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Is the new contraceptive pill that stops menstruation healthy for women?

Results so far:

No		79%	312 votes	Total: 397 votes
Yes		21%	85 votes	Total: 397 votes

No

1 of 18

The menstrual cycle is a necessary but challenging time of the month for many women. The majority of women either suffer from cramps, bloating, anemia, irritability, heavy bleeding, pain in the legs and in the back and sometimes migraines associated with their period. For these reasons and more some women have decided to reduce the number of times they have a monthly cycle. I feel that in some cases, the pill is very helpful in giving a woman relief from their period, but overall it can also make a bad situation worse.

Because menstruation is a normal body function, stopping the monthly cycle can lead to very bad side effects, that may leave a woman regretting the decision to only have four cycles per year. Probably the best advice I could give any fellow woman is to weigh the pros and the cons of taking birth control pills to stop the monthly cycle, and see if it's really worth the potential risks that may follow.

There are many causes for the menstrual cycle to go awry, but the most common reasons usually include environment , hormonal imbalance and what a woman may eat or drink. There are several herbal remedies that may offer significant relief, but with herbal supplements these should be taken with caution because even though these remedies are considered natural, they may still cause adverse side effects by taking them too long or with other medicine when seeking to balance the female hormones. Surgery is another option depending on the severity of bleeding and presence of fibroids, ovarian cysts and endometrial lesions that may be causing pain in the back or other areas of the body.

After about a year and a half of taking birth control pills to get relief for my menstrual problems, I decided that the best route for me was to get an endometiral ablation to alleviate the blood clots and painful bleeding that I was experiencing. Some women will most likely pick this procedure over hysterectomy because it is not as invasive and recovery time is much faster.

However, a woman's chances of becoming pregnant are slim to none. I feel that a woman being healthy and feeling good is a wonderful thing that is much deserved. Unlike the older generation, we don't necessarily have to suffer until menopause to get relief from our menstrual cycle, and if there's a way to find relief other than taking birth control pills I am all for encouraging any woman to go for that option.

Learn more about this author, Lorri B Smalls.
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Yes

1 of 9

by Ml Henneman

Apparently some women are actually outraged that there is finally a birth control pill that does not force us to have a period, supposedly because it is somehow "unnatural" not to have one every 28 days of our non-pregnant lives. And yet it is only due to a bizarre historical artifact that for the nearly 50 years that the Pill has been available, those of us using it have been forced to have our period thirteen times a year, even if we didn't want to.

Here's a brief summary of the human female menstrual cycle:
The first day of menstrual bleeding is arbitrarily designated as the first day of the menstrual cycle. During the first 4-5 days, during bleeding, hormones are at their lowest point. Over the next 10 days or so, an ovarian follicle develops, and once the follicle is mature, ovulation occurs. At this point, estrogen is peaking. Then, estrogen drops after ovulation and progesterone, which stimulates the uterine lining to develop in anticipation of receiving a fertilized ovum, increases. If the ovum is not fertilized, progesterone levels drop, which means the enriched lining of the uterus is not sustained, and menstrual bleeding occurs.

The birth control pill mainly contains progesterone. If you become pregnant, high levels of progesterone are maintained, which prevents further ovulation. Thus, the artificial introduction of progesterone essentially causes your body to behave as if it were pregnant, which inhibits ovulation. The traditional Pill introduces one progesterone-free week out of every four, so that menstrual bleeding will be simulated. It isn't true menstrual bleeding because we are never actually allowing our bodies to go through the cycle, we are just turning progesterone levels on and off like a switch to manipulate it.

If you ever asked your doctor why you should be compelled to go through this ritual despite the fact that you have not even ovulated, you got some vague response about how it was not 'healthy' not to have periods. But women have been systematically misled for decades; there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there are health risks associated with the absence of menstruation. Certainly the lack of menstruation can be an indicator of some further health problem (such as abnormally low body fat), but it actually serves no function other than your body saying "not pregnant this time."

What furthers the outrage was the assumption that women must have 13 cycles a year to be "normal." But Michael Gladwell(1) pointed out that there is evidence that menstruating more often is a product of industrialized society, and that in pre-industrial societies, it is normal for women to menstruate as few as four times a year. The article further shows the positive correlation between lifetime number of menstrual cycles in women and cancers of the reproductive organs.

So why on earth does the traditional birth control pill force us to simulate menstruation, when for so many of us, it is a miserable few days?

Perhaps at the time the Pill was being researched and developed, in the late 50s-early 60's, people knew that the primary force behind that research and development was Dr. John Rock, who happened to be a devout Catholic. In fact, he pursued this line of research precisely because he was a Catholic, and wanted to give Catholic women more control over their reproductive lives without violating their church's rules. He reasoned that if the rhythm method was acceptable to the church, surely intervention - using the same hormones occurring naturally in the body - in order to make the cycle more regular and prevent a fertile period entirely, would be acceptable too. Of course he ultimately was wrong, and became an embittered ex-Catholic by the end of his life.

But the greatest travesty was done to women who simply wanted convenient birth control, and to have power over their own reproductive lives. A menstrual period every 28 days was arbitrarily introduced into the regimen by a Catholic doctor who thought it would appease the pope. A pope, who, eventually, decided Catholics were not allowed to use the Pill. So every woman who has used the birth control pill since is a non-Catholic (or a non-practicing Catholic). And yet for nearly 50 years we have been stuck with a Catholic Pill as our only option.

The one argument that has been made about forcing regular "periods" that makes any sense at all is the psychological reassurance for some women that they are not pregnant. Certainly, women should have the choice of having a period-forcing pill if they want. But women who do not need this reassurance should not be compelled to.

Reference

1. Gladwell, M., "John Rock's Error" The New Yorker, March 13, 2000.

Learn more about this author, Ml Henneman.
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