is likely picking up on all of those cues that are related to fertility. And then those are informing those decisions. And so my brain, if I see a really sexy woman, I'm not gonna want my partner to be near that person. Right. Because, um, that could be a threat. I. And so my brain is probably just perceiving sexiness cues.

I'm not like necessarily seeing it as like, oh, that person is fertile. It's just like, oh, that person is a threat because that person is sexy. You know, there's a lot of research that shows that for both men and women, it's like the cues that we tend to find as sexy and beautiful and women are cues that are related to estrogen presence and fertility.

[00:45:19] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This is fascinating. I mean, this is the obvious question is why would women evolve this? And the answer is because they don't want the guy that they're with, who they've invested in potentially partnered with. To invest in somebody else, right?

[00:45:31] Sarah Hill: Yeah. Well, exactly. I mean, it's like you have to know your competition, you know, it's like we have to understand who it is that we're out there working against.

And same with men. It's like, even though men are like, oh, you can control if other guys are attractive, and it's, that's

[00:45:43] Jordan Harbinger: such nonsense.

[00:45:44] Sarah Hill: I know. That's like such bullshit. You gotta have your head

[00:45:46] Jordan Harbinger: firmly up your rear if you can't tell that the six foot five guy like Chris Holsworth. Oh, he's good looking. I mean, I guess so.

You know, like, come on. I guess so. Come on, man. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. It doesn't have to be that extreme either for guys to feel threatened. I'm not super tall or anything like that. I'm, you know, five 10. Even you can feel like, why is this guy being mean to me? Just 'cause I looked at, or like shook hands with his girlfriend or whatever.

Like, this is ridiculous. And it's, oh, he's insecure about this. And you, you can even hear, sometimes you get concrete evidence, right? Like, oh well you rolled up in a Tesla or something. And the guy's like really jealous. It's just like, geez man, calm down. It's got car seats in the back for god's sake. Yeah.

Chill. That's so funny. It is interesting though, and a lot of this hinges on the fact that guys have insecurity around other guys is case positive that guys can tell if another guy's attractive because they're not threatened by the portley waiter at the Italian restaurant.

[00:46:41] Sarah Hill: Right? Right. Exactly. And it, what, what's also really interesting about that to me is that.

Both men and women have an understanding of what the other sex is looking for. Because there are somewhat, you know, there are differences in the degree to which men and women prioritize different types of traits when they're choosing partners. And so, for example, you know, if I see a woman who has this like really amazing job and she's like a super, like a ton of power and status and that sort of thing.

Mm-Hmm. And she's kind of average looking, I'm not gonna be threatened by her at all because I know that that's just not something that most men are like, wow. Like she's so powerful. That's so amazing. She's got

[00:47:15] Jordan Harbinger: two PhDs. Like Yeah. It's

[00:47:16] Sarah Hill: like, wow. That

[00:47:17] Jordan Harbinger: is impressive though. But

[00:47:18] Sarah Hill: like for a man who sees that, I mean, that's a threat.

[00:47:21] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:47:22] Sarah Hill: And so it's like we both have this, have this implicit awareness of like, what plays out in the mating market within our own sex. And it's also that way we can maximize our own probability of getting what we want by being maximally competitive for what we're looking for. Um, but also so we can keep an eye on our rivals.

[00:47:40] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It is a little bit of a sad state of affairs and totally unfair. Like, oh, she's got two PhDs. That's really impressive. Meanwhile, guys are like, yeah, but that booty dough, like, come on man.

[00:47:49] Sarah Hill: Yeah, I know, right? Like, come on. Yeah. Is that it? Gimme a break. Yeah. Is that it?

[00:47:55] Jordan Harbinger: Tell me about strippers and tipping during their cycle and while on the pill.

This was just fascinating. I was just thinking like, wow, you can, you can put a dollar amount on this. That was not, I did not expect that.

[00:48:05] Sarah Hill: Yeah. No, that was a really brilliantly done study. And, um, and it was a study that was done at a, at a strip club, of course. And the researchers, they must have had a great

[00:48:14] Jordan Harbinger: time running this.

[00:48:15] Sarah Hill: I, I, I was gonna say they had a line of research assistants out the door. Yeah. Like men saying, I would love to participate in this study. Yeah. Like, please, I'm super

[00:48:23] Jordan Harbinger: interested in hormones, guys. Yeah. It's like, this

[00:48:25] Sarah Hill: is hormones. Right. It's like hormones. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm totally into that.

They worked with women who were working as dancers at a strip club, and they had them all keeping a diary over the course of, uh, I think it was two cycles. And all that they had to do is every day they logged in, whether or not they were working, how many hours they worked and how much tip money they earned.

And then did you get your period today? Yes or no? And so they logged this over the course of two cycles and then the researchers took the diaries and the first thing that they did is they divided the diaries into two piles. One was a pile that was, uh, kept by women who are using hormonal birth control.

So women who are on the pill or on the hormonal IUD or what have you. And the other stack of diaries was the diaries of the naturally cycling women. And then what they did is they mapped the tip earnings onto the women's cycles because they asked the women every day, did you get your period? And so they were able to know when the first day of their cycle was right.

And that is the, the day you get your period is the first day of your cycle. So they track that there, and then they look and see where the end of their period is, and then they sort of bisect that in half. It's usually around day 14 where ovulation is, and you're able to see when estrogen is rising in the cycle and when fertility is high.

Sure. For women who are naturally cycling. And then you're able to, um, look at women who are using hormonal birth control and see whether or not they also have, you know, are there any differences in tip earnings that they get as a function of their cycle because they don't have changing sex hormones the way that naturally cycling women do.

And what they found was that for women who are naturally cycling, you see that tip earnings, the average amount that women were pulling in each shift. Was increasing as a function of estrogen in the cycle. And in particular, what they find is that during that period of time, that five or so days prior to ovulation, and then the day of ovulation itself, that period of time was marked by having really high tip earnings.

Wow. So they earned the most money across the cycle. Right. During what we call the peri ovulatory window. It's that five days prior to ovulation. And then on the day of ovulation itself, when sex can lead to conception, and during that time, women are earning the most tip earnings. That's

[00:50:31] Jordan Harbinger: so funny. And

[00:50:32] Sarah Hill: then it falls when estrogen levels fall on the cycle.

Mm-hmm. And then when estrogen levels climb a little bit in the second half of the cycle, you also see a little bit of an uptick in earnings again. And what this is showing us is that men are just, you know, instinctively responding to these cues that are related to the probability of pregnancy from sex.

And that men are finding that these fertility cues. As being really intoxicating. And we know from research that men prefer the scent of women when they're ovulating. So they like the way that their skin smells more, they tend to find them more attractive. In this study, like showed it perfectly, I mean this very non-reactive measure that quantifies how much interest men have in women showing that as estrogen rises, that you get this increase in tip earnings.

And then when they compared this to the natural, or pardon me, when they compared this to the women who were on the pill, what they found is that there was no such increase for the pill takers. And of course when you take birth control, it prevents you from ovulating. So you never get that big increase in estrogen.

It keeps your estrogen levels really low. And the entirety of your cycle when you're on the pill is you have, uh, this pill that has relatively low levels of estrogen and then relatively high levels of this synthetic progesterone or progestin. And you're getting that same hormonal message every day. And what we see is that there's no real differences in tip earnings across the cycle.

They earn pretty consistently across. And they never get to that high. Huh? That is reached by women who are on the pill or not on the pill. Right. Who are, who are naturally cycling. That's

[00:52:02] Jordan Harbinger: so interesting. And so if you're a part-time exotic dancer, then choose your shifts based on the peri, was it peri ovulatory window?

[00:52:10] Sarah Hill: Yeah. So the five days prior to ovulation and then the day of ovulation itself. So like usually if you have a 28 day cycle, day nine to day 14 or 15. Yeah. Work that 10 hour shift.

[00:52:21] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:52:22] Sarah Hill: Yeah. It's just enough work that poll. It's gonna be worth it. Yeah. So you can just take the rest of the month off.

[00:52:26] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

If y'all could only smell the hormones oozing out of me every time you support the fine products and services that support the show. Well, that just got gross and personal. Anyway, we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Rosetta Stone as a polyglot, and I know that sounds pretentious, but I love connecting with locals in their languages.

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Now, for the rest of part one with Dr. Sarah Hill, this is gonna make me sound gross by association, but I don't care 'cause it's for science. When I was in law school, I used to go out all the time, of course 'cause I was in college and I had a friend and he would say something like that girl over there is on her period right now.

And I would be like, how do you know this? And he would go, they're a little bit shinier than the other women look around and like we would have drinks and I'd be like, alright, well there was one time where I was like, this is bs. We gotta figure this out. He just went around asking everyone, and a lot of them were like, excuse me, but we're like, no, no, no, it's a, you know, blah, blah.

He would try to come up with an explanation. Some people were offended, but a lot of them were like, yes, no. So we actually did this a few times and he was very often correct.

[00:55:46] Sarah Hill: That's fascinating. Yeah. I had a student, I teach this really fun class called Evolution Sex in the Brain. Mm-Hmm. And we're like talking about all of these kinds of things.

That

[00:55:55] Jordan Harbinger: sounds so interesting. My goodness.

[00:55:57] Sarah Hill: Yeah, it's so fun. And I was, had this student in my class and after class one day he came up and he said, I have this skill

[00:56:03] Jordan Harbinger: superpower. Yeah. He is like,

[00:56:05] Sarah Hill: I have this superpower. I know you're gonna think that it's crazy, but I, I've had a hundred percent accuracy on this.

He's like, but I can smell from a woman's breath. Whether or not she's on her period.

[00:56:13] Jordan Harbinger: That's interesting. Yeah. Wow. And he's, he

[00:56:15] Sarah Hill: is like, there's something in their breath that I'm picking up on and I'm always right. I've never been wrong. Wow. And I'm like, what is that? That's also

[00:56:23] Jordan Harbinger: something you don't necessarily want all the time.

Like you're ordering at McDonald's and you're like, I don't need to know that. Yeah, come on. I

[00:56:29] Sarah Hill: know. Well, it's so funny 'cause he is saying that to me and I'm like, okay, well you know, that's

[00:56:33] Jordan Harbinger: but just dumping tic-tacs in your mouth. Like really? Yeah. Tell me more tomorrow though. Not today. Maybe next week actually.

Yeah, we'll have this conversation.

[00:56:40] Sarah Hill: I mean, it's so fascinating and what's also really interesting about that is that if there is something I. That you can pick up on? I mean, that's something that you could use as some sort of a metric. Yeah, I mean, I don't know because I'm like, there's gotta be something that you can be measuring that'll give you insight into hormones that you know that we aren't able to do yet.

Because one of the big things in women's health right now is a lot of people are trying to come up with ways that women are able to better keep track of what's actually going on hormonally with themselves, because. Especially, you know, as women go through the perimenopausal transition and like with pregnancy and or that somebody's trying to get pregnant and their fertility, it's like women want so much information about what's going on in their bodies and it's so hard to get it in a way that's like cheap and easy to get and is available to everyone.

And so everybody's trying to figure out like, how can we measure hormones cheaply? Like, how can we do this without taking blood? How can we do this where women can measure this every day so that way they can see how their cycle is performing. Right. And so whenever I hear something like that, I'm like, what is it?

And can we measure it cheaply? Yeah. Because, um, as soon as something like that is available to women, I think it's gonna be like, it's gonna change the way that we do things. Like tracking, for example, the menopausal transition or fertility for women who are trying to get pregnant.

[00:57:55] Jordan Harbinger: It seems like that's a, a breathly, we're a breathalyzer away from being able to detect that because if that guy can smell it and the human nose is not, is that sensitive?

Right. I mean Right. It's like those dogs that can smell cancer. No, human is like, I think you have cancer. Right. It's, it's more like maybe if you had a pastrami sandwich, I could detect that, but that's, that's about as far as we go. That's quite a superpower. Yeah. By the way, has that stripper study, sorry, exotic dancer study, has that been replicated?

[00:58:20] Sarah Hill: No. I don't know that anybody has even tried to guys, somebody.

[00:58:23] Jordan Harbinger: Get after it. Scientists. I know.

[00:58:25] Clip 1: You know, I'm something of a scientist myself.

[00:58:28] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That seems like an opportunity to just, you know, make sure that this study is just hammered down properly for the sake of science.

[00:58:34] Sarah Hill: I would think that there would be a bunch of scientists trying to replicate that.

Yeah. I think that the fact that it hasn't is a reflection of the fact that we are seeing a lot more women going into science, and so maybe

[00:58:45] Jordan Harbinger: why wouldn't women also be interested in this? I mean, it's not maybe as interesting as it would be to men, but they would have no problem getting research assistants for sure.

They would have, like you said, a line out the door. What is the method by which the pill works? I mean, without getting super, super in the weeds, because look, we know it prevents ovulation, but what is the mechanism using as few of those $10 words as possible? Yeah.

[00:59:07] Sarah Hill: Big terrible words. Yeah. So essentially it's fooling your brain into thinking that you just ovulate.

[00:59:12] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:59:13] Sarah Hill: And so after you ovulate, like one of the things that I talked about is the first half of your cycle is just all about releasing estrogen, and that's what happens when an egg is getting ready to be released. After that egg gets released, that empty egg follicle is what starts releasing that other hormone, progesterone.

And when progesterone is being released, that actually tells the brain, don't stimulate the egg follicles. Mm-hmm. Because you just ovulate it. And we wanna see whether or not that egg gets fertilized and implants. And so when you have progesterone getting released, your brain doesn't stimulate your ovaries.

And so what the pill does is it gives you this daily dose of the synthetic progesterone or progestin. And this is what tells your brain not to stimulate your ovaries. And so that's how it works. I would love to

[00:59:58] Jordan Harbinger: get some stories of women who met men on or off the pill because the change in preferences is very interesting and you see a lot now in the news about, well, it's sort of like clickbait stuff, like the birth control pill makes women choose effeminate men and it's a turning it into this like whole societal crisis instead of something that's kind of a temporary effect that some people maybe experience.

[01:00:22] Sarah Hill: Right? Yeah. So there is some research that finds that women who have chosen their partner when they were on the pill and then they discontinue the pill, that on average it can create some differences in how women feel about their partner. And what's really interesting about it is that what it finds is that it can either increase or decrease your attraction to your partner.

And so for some women, when they go off of the pill, because the pill is oftentimes, I mean, it kills your free levels of testosterone, so it causes the release of what's known as sex hormone binding globulin, which binds up all your testosterone and makes it unusable. And when you're not ovulating, that combination of things tends to kill libido.

And so a lot of times when women are on the pill, their sex drive goes in the toilet, and when they go off of it, all of a sudden they're like, oh my god, sex. And then they're really into their partner and they're super attracted to them. But for some women, they go off of it. And even though they're having this increase in sexual desire, they're realizing that their partner isn't.

Really what they want and like, oh no. Right. And that does happen. And it's not, it doesn't happen most of the time, but it does happen. And it's possible. I mean, it's like we know that hormones nudge our partner preferences. There's been research for decades showing that, like for example, when estrogen is rising and high across the cycle, that this tends to make women almost more shallow.

It's like all of a sudden we're really into. All of those genetic quality kinds of cues. Things like sexiness and sym, facial symmetry and testosterone markers, and women, women aren't having any estrogen surges in the cycle. You're never getting that, you know, sort of queuing into these things that women find sexy.

And it's possible that for some women, because they're not really prioritizing those kinds of cues when they're choosing their partners, that all of a sudden when they're off the pill and they start to care about those things again, that they realize that their partner isn't really hitting all the right buttons.

And, and that can be really upsetting. I've talked to women who've gotten divorced, and I've talked to women who've, you know, had really tumultuous breakups that happened as a result of going off of hormonal birth control because they realize like, oh my gosh, this isn't like, I don't like the way you smell anymore.

Right. And then I've also had women who go off the pill and are like, oh my gosh. Like my partner is exhausted.

[01:02:37] Crosstalk: Poor guy. Yeah. Because, because I'm like

[01:02:39] Sarah Hill: so sexually excited to be around them and, and I hadn't been, you know, for so long. So whenever you have hormonal changes, and given how big of a role our hormones play in terms of, uh, partner choice and attraction, you're going to get these changes in sexual behavior or potentially, um, get these changes in, in satisfaction with your existing partner.

Wow. And we just actually did a new study and it hasn't come out yet, but hopefully it will be ready. We're getting it ready to submit for publication. But we worked with, uh, natural Cycles, which is a cycle tracking app for women who are not on hormonal birth control. But we captured new users who had just discontinued birth control.

And then we asked them, what type of birth control were you on when you met your partner? And for some of them it's hormonal birth control, and for others it's something else or nothing. And we looked at women's sexual frequency, you know, over the course of multiple cycles and then looked at whether or not we had differences in the frequency of sex.

Between people who chose their partners when they were on the pill, or women who chose their partners when they were off. What we find is that you get more sex within these couples that were chosen when the woman was naturally cycling. So they're having more sex across the cycle. Wow. Relative to, um, women who chose their partners when they were on the pill.

And again, this is just consistent with the idea that if you choose your partner when you're off the pill, you're going to be going through this regular fluctuation where you have this period of time when estrogen is kind of driving the bus in terms of the brain. And estrogen really likes those sexy qualities like testosterone and good genes markers, and somebody who's got signs of good immune functioning and all these other things.

And women who are on the pill don't have that. They don't go through that period. And it seems like. What's likely happening is when you go off the pill and everybody's naturally cycling, is that for women who chose their partners when they were going through that they're experiencing that. They're like, oh yeah.

Yes, yes, yes. And that for women who chose their partners when they're off the pill, for some of them, they're going to be having that exact response, and then for some of them, they're not. And it's because their brain wasn't prioritizing those cues when they chose their partner.

[01:04:45] Jordan Harbinger: It seems like that could lead well, the obvious conclusion is that it would lead to less relationship satisfaction potentially.

It could maybe do you pick based on mate investment and financial stability instead? I mean, maybe not financial stability, but stability instead.

[01:05:00] Sarah Hill: Right. So that's a really great question and there was a study that was done, gosh, probably 10 years ago now, where they looked at different types of relationship satisfaction.

And depending on whether women chose their partners when they were on or off of the pill. And what they found is that women who chose their partners when they were naturally cycling, that they were more satisfied with the sexual and attraction related aspects of the relationship. So like how much sexual desire do you have?

Like how satisfied are you with sexual frequency? How satisfied are you with your attraction to your partner and so on. But then they found that women who chose their partners when they were on the pill that they had more satisfaction with things like their partners earning capacity and their partners like just like how good of a partner they are, like how much of a team player they are, uhhuh.

And so it suggests that women are just kind of queuing into different things and like prioritizing different qualities. And what was really interesting with that particular paper is that they found that women who chose their partners when they were on the pill, that they actually had a lower divorce rate.

[01:05:58] Jordan Harbinger: Really?

[01:05:59] Sarah Hill: Yeah. So, which is really interesting. 'cause it's like, so this sounds like a question that you would ask, like with your roommates when you're in college. Mm-Hmm. After like smoking dope or like drinking too many beers. Yeah. Where you're like, what is. A successful relationship.

[01:06:14] Jordan Harbinger: Right.

[01:06:14] Sarah Hill: And it's like, what is that?

You know? And it could be choosing somebody who's just a really good partner and you know, in, in financial provisioning and that you feel really satisfied with that. It could be the sexual piece, right? Maybe that's what we're, I mean, nobody really knows, right. It's just like you hope to have all of it.

Yeah. Right. Like I think all of us, when we choose our long-term partners are like hoping that we're gonna be satisfied in all of these different domains equally. But it's like, what is satisfaction? And at least, you know, if we're gonna define relationship success as togetherness, which I wouldn't, but some many people do say like, it's successful relationship is whether you're still together.

If you're defining relationship success that way, then maybe the pill leads you to choose smarter partners. Mm-Hmm. You know, like a, like to choose more wisely.

[01:06:59] Jordan Harbinger: I don't want guys to be like spiking their wife's pumpkin spice lattes with the birth control pill, but it is. Right. It is interesting.

[01:07:07] Sarah Hill: Super interesting.

Yeah, this

[01:07:08] Jordan Harbinger: is quite fascinating. Do you know what women tend to prefer when on or off the pill? I know there's a photograph experiment where you, you kind of get preferences. Tell me about that.

[01:07:19] Sarah Hill: What you tend to find is that women who choose their part, or like women generally when they're on the pill, they don't have this preference for masculinized male faces that you get among naturally cycling women.

So naturally cycling women, particularly if you happen to capture them in the, in your study, at times in the cycle when estrogen is high, women are really into things like facial, vocal and behavioral masculinity. So somebody who looks like a manly man and estrogen loves testosterone and that's, you know, just kind of the way that it is.

When you blunt estrogen levels, which you do when you're on the pill because you're not ovulating, and it's a creation of an egg that actually produces all that estrogen for women who are on the pill. When you're not having those estrogen surges where you're like really queuing into these things, you tend to get a preference for a slightly less masculinized male face, male voice, male behavior, so that women just don't seem to be, you know, zeroing in on those qualities the way that naturally cycling women do.

And now when we talk about these differences, you know, it can sound alarming and you know, like, oh my gosh, like women who are on the pill are choosing these like namby pamby girly men. But when you look at the differences, like for example in the photograph study where they had women like essentially using it little slider scale to create their ideal male face, what they found is that women who were naturally cycling made a slightly more masculinized male face compared to the pill takers.

But when you look at the faces side by side, I mean, it's not like you're like, oh my God. Like how could the same woman have, you know, chosen this right? Or that depending on whether she was on the pill or not. Instead, they're just slight differences. And essentially what estrogen does is it just makes us more sensitive to minute differences in faces based on the presence or absence of high levels of testosterone.

You do get differences, but they're not so great that it's probably going to matter in most women's lives. For some women it does. Right? And we do know, and I've seen it more times than I can count, where you'll have women who have an experience where all of a sudden they're, you know, off the pill and they're like, this isn't gonna work out anymore.

Or women who are like, oh my God, my partner is like, this is awesome. But for a lot of women, because these are small nudges, it's not gonna nudge you out of attraction or nudge you into attraction. For some women it will, but for most women it won't.

[01:09:42] Jordan Harbinger: I realize this is probably one of the creepiest, non-sequitur I could ever have on this show.

But talking about hormones and faces, pre-teen girls love these BTS looking guys, like the boy band look. And they really look like, sometimes I look at the photos and I go, is that a girl with short hair? And they're like, no, it's a guy with like seven earrings and makeup on. It's like these guys are really popular.

There's obviously some hormonal differences between young people and adults, and I'm wondering if that's why they choose these really girly looking guys to be in these, boy, those guys are already young themselves, but there's guys that are that age that have facial hair and they're, they're nowhere to be found.

[01:10:21] Sarah Hill: Right. That's so interesting. I bet you're right because you know, a lot of those preteen girls aren't ovulating regularly. Mm-Hmm. And so they're not having this big surge in estrogen, which is again, you know, that's like the thing that really tends to make our brain really cute into those masculinized male faces.

So, no, totally. That's really interesting.

[01:10:39] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I'm gonna leave it there 'cause that's just about as creepy. I people are gonna be like, dude,

[01:10:43] Sarah Hill: they'll be like,

[01:10:44] Jordan Harbinger: I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if this Jordan Guy, but it just, whenever I see these guys, I'm just thinking. What woman is going, oh, he's so cute. And the answer is, a child, a literal child is the one who's thinking that these people are Right.

Attractive. Yeah. Otherwise they look, yeah, they look like

[01:10:58] Sarah Hill: it's like a non-threatening version of a male. Right. It's almost like a cartoon male Cartoon. Cartoon.

[01:11:02] Jordan Harbinger: Yes. A cartoon anime guy with nothing. Yeah. Yeah. No. Like two dimensional caricature.

[01:11:07] Sarah Hill: Like totally nonthreatening. Yeah. No, that's so super interesting.

It'd be interesting to see whether or not like the age at which girls switch out of that coincides with Menarchy and the timing that they get their periods.

[01:11:19] Jordan Harbinger: Uh, it makes sense that, because I know that like older women go to Backstreet Boy or what is it? New Kids on the Block reunion concerts. That's a totally different thing.

That's not what we're talking about. Totally. Totally different thing. That's nostalgia. But when I look at, again, like BTS, that Korean k-pop band, and some of that might be cultural, but I'm trying to think of any boy band that's not that one. 'cause I'm not, it's not really my scene. Yeah, there's a lot I'm sure.

And they all kind of generically look like similar. They're not leaning into the. Facial. Even like the Orig, og, Backstreet Boys, there was like one guy with a five o'clock shadow to appeal to like a certain demographic. And then, and he wasn't even kind of, no one even remembers that guy's name, right?

Because he wasn't the, the popular one, he wasn't the front man, so to speak. So it seems like, and I'm worried I'm overstating this, so please jump in here. It seems like women should try to choose long-term partners when they're off the pill if they plan to not take the pill throughout their whole life, which is probably, you know, not something you should do anyway with medication,

[01:12:14] Sarah Hill: right?

Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think yes, if a woman does not need to be on hormonal birth control and she's looking for a long-term partner, my recommendation would be that you're not on it when you pick it. Hormones affect the way that our brain does its daily business. And that includes things like attraction and the idea of being under the spell of a different hormonal profile when you're doing something as important as choosing your partner or even choosing your career.

'cause you know, I've met women who were on the pill, they were like a worker ant is how they describe them. They're like a drone where they're just like, work, work, work, work, work. They go off the pill and all of a sudden they realize that they want more work life balance because all of a sudden they're like kids and and relationships and they start thinking more holistically about these other things that are important to them.

Um, and then their life explodes because they were, they made all of these other choices when they were on the pill, right? And now they're off of it and they're realizing that this isn't exactly what they wanted. And so I think that for women who don't need to be on it. For reasons of pregnancy prevention, don't, don't, you know, it's like you're gonna be living with these other hormones most of your life.

And so I, I think that choosing a life that fits you with the set of hormones that you're gonna be spending most of your life with is probably a good idea.

[01:13:30] Jordan Harbinger: Although, I would say, man, short term. Use that pill because getting pregnant by the wrong guy Trumps pretty much anything else that we've discussed here?

Yeah,

[01:13:37] Sarah Hill: I mean, absolutely. I mean, it's like with everything, it's about trade-offs, so it's not necessarily that birth control's bad because as you were saying, I mean there is nothing that will derail a person's life more than an unplanned pregnancy. And this is particularly true in our current environment where women aren't able to get safe legal abortions in many states.

So like not having that as a worry I think is such a huge benefit to women and not having a life go off the rails. So for women who don't have a different means of avoiding pregnancy, then I mean absolutely. It's a great way to do it. You know, one of the things I write about in my book, and I'll say it here too, is that knowing everything that I know, I was still bent on it when I was on it.

Because for me, like the need to prevent pregnancy and be able to plan and make plans for, you know, graduate school and then building my research lab, all of those things were so important to me and it's benefited me in so many ways. And even though it comes with trade-offs. Those are trade offs that I was willing to make then, even though I didn't know I was making them.

But now knowing everything that I know, I would still make those trade offs. I would just be more informed about what it is that I was doing.

[01:14:50] Jordan Harbinger: I love this. I, I love the career idea that you mentioned. Like, maybe don't become a partner at a law firm until you've spent three or six months off of the pill.

How long does it take actually getting off the pill before your brain goes, Hey, I'm thinking differently Like it is. Three months seems too short. Yeah. And so, you

[01:15:05] Sarah Hill: know, I think here's, and it differs for everybody. I mean, sure. For me, I started to notice differences within about three months. Oh, okay. But it can take a lot longer than that.

Right. So for example, if somebody was making a. Like, I don't know about my partner, I don't know about my career. I mean, I'm thinking six months or a year. I mean, it took me several years to realize that I don't get overwhelmed super easily or that I don't have, you know, anxiety or it takes you a while to figure out yourself narrative.

And so I think that for a lot of women, it probably would take six months or so before they're feeling like, gosh, you know, I'm really unhappy at my job. Burned

[01:15:43] Jordan Harbinger: out. Yeah.

[01:15:43] Sarah Hill: Like, yeah, like this isn't what I want in my life. Like I don't think that you would probably figure that out within three months. I think that would take a little bit longer.

[01:15:50] Jordan Harbinger: It seems like also a type A personality who's a partner at a law firm or a surgeon or something like that. Taking on extra shifts, you, you're gonna try and plow through that for as long as possible. You almost have to burn out and go, what is my deal? I used to be fine doing this. Am I getting old? And the answer is, oh, I stopped.

You also have to be aware that the birth control pill does this in the first place. 'cause you might not even put it together that you stopped taking the pill. Suddenly you burn out. You might not even notice the correlation between those two things, so,

[01:16:15] Sarah Hill: right. No, I mean, absolutely. It's not on the pill box,

[01:16:17] Jordan Harbinger: right?

No, this, it's not on the label. Exactly. I definitely wanna do, uh, more with you here and do part two. I wanna talk about the other drawbacks of birth control. There's a lot of stuff that can go quote unquote wrong with it. I also wanna talk about the recent media storm with respect to birth control from the right and the left, turning it into a political discussion.

I definitely want to go through that because I think that's, whenever we put health through a political filter, it's just never good, really, in my opinion, because your body doesn't care about your politics, it cares about science, and so I definitely am looking forward to that. So stay tuned for part two y'all.

We'll be back with Dr. Sarah Hill. Here's a trailer for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show with the legendary Aire pll as she sheds light on cheating, not just being about the thrill, but about finding a part of ourselves that we've lost.

[01:17:04] Clip: Affairs also happen often in good relationships. They're not just symptoms of relationships that have gone completely awry.

Sometimes a person goes looking elsewhere, not because they wanna find someone else, but because they want to find another self. Nuclear family life is a bitch. It's really a stressful situation on people, especially if they have on top of it, young kids, pets and in-laws and older parents and all the other responsibilities of life.

We were not conceived to live like this. What's going on is this. There is what people fight about and then there is what people fight for. Power and control. That's the hidden agendas of most fights. Whose decision matters most? Who has priority? Is it about care and closeness? Can I trust you? Do you have my back?

Can I rely on you and respect and recognition? Do you value me? Do I matter much of couple's life? When things begin to go a little bit awry? Is putting the responsibility on the other person without paying attention enough to what can I do to make this better? Or in what way am I contributing to my partner feeling the way they do?

So it's very important. What is relational and what is individual and where do you start to make sense of this complicated and often very painful experience

[01:18:31] Jordan Harbinger: to hear how our fights can actually make our relationships stronger and what the future holds. For love in the age of ai, check out episode 9 1 1 on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

That's the end of part one, part two, out in just a little bit here. All things Dr. Sarah Hill will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers deals, discounts, ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Also, our newsletter, a little tidbit in two minutes a week, every Wednesday.

It's called Wee Bit Wiser, something that'll affect your decisions, your psychology, your relationships, again, in under two minutes. It is a great companion to the show. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six minute Networking over@sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter or Instagram.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we've rise by lifting others. The fee for this show as you share it with friends, when you find something useful or interesting, because the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

Now, if you know somebody. Who might take birth control is taking birth control, did take birth control, so a a woman basically, or a guy who's interested in interesting things like this, hormones and the body. Share this episode with 'em. Frankly, I find this stuff fascinating. I don't know who wouldn't be interested in this.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.

[01:20:01] Clip: Hi everyone. This is Jillian with Court Junkie. Court Junkie is a True Crime podcast that covers court cases and criminal trials using audio clips and interviews with people close to the Cases. Court Junkie is available on Apple Podcasts and podcast one.com.