You’ve seen the ads, a smiling, peppy and attractive woman skips merrily about her day. She smiles at the camera and says, “Who says you have to have a monthly period?” To which to my husband’s amusement, I shout, “Uh, nature?” Sometimes, after the commercial has appeared for the seventh time in one half-hour program, I’ll switch it up with my vocabulary, but you get the point.
Menstrual suppression occurs when a woman takes hormones (usually extra birth control pills) to suppress her natural menstrual cycle, eliminating most of her periods. Normal birth control includes a week of placebo pills that would be replaced with a week of active pills. Most physicians still recommend that you have your period at least four times a year.
The practice of menstrual suppression has me a bit concerned. Yes, I realize that not everything that nature does should be taken as is. I believe that a child’s clef palette should be repaired as soon as possible, for example, and if someone invented a pill that could give me nicer looking pinkie toes, well I might consider taking it. But menstruation has withstood the test of time as a natural bodily function (some scientists say that it is also a natural way for the uterus to cleanse itself of bacteria).
Perhaps I am an old fuddy duddy in this, but I have my reservations about menstrual suppression. For one, changes in a woman’s menstrual cycle can often be a sign of a more serious condition. Without that warning sign, illness could be missed and treatment delayed.
What do the experts say? Well, you can find them on both sides of the fence. Some physicians say that there is no medical reason to have a period, outside of reproduction. While other physicians say that skipping periods could affect a woman’s levels of iron and testosterone. High iron levels could lead to an increase in cardiovascular disease.
There are other risks involved in taking oral birth control, especially for women who smoke and or over the age of 35. One common side effects of menstrual suppression is unpredictable bleeding.
If you are considering suppressing your menstrual cycle or making any changes in your birth control or other medications, you should speak first with your physician.