As young women turn to social media for birth control advice, doctors try to counter misinformation
Nicole Xu for NPR
Charlotte Freed first got a hormonal IUD when she was a teenager. She wasn't sexually active at the time, but she wanted to be protected from pregnancy before she started college.
This was also a time when she experienced anxiety, depression and fatigue. But it wasn't until a friend of hers quit her birth control, and recommended a book on the topic, that Freed started wondering if the two could be related.
"It was really upsetting and almost like a little disturbing that no doctor had ever brought it up," said Freed, now 27.
At that point, Freed had had an IUD for about eight years.
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"I kind of just [wanted] to, like, meet myself in a way that I hadn't since I was 16, 17," she said. "And, you know, maybe I would experience some changes in my mental, emotional, physical well-being that I didn't even really know were a possibility."
So Freed took out her IUD.
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