Get pregnant or risk your life!

Your cholesterol meds can stop your heart. Red wine can be healthy, but not too much! Jog, but don't run a marathon, 'cause that can kill you, too.

Every day it seems, there's another story about conflicting health studies. Today the New York Times reports that birth control pills can clog your arteries when taken for more than 10 years. Crap. I've been on and off them since I was 16. (No, I'm not a hooch! I have really bad cramps. At least, that's why I first went on them. Now ...) And also that they double the risk of cervical cancer.

So what's a girl to do? There are other methods of birth control, but the side effects lists on those are just as long. Hormone-replacement therapy is linked to cancer, but it also reduces the possibility of osteoporosis. So how do you choose?

At this point in my life, it's more important that I'm able to escape the baby boom than avoid artery cloggage. I eat heaps of vegetables, I exercise ... shouldn't that good behavior allow me to have worry-free sex? And I know there are nonprescription options like the Sponge (do they even make that anymore?) or the IUD (sorry, but sticking something that looks like a metal barb up my vajayjay freaks my shit out), but those failure rates are way higher than the pill. And neither of them would clear up my skin.

But studies like that do get my attention, because after a while taking a pill becomes so routine that I don't even think about what it actually means anymore. It's like a vitamin. Except not at all, apparently.