New Birth Control available for Women

A new type of birth control pill that will alleviate women of the often dreaded 12 menstrual cycles a year, and instead make them quarterly has many women wondering if it is safe; practitioners say it is. Designed by a female doctor and approved by the FDA in May 2006, Seasonique is an extended-regimen birth control pill that is fashioned to reduce the range of time between menstrual cycles by allowing women to take 84 days of active pills and seven days of low-dose estrogen pills. The typical birth control pills are fashioned for women to take three weeks of active pills and one week of placebo pills. Pituitary gladsare at the base of the brain that produces a number of hormones and oversees hormone production by the sex glands such as the ovaries in women. The hormones tell the ovaries to ovulate. "Birth control pills work like a buffer to the pituitary glad "said Karen Blackburn, CANP, nurse practitioner at the Georgia State Clinic. "When you are on birth control pills, it overrides that stimulus so you do not ovulate; so if you do not ovulate, you do not have a period because the lining of the uterus does not form." The question that most patients ask next is "why do I still have a period?" The building of lining in the uterus occurs when women (who do not take birth control) ovulate. If the eggs released during ovulation are not fertilized within a month, the body sheds the build up. However, women on birth control have the "pill period," which not the actual menstrual cycle. The "pill period" occurs because of the withdrawal of hormones when the active pills are completed. "We make the period," said Blackburn. "In essence, when you take birth control pills where you have three active weeks and one placebo week, it is the same thing as taking three months of active weeks and then one week (of placebo). It is not going to be any heavier; it is not going to be any lighter." The health aspect of the absence of a "real" menstrual cycle is a concern of some women. Dr. Susan Rako, founder of Women's Health on Alert, stated that nonstop use of the birth control pills with potent estrogen designed to lengthen the time between periods, results in women having less available natural testosterone in their body, which can result in "suitable to severe consequences." According to Blackburn, many years ago people thought that birth control pills caused a lot of health problems, but in actuality those issues occurred for other reasons. For example, smoking while using birth control pills aids in the development of blood clots that could eventually reach the vital organs. Another factor that Blackburn said causes issues that is misconstrued with the use of pills in regards to infertility is sexually transmitted diseases. "Eighty percent of people who have Chlamydia do not have symptoms (both men and women) and do not know [they have it]; it can scar the fallopian tubes." Blackburn said it is actually healthy not to produce the lining in the uterus "because that is where you develop uterine cancer; we know that it is a lower incidence of uterine cancer in women who take birth control pills than in women who do not." "For folks that have polycystic ovarian syndrome or women who have very, very irregular periods, it would be good for them to regulate themselves because we are not sure if they are ovulating. If they are, we are in trouble because that lining is building up and that is where the danger is." Leola Reis, vice president of communications for Planned Parenthood of Georgia, cites other benefits to taking Seasonique. "Research around the health benefits is related to some really interesting studies that the reproductive technology folks have been undertaking for quite some time, and what they are finding is evidence that would indicate that having a bunch of periods in your life isn't such a great thing for you. "Let's talk about our great-grandmothers that lived 100 years ago. They didn't live as long and they had more children, so they had more pregnancies, which meant that they had fewer menstrual cycles. Some of the evidence shows that some of the cancer rates could be related to the up and down menstrual cycle. So there is a body of evidence to suggest that there is no real health benefit to having a period." Seasonique was a follow-up to Seasonale, which hit the market two years ago but virtually has the same affect (the level of estrogen is what makes them different), but both Reis and Blackburn said that the concept is not new. "The use of birth control pills to eliminate or reduce the number of periods had been a fairly common practice for quit a number of years," said Reis. "Sometimes it was just a practicality for women who were traveling, women going on their honeymoon, or athletes who did not want to be menstruating during certain events." Blackburn and Reis agree that Seasonique is not for everyone. "The active ingredient in Seasonique is a form of progesterone that if women have problems with acne or weight gain, it increases the androgen affects of the body so that releases more testosterone, so you get more problems with acne. "So if you get a gal that comes in because they have problems with acne, this would probably not be the first pill I would put them on." But for ladies with severe symptoms like migraine headaches and other pre-menstrual symptoms, "they would probably benefit from not having a (cycle) so often."

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