Final Period

NY Times ^ | July 17, 2007 | KAREN HOUPPERT

[neverdem]

IN May the Food and Drug Administration approved a new birth control pill, Lybrel. It is as effective at preventing pregnancy as the other pills already out there (about 98 percent) but boasts one advantage: Women who take it will never get their periods.

Lybrel is landing on pharmacy shelves this month. And now war has been declared on menstruation.

Already the first few volleys in this battle have been exchanged. Gird yourselves, women, for a barrage of advertising and research highlighting the debilitating effects of periods and the joys of menstrual suppression.

After all, periods and their mood swings are bad for family values (who wants to have a stay-at-home mom when she’s so darn cranky?), bad for women’s health (women were never meant to menstruate so much; natural selection designed their bodies for back-to-back pregnancies and breast-feeding), bad for the fashion industry (how can beige be the new black if women won’t wear it all month?) and bad for the economy (everybody knows women take to their beds at the merest whisper of “cramps,” fueling the nation’s employee-absentee rate). Western civilization, it seems, hinges on our ability to wrangle our messy cycles to the ground and stomp ’em out once and for all.

Sound absurd?

In a presentation by Lybrel’s maker, Wyeth, to investors and analysts last October, Dr. Ginger D. Constantine, the company’s therapeutic director for women’s health, laid the groundwork. Citing company-backed studies, she reported that menstruating women feel less effective at work and take more sick days. Not only that, but they don’t exercise and they wear dark clothes more often, she said.

Suddenly, news articles are weighing the pros and cons of our monthly cycles. And while it’s great that the American news media are, for a moment, challenging the culture of concealment that...

[neverdem]

Wyeth Receives Approvable Letter From the FDA for Lybrel

[Bobalu]

Tough times ahead for manufacturers of feminine hygiene products?

[SoldierMedic]

I'm a dude, yet even I know about birth control and stopping your period.



Only those blue pills contraint the hormone. Those green pills are placebos, and only are there to so you stay in the habit of taking your pill each day. Because they lack the estrogen, when taking the green pills a woman will have her period. Some women skip those green pills all together, going from one months blues to the next, thus not having their period.

Personally, I think (the opinion of a male) that doing it that way is safer, because every other month you can have a period, which isn't a bad thing. You don't want to completely skip your period.

[Caipirabob]

I can't imagine that this will be very healthy or hygienic for women in the long run. I can see missing 1 or 2 cycles, but to do so consistently or for far longer time frames? I can imagine a whole slew of health issues arising from tissues that need to be purged not naturally being removed. I won't speculate about cysts that nearly every woman I know either experienced or knows someone who deals with them. I don't imagine this will have a good impact towards that end either.

I'm not a gynecologist and I didn't stay in a holiday inn express last night.

It's just that artificially prolonging the duration of this natural cycle by a chemical imbalance seems to draw obvious questions and concerns. I mean, even in my exceptional caffeine deprived state...

Despite the articles implications that "sans menstrual cycle" a woman will be the same as a man in a position of responsibility, a woman is still a woman.

Chemically altering her so she can be more competitive? Beastly...

However, for women who suffer tremendously due to severe menstrual discomfort and perhaps other concerns, this pill could be a miracle.

From the perspective of healing, I welcome reasonable exploration of this as a resolution.

From the perspective of "Let's give this to Cheryle in accounting so she won't go PMS on us!"? Just d@mn...

[Mark was here]

Tough times ahead for manufacturers of feminine hygiene products?

Not to mention landfills.

[liberty or death]

As a personal observation from both my wife and I,

1) Family and friends who were on the pill from say the time they were 16 or so and then tried to have children in their early 20’s to mid 30’s lost many to miscarriage before success, or had no success at all.

Others like ourselves (and there were only a handfull) never used hormone altering birth control and we all had an easy time of conception (way easy :>)

[netmilsmom]

I had a hysterectomy and it cleared all of this up.

But could you check into this...I know the drug reps have to be beating down your door (they were when ran one)

The commercial says, four periods a year with breakthrough spotting, which can be a normal flow.

Isn’t this all just hype?

[Gorzaloon]

It's just that artificially prolonging the duration of this natural cycle by a chemical imbalance seems to draw obvious questions and concerns.

First, Depo-Provera often did the same thing and started being used nearly thirty years ago. It has fallen into disfavor, partly because of calcium losses.

Secondly, chemical imbalances are not important with respect to phamaceutical Stock Prices, and as proof, consider the new norms of serum cholesterol being reduced to 100 mg/DL.

EVERYONE needs statins! We need to turn off certain metabolic pathways common to all mammals that only took a half-billion years to develop, to save the investors.

< sarc >Besides, the candidates for menstrual suppression are only women. They are imagining the side effects anyway, and not a lot of them are the biggest stockholders.< /sarc >

The runaway success of The Drug Answer seems to be related to hospital adminstrators double-booking physicians, and pressuring them to prescribe-and-dump, in order to get the same thoughput as a McDonald's burger stand.

This makes the MBA's, who for some reason, are attracted to the Practice of Medicine as a hobby, very happy.

[Jabba the Nutt]

This is what happens when agenda-driven news takes over a once great newspaper. Doctors and presumably most women have known for decades that you can shut down periods (menstruation) by taking the pill on a daily basis. To paint a pill designed and tested to do this as a 'war on menstruation' is ludicrous.

Is this a sign of the complete transformation of "progressives" and "feminists" into reactionaries? If they are against Lybrel, will they come out against all birth control pills and join with the Catholic Church? Just wondering.

[wolfcreek]

This is not a good thing! A woman's monthly period cleans out their system. Not doing so will create several unwanted and dangerous consequences. It's not good to mess with Mother Nature.

[wolfcreek]

Lybrel = Liberal

[Tax-chick]

The commercial says, four periods a year with breakthrough spotting, which can be a normal flow.

Or in other words, one is likely to be bleeding on and off throughout the year, sometimes heavily. This is new?

FWIW, the fact of not having a period, in itself, doesn't seem like it would be a health problem. Women who breastfeed intensively and experience regular pregnancies can go many years without a period.

[netmilsmom]

>>FWIW, the fact of not having a period, in itself, doesn’t seem like it would be a health problem. Women who breastfeed intensively and experience regular pregnancies can go many years without a period.<<

Exactly.

I don’t know though, pumping your body with artificial hormones seems way different to me than the natural ones from pregnancy and breastfeeding.

[toomuchcoffee]

Why on earth wouldn’t I want to skip my period? They’re messy, painful, annoying and not in the least necessary unless reproduction is planned. I suppose you think I should keep my reproductive parts past the point where reproduction is a desired option. Geeze... Guys are so clueless.

[toomuchcoffee]

Another guy chimes in. Got a clue why women have periods, besides to make their lives as miserable as possible for a few days a month? Women do not need to bleed to be happy and healthy.

[toomuchcoffee]

Well, I’m hoping you’re being humorous here. Otherwise, you must have some serious knuckle damage from dragging them on the ground.

[Howard Jarvis Admirer]

Very true. According to the “Iron Time Bomb” by Bill Sardi, the reason women live longer than men by 6 to 8 years is because they have a monthly period and flush out excess iron. Men and women who have had hysterectomies die earlier than women who regularly lose blood every month.

[Tax-chick]

pumping your body with artificial hormones seems way different to me than the natural ones from pregnancy and breastfeeding

Certainly the results from use of birth control pills, vs. a natural menstrual cycle, are significantly different. Although it might seem that the symptoms are the same, at the hormonal level it's not the same at all.

A good diet, plenty of vitamins, and lots of vigorous exercise helps with many menstrual-cycle problems.

[netmilsmom]

>>A good diet, plenty of vitamins, and lots of vigorous exercise helps with many menstrual-cycle problems.<<

Or having lots of babies, right?

I will tell you, I never hear the whining about periods in my parish from women who are either, pregnant, nursing or waiting for the next, like I do from the moms who have had two children and are having no more.

(unless they are like me who are very blessed to have made it through both pregnancies!)

[nyconse]

I would never take such pills. First of all birth control pills have side effects and can be dangerous for some women. Most women do not have much trouble with their periods anyway. I would bet that this would increase the risk of some cancers long term.