The pill and condom are still the most important contraceptive methods in Germany, at least according to the figures collected by the Federal Center for Health Education in 2018. Interesting: compared to the previous survey, the use of condoms as a contraceptive has increased (9 %), while the pill has lost a similar amount (6 %).
And these are the numbers that apply to the entire sexually active population. It gets really exciting when you look at specific age cohorts: Among 18-29 year olds, the number of those who use the pill has fallen by 16 percentage points.
This also statistically proves a trend that many of our customers know from their own environment - and not least from their own experience: Confidence in hormonal contraception is falling and more and more young women in particular are coming off the pill.
The driver is often the fear of side effects: thrombosis, depression, circulatory disorders, nausea, weight gain - all of these side effects are attributed to the pill, of course with different weighting depending on the preparation. And just the group of young women who are now following the trend “away from the pill” determined, apparently suffers particularly from the side effects: 64 % (!) of users up to the age of 24 say they suffer (or have suffered) from side effects of the pill. Of that, in turn, was at 17 % the effect “headache/migraine” front runner.
Many young women are particularly concerned about the study results, according to which the active ingredient dienogest/ethinylestradiol, which is used in the 3rd and 4th generation pills, is responsible for an increased risk of thrombosis. 8 to 11 out of 10,000 women fall ill - while in the normal population it is only 2 out of 10,000.
At the same time, it is above all contraceptive safety that motivates women and couples to use the pill for contraception. Because from this point of view, the pill is still largely unbeaten: The Pearl Index is between 0.1 and 0.9, which means: Of 100 women who took the pill for 1 year became 0.1 to 0.9 unintentionally pregnant. Especially for very young women, for whom an unwanted pregnancy represents a particularly threatening scenario, the comparatively simple handling with high security is an important criterion.
Conclusion: A difficult conflict. The trend away from the pill is now clearly detectable - and in view of the side effects, especially in the young age group, it is very understandable. At the same time, the group also has a particularly high need for security when it comes to contraceptive security.
A good alternative can be a contraceptive computer like trackle, which looks after the symptothermal method evaluates and thus comes very close to the pill in terms of safety - and without any side effects. here there is a lot more information about it.
