A NOTE ABOUT SKIPPING PERIODS

Women have been manipulating their menstrual cycles for years - to avoid bleeding on a special trip, a wedding, or an athletic event - usually by skipping the hormone free week (the sugar pills) of the pill. Medical providers advise this to decrease painful periods, excessive bleeding, headaches on periods, and ovarian and fibrocystic breast cysts.

Here are answers to frequent questions.

Is it dangerous to not get a period?

Well, our bodies are made to be pregnant for 9 months (no periods) and then breast feed for 9 months (there was no bottle feeding in the stone age), and just when our fertility returned, we ovulated and got pregnant again! However, in our modern times most of us do not spend our lives gathering nuts and rice and having 10 babies so that 2 or 3 can survive to keep the biological race going.

So - we bleed more and don't have to. "No evidence exists that menstruation improves a woman's health or prevents uterine infections or cancers." (Clinical Proceedings: 2003 April. Association of Reproductive Health Professionals & NANPWH).

What happens to the blood if I don't get a period?

When you are on birth control pills, you don't ovulate, so the lining of the uterus does not thicken for the implantation of a fertilized egg. The lining remains thin, and breaks down only when the hormone level is lowered by stopping the pills.

What are the drawbacks to continuous contraception?

If your insurance company provides for only 13 cycles of pills yearly (a full calendar year) you will run out before your next yearly exam is due - make sure your health care provider ( me or whoever!) supplies you with samples to make up the difference.

You may experience more spotting in the first 3 cycles, but this usually remedies itself after these cycles.

If you rely on a monthly bleeding to assure that you are not pregnant, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM!! But few pregnancies occur when the pill is taken correctly by healthy women with no dietary or food absorption problems.

Lynne Fiore, NP

 

 

 
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