How Does Norimin Work?

Like most contraceptive pills, Norimin uses three mechanisms to prevent pregnancy. These mechanisms are what make the contraceptive pill so effective because if one of them fails, there are still two more mechanisms preventing pregnancy. The pill relies on a constant stream of the hormones so missing pills will make Norimin less effective.

The best way to prevent pregnancy is to prevent an egg from being released. During a normal menstrual cycle, fluctuations in oestrogen cause an egg to be released from the ovaries in the hope that it will be fertilised. It travels down the fallopian tube so that a sperm can fertilise it. The pill maintains a high level of hormones so that the body will believe that it has already released an egg. As only one egg is released during a cycle, no egg will actually be released. Therefore, if there is no egg, there is nothing for the sperm to fertilise and you should not get pregnant.

Another way to prevent pregnancy is to make the sperms journey much more difficult. The journey is hard for a sperm anyway because they have to traverse the womb to find the egg and the small minority of sperm makes it that far. There is a mucous fluid that surrounds the neck of the womb and helps to keep the area clean. The pill acts on this and causes it to thicken so this acts as a barrier between the womb and the sperm. The sperm have great difficulty in swimming through this viscous fluid so their chances of meeting an egg are greatly reduced.

The final mechanism that the pill uses stops a fertilised egg from attaching to the womb. In the event that an egg is released and the sperm get through the mucous fluid, this third mechanism will stop the pregnancy. If an egg is fertilised, it has to embed into the uterus wall. In order to be successful, the wall needs to be thick but the pill thins this uterus lining out. This makes it harder for the egg to implant into the wall so there is little chance of pregnancy.

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