A Pill To Stop Female Menstruation

skinney writes: "Preliminary findings now suggest that it may be possible in the near future to reversibly suppress menstruation using new progestin antagonists, a class of drugs that includes the controversial abortion pill RU-486." If these pills make it to human trials and then to market, I wonder how much longer it would take for them to become over-the-counter.

Comments

Not so new, really

[Galvatron]

In addition to RU-486, the same chemicals are in your run-of-the-mill birth control pills. In fact, you can get the same effect as RU-486 by taking a bunch of birth control pills at once. Don't know the dosages exactly, but I'm sure it's not too tough to find out.

Anyway, my girlfriend already prevents menstruation by just taking the pill month-round. Ordinarily, one week of the pill is just a sugar pill, but if you instead take the full strength pills the whole month, you can prevent menstruation. My guess is, this is more or less the same idea.

A couple notes for those of you who want to try this at home: first, yes, it is considered safe. My girlfriend has discussed it with doctors, and originally read about it in a medical article (her father's an ER doctor). In fact, girls really shouldn't be menstruating all the time. Up until a century ago, women would basically spend half their time pregnant from puberty to menopause (or until they died in child birth), so what's going on now is pretty unnatural.

Second, make sure you have full strength pills. Many pills have stepped dosages, so only one week would actually be full strength, two weeks would be partial strength, and one week is just a placebo. You need the ones with 3 constant dosage weeks, and one placebo week. Just toss out the placebo week and keep taking the regular pills.

Third, 9 weeks seems to be the limit for my girlfriend. After going through 3 sets of pills, even if she continues taking full strength pills, she goes into menstruation. YMMV, but this is probably not something you can do forever.

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

argh

[tunesmith]

Hasn't anyone stopped to think that menstruation is a normal, cleansing part of a woman's cycle? So lame that it's seen as nothing more than an inconvenience. In older spiritualities, pagan, native american, etc, menstruation was seen as sacred and a way for women to connect with their inner selves. It's sad that it as seen as nothing more than an inconvenience now.

I can understand "exceptions" where some women's systems make menstruation some sort of risk, but this is obviously going to be marketed to all women in some sort of floaty commercial with muted pastel colors exhorting women to exercise their newfound FREEDOM...

tune

Used as a lifestyle choice, this worries me.

[RhetoricalQuestion]

Regarding both forms of this drug:

Many existing forms of hormonal birth control stop or greatly reduce menstruation (and its lovely side-effects) already. The Pill is often used on women who have severe cramps, and usually greatly reduces flow. (It's been described as going from a gush to a drizzle.) Similarly, Depo-Provara (the Shot -- a needle every 3 months) has a very common side-effect of stopping menstruation completely. While both of these have problems associated with long-term use, this article doesn't tell me what I'd really like to know -- how is this better than my current choices?

The stopping menstruation without stopping ovulation does sound interesting, but I have to wonder about its side-effects. Without the build-up in the uterus, couldn't this lead to more ectopic pregnancies? And if you were to become pregnant while on this drug, how would you know? (It's very dangerous, for example, to take birth control pills while pregnant.) And couldn't the continued use of this drug while pregnant have adverse side-effects?

I applaud their goal of trying to reduce endometriosis and the number of hysterectomies performed (both my mother and my mother-in-law underwent this) but I worry about this as a lifestyle choice.

Frankly, I'd like to see some more work on developing birth control for men. My SO and I don't want children. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at doing things on a schedule. I was on the pill -- but after a few months I started forgetting to take them so often that it became useless. I can barely remember to get my oil changed every 3 months, let alone get a shot -- and I hate doctors anyway. And the Norplant (implant which provides birth control for 5 years) has some extremely adverse side-effects. (Most women experience CONSTANT bleeding.) My SO, however, is much more organized; I'd trust him to take a pill every day over me. Unfortunately, there's nothing available.

Thinking back to my single life, though, I don't think I'd ever be able to trust any guy who said "Relax babe -- I'm on the pill"