Hi Joshua,

Hopefully your girlfriend will be fine. I do not
know much about Depo Provera, but I did once had a friend who took it and it

caused her to gain a lot of weight.

As for "natural" forms of birth control. With
reference to gatherer-hunters, women in those societies follow the typical

primate pattern, which is wide intervals between
birth of children with ovulation being supressed by lactation. Lactation can

last up to four years after birth and that, in
conjunction with the rigors of child care and food collection, is very taxing

on the woman's body. Within these traditional
gatherer-hunter societies women will ovulate for a total of six years (on

average), those are accumalitive years collected
between periods of lactation; they are not serial years. They have late

menarchies and attain menapause early by our
standards, which in turn, results in life long
low levels of estrogen. Women who

live in post-industrial societies live a
reproductive pattern almost opposite to that. We
will maybe lactate a total of 6

months in our entire life, have early menarchy (I
reached menarchy at age eleven) and reach menopause much later. This resul

ts in higher estrogen which is associated with
higher levels of cancer in post-industrial women.

Sorry for that tangent there.

Sincerely
Diana Hay