Ever hear the (crass but widely repeated) joke that the pill works by making you chubby and hairier so one wants to have sex with you?

A new study seeks to put the link between birth control pill use and weight gain to rest, using primates to determine whether introduction of the pill to a female’s daily regimen is likely to result in weight gain. Not only did the study not find a link, but it actually seems the pill could speed up a woman’s metabolism, making weight loss a more likely outcome of birth control pill usage:

At the beginning of the study, half the animals were obese and half were normal weight. During the eight-month treatment period, animals received doses of oral contraceptives, adjusted to the weight of the animals so that it mimicked dosage in humans. Researchers tracked weight, food intake, activity levels, body fat and lean muscle mass. At the study’s conclusion, the normal weight group remained weight stable whereas the obese group lost a significant amount of weight (8.5%) and percent of body fat (12%) due to an increase in basal metabolic rate. No changes were seen in food intake, activity or lean muscle mass for either group.

So why the misconception? One of the study’s authors suggests that women may be attributing the weight gain that can gradually occur with aging as a side effect of the pill.

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Study: Link between birth control pill, weight gain a myth is a post from: The Inquisitr