Periods. Having them can be seen as a price we pay for being a woman, but worse than getting your period, is not getting it when you should.
It took Western Medicine decades to develop the pill so that women could have their periods regularly. The pill was designed to control our fertility, so that it doesn’t control us, but it has come to be used frequently to reduce bleeding and do away with many of the charming hormonal side effects, which every gal knows in her own unique way.
Once we had the pill down, the drug companies started working on the next level of convenience. The way that the classical contraceptive pill works is that it provides a combination of hormones that trick the body into thinking that we are pregnant. This means that the period a woman has when she's on the pill is actually fake; just a way of saying "Hey, everything's in order." So for the past few years a pill has been available which is taken for 3 months without a break, instead of 3 weeks, and this means that periods arrive during the quarterly breaks – 4 times a year. They called the pill "Seasonale" to create the perception that women were still in flow with some natural course, when in fact, nature is being bamboozled by the pharmo-lords.
It's not a bad thing to arrest the call of nature. Anyone who's ever experienced a tough case of PMS (Pre-Menstrual Syndrome) will agree that natural isn’t necessarily best. However, for a lot of women going too far out of sync with the moon is something they are a bit fearful of. Maybe it's superstitious, maybe it's just an old-wives' thing. But if four periods a year is too few, what would they say about none?
Lybrel is the name of the pill being developed and tested, that will be taken 365 days a year, and be the effective eraser of the period as we know it. The researchers haven’t dotted the "i's" and crossed the "t's" yet, because not all the women using it have stopped bleeding completely; only about 60% had no period and full contraceptive coverage. A lot of women had some spotting, but then again, that happens with all pills.
Think about a sex life that is never interrupted by periods. For some women and their partners, bleeding raises the red flag, but not for all. There are those couples who like the idea of taking an enforced break from sex, just as there are others who get so horny during their periods that they look forward to the feeling.
This new pill is expected to hit the market in late 2007, and only then will it be clear just how many women will be willing to agree to this chemical disappearance act. It will be interesting to learn just how attached women are to our lunar cycles. Perhaps one gets attached to something they spend their entire adult life badmouthing.
Well it's good to know that medicine is continuing to search for new directions in contraception, offering women new opportunities and maybe even new levels of safety. But here is a suggestion: how about a pill that lets us bleed (after all, once we survive puberty, the bleeding is the least of the problems) but releases us from the inelegancies of PMS and the period blues?
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