I fed this subreddit into a language model to see the most popular + top birth control and side effect mitigations, the results look pretty good!

[gamesbx]

Here's the link where you can explore the results https://ai.eurekahealth.com/BirthControl

Here's how it works

1. Scrape the r/birthcontrol subreddit
2. Feed each post/comment into the latest fancy OpenAI language model to extract if the author took any treatments, and if so what the effect was (the dataset has just under 8000 reports!)
3. Put the data up on a website, with aggregate stats and more detailed treatment pages

Accuracy isn't perfect, but I think the results pass the gut check and I find it's way easier to grok what's out there than reading through posts one at a time.

Results

Most popular

1. NSAIDS (painkillers) (n=656)
2. Mirena (n=353)
3. Nexplanon (n=284)
4. Slynd (n=206)
5. Yaz (n=200)

Top 3 side effects of Mirena

1. Acne (44 reported)
2. Anxiety (40 reported)
3. Cramps (39 reported)

Top 4 that improved acne

1. Spironolactone (58% improved)
2. Accutane (52% improved)
3. Diane 35 (40% improved)
4. Spiro (38% improved)

Top 4 that improved anxiety

1. Xanax (34% improved)
2. Zoloft (31% improved)
3. Ativan (27% improved)
4. Cannabidiol (23% improved)

Each treatment has its own page, where you can see benefits, side effects, and see all raw data (posts) alongside the information extracted by the model.

I originally made the site for Long Covid, where people are trying many different treatments, but since there's a lot of experimentation happening in here, too, I thought it would be interesting to see what bubbles up for y'all.

Curious to hear any thoughts or feedback!

https://ai.eurekahealth.com/BirthControl

 

[jim0488]

@gamesbx Interesting.

I'd mention that your model isn't differentiating between birth control methods and other types of medications. For example, of your things that improved acne, the first two are not birth control methods. For anxiety, nothing listed is (you've got benzos, SSRI, and THC). I think your model is also going to have a lot of trouble with the number of generics out there for birth control pills, because people are using different language to describe the same combination of hormones.

 

[gamesbx]

@jim0488 100%, there's a mixture of birth control and symptom management in there, and it would be great to split them out.

Good call with the generics! I do have a basic way to roll up variants of a treatment, it would take some manual work to chase down the names but I'd be happy to do that