New Contraceptive Pill

[hmmm_tea]

So there's a lot in the news today about a new contraceptive pill that also stops women's periods. It's probably very easy for me to criticise this as I don't have to go through it once a month.

However, surely periods are just natural?

They may be unpleasant, but they're not an illness, why do we need to cure them?

I suppose it's the natural development of a society that reachs for the paracetamol every time they get a minor ache.

Comments

[mair_in_grenderich]

I missed the news, but there have been the injection and the implant thing for a while that are supposed to stop your periods.

Personally, I think the monthly reassurance that your contraception is working is rather nice...

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Sheesh, UK sex education is so terribly poor.

The current contraceptive pill, the combined pill, stops women's periods. All it leaves you with is a fake-period, a withdrawal bleed, that happens when you come off the pill for a week. As medical research developes, they've decided this is completely pointless, and are more prone to telling people to take the pills continuously and not have this fake-period.

Likewise, the depo injection, the implanon implant, and the mirana coil all often stop womens periods.

The is because contraception works by making your body think that you're pregnant. When you're pregnant, it's very hard to get pregnant again, your body stops releasing eggs, etc etc. Also, when you're pregnant your periods stop. This is Natural. It is Really Bad for the baby if the entire womb lining goes walkabouts every month.

Sheesh. You can decide the whole idea of contraception is unnatural if you like.

[mair_in_grenderich]

You can decide the whole idea of contraception is unnatural if you like.

IMLE men are uncomfortable with the idea of fucking around with hormones and "natural" rhythms, until a condom breaks...

*waits to be smited for making evil generalisations*

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

You can decide the whole idea of contraception is unnatural if you like.

Maybe I didn't phrase that very well. Have nothing against contraception.

It was just that the news this morning mentioned the new pill and then developed into a full discussion on how it stopped the womans period without any real mention of use for contraception.

[chess]

Having being told 'take the pills continuously', there are bad effects from not having the fake-period - I get Angry PMT by the end of the second pack if I run them together, so I went back to having fake periods.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

However, surely periods are just natural?

Well, if we're talking about what's "natural" for women In The Wild, as it were, they tended to be pregnant for about 9 months of every year, and breastfeeding for a while after then. Periods don't come back the second the baby pops out, for obvious biological reasons. So if it's "natural" you want, then a woman would only have one or two periods in her life, and spend the rest of it pregnant.

I'll pass on natural, but the point is, it's not natural for a woman to have a period every month between the ages of 11 and 40.

They may be unpleasant, but they're not an illness, why do we need to cure them?

First of all, as I've just explained, we're not trying to cure them, it's just a side effect of contraception. But even if we were... If your metric isn't trying to improve the quality of life for people what are you trying to do with your medicine? If people are spending two days every month unable to work, should we stand by and say "well, it's natural"? I can see we might not want to Tamper With Forces Beyond Our Control, but we have a fairly good understanding of how a womans reproductive system works nowadays, and I don't think she should be forced to suffer monthly pain and unhappiness just because it's natural (which it isn't). It's natural for men to grow beards, hmmm_tea, where's your facial hair?

[naath.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I've seen research somewhere that suggests that having a period every month for between 30 and 40 years is Bad For Women. Because 'naturally' they would be pregnant for much of that time. Not to mention that for many women periods are incredably painfull to the point where Usefull Work becomes impossible.

There is also research that says that spending 30 to 40 years taking fake hormones is Bad For Women.

So I guess that for me (given that I don't want to ever be pregnant) there as a choice between to Bad Things - hormones or periods for the rest of my life; given the NHS's refusal to sterlise young women I guess that I'll probably end up about half and half.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

That's a good point, hadn't thought about it like that.

Still not sure about this filling ourselves full of drugs to solve the problem, but as it's not an issue I face it's really none of my business what you all do.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

*grows beard*

[mair_in_grenderich]

yay! pictures!

[fluffle.livejournal.com]

we don't *need* to cure them. But I have friends, for instance, that regularly spend a couple of days a month curled up in pain in bed because it hurts too much to do anything else.

Natural, maybe. Debilitating, sometimes. That's why people want to do something about them. Not to mention the cost we women go through of sanitary products..

[mair_in_grenderich]

. o 0 { mooncup }

[chainmailmaiden]

Ha ha, you can so tell you're a man! ;-)

I can't think I've ever encountered a woman who wouldn't happily dispense with the monthly annoyance that is her period if she could. It's especially annoying for those of us who don't want children, as it ceases to have any relevance at all to our lives.

Lots of things occur naturally, cancer, macular degeneration, psoriasis, hernias... I could go on, but my point is natural doesn't always = good.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

I'm not questioning the fact that you'd want to dispense with it.

What I'm questioning is why we think the solution to all of life's little problems is to throw drugs at them?

[chainmailmaiden]

Well, we do have the choice of endometrial ablation, which destroys the lining of the uterus and therefore stops your periods. Or you can have a hysterectomy which also sorts the problem out nicely, unfortunately if you want kids then both of those options are out, leaving drugs as the only solution.

Even if you don't want kids and therefore wouldn't mind either of the above procedures, actually getting a doctor to agree to doing them would be virtually impossible unless you have a real medical need for them or are too old for periods anyway. Doctors are very reluctant to permanently remove a woman's ability to have children even when she's been telling them repeatedly for years she doesn't want them...

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

Doctors are very reluctant to permanently remove a woman's ability to have children even when she's been telling them repeatedly for years she doesn't want them

They do that to men in the equivalent situation, FWIW.

[chainmailmaiden]

Yup, I know. They took so long to give my husband an appointment on the NHS we gave up and he went privately in the end.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

So... things I don't want to know about my boss...

[chainmailmaiden]

Sorry ;-)

I tend to think everyone knows already, as we've always been so up front about not wanting children, but I guess that's not the sort of thing that generally comes up in conversations at work...

[sonicdrift.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't describe periods as a "little problem" nor compare stopping them to reaching for a paracetamol for every "minor ache". I think you're being very dismissive given you've never experienced them.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

OK, I picked a bad example to highlight my point, it just happened to be the one on the radio that got me thinking about it again...

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

I've never quite got this "natural" thing. Either humans and human endevour is part of nature, or all activity unique to humans is unnatural. I don't think that's a false dichotomy, it seems entirely arbitrary to make distinctions about what things count as "natural" or "unnatural" beyond that.

My view is that using tools to improve their environment is what people do, or "natural" if you must. Which is to say using technology to stop periods is just as natural a thing for people to do as using technology to stay warm or keep food fresh.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

Yes, vegetarianism could also be classed as "unnatural" and that doesn't stop me being one. Possibly a bad choice of words there...

[yellowrocket.livejournal.com]

I suppose the difference for me is that there is plenty of evidence that keeping warm, basic hygiene and other 'unnaturals' are beneficial, but that hormones are not well understood and prone to doing unexpected things when you're not looking and therefore messing with them might not be quite safe.

There are some circumstances where messing with hormones is preferable to the alternative - treating a dicky thyroid gland, for instance - but there are alternative forms of birth control available that don't involve filling the body with strange hormones...

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Ok, alternative methods of birth control that don't involve filling the body with strange hormones? What have we got?

Well, we've got condoms. They're not very good (highest failure rate of any contraception, isn't it?). They're enough faff to get on to have a negative impact on the actual sex act, which if you're not trying to get pregnant is the whole point of the thing. And oh, stuffing latex up your vagina isn't very natural, and can cause a whole host of allergies and reactions. Like thrush, which may not kill you, but can make your life hell, and definitely make you not want to have any sex at all.

So I'm not sold there. There's the cap, but that suffers from most of the condom problems.

Oh, and there's a coil. Now, even ignoring the fact that doctors don't like giving coils to women who haven't had a baby, or that the latest coils are coming with strange hormones as part of the package, or that the pro-lifers amongst us do worry that post-fertalisation contraception is a little bit evil, it is unnatural and possibly dangerous to stick a lump of metal in your womb.

So yeah, all birth control might not be quite safe. What do you want? Abstinence programs?

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

wrt to the pro-lifers I was under the impression that when having sex while protected by the pill there is still a good chance of some fertilisation each year... the reason there are fewer pregnancies is that part of the pills effect is to stop implantation.

Are you against contraception that doesn't contra-cept?

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Personally, I prefer to use pre-fertalisation contraception. Pragmatically I drew the line that it had to be trying to prevent fertalisation, nothing was perfect, and what we didn't know didn't hurt us.

However, I was very pleased to find out that recent scientific studies have shown not only the contraceptive pill, but also the morning after pill, to have no effect on whether or not a fertalised egg will implant whatsoever.

[yellowrocket.livejournal.com]

Yes, all birth control is unnatural and probably carries an element of risk. My opinion (and one with which you are welcome to politely disagree) is that the possible local effects of condoms or the cap are less hazardous to health than ingested hormones which reach every part of you via your bloodstream.

Nobody is trying to take your pills away from you...

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Well, it's always going to depend on the individual, but for me the hazardousness of a method isn't best evaluated just by considering the most harm it can do, but by looking at what harm it can do, and how likely that harm is. And risk in contraception is not just measuring how hazardous to health things are, but also whether you conceive or not. As well as social implications, both pregnancy and abortion are pretty hazardous to health.

I'd be very impressed to see you make a case that, all things considered, the pill is higher risk than condoms. Even if you use the "Cancer is the most evil thing in the universe" argument, the pill lowers the risk of ovarian cancer just as much as it raises the risk of breast cancer.

[yellowrocket.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I dunno.
I guess that I've read just one too many examples of scientists hailing hormone treatment as the best thing out and then, a few years later, saying, 'Oh blimey! We didn't realise they were going to do THAT!'. I'm therefore not quite comfortable about taking them myself voluntarily. I'm not just referring to the hormones in birth control pills either, I'm suspicious about all of them!
Hormones are complex beasties :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Natural is not "good". Though it's a decent first approximation default; if you don't know whether hormones or no hormones are good, you probably want to try no hormones first :) You can't experiment with all possible unnatural things just to see.

But if there's a reason (eg. not having pain once a month) and it happens to be reasonably tested, that's plenty of reason why it's great.