The bane of women's existence

Tue, Sep 2nd 2014, 01:02 AM

Cramping, bloating, fatigue, irritability -- indications to women and girls that "Mother Nature's monthly gift" known as her menses is about to be dropped like a bomb. For many women, their monthly menses may be the bane of their existence; yet, they still find comfort in its presence. Sharon Smith (name changed) is one of those women who is plagued with excessively heavy and painful periods for whom finding a way out of menstruation would be a dream come true. But, to her, the idea of eliminating what she has become comfortable with since her early teenage years just seems unnatural and unhealthy.
"I've seen those commercials on television with women twirling and smiling about not having to go through their period for a few months because of the great birth control they are on. I even heard about one where you don't even get a period -- ever," said the woman who is in her 20s. "It's interesting to think about, and I even imagined I would love to try it too, since I have really bad periods that incapacitate me some months. But getting rid of my periods entirely? I can't shake the feeling that it just isn't right."
Smith is one of many women who are "on the fence" about taking the kinds of birth control that allow women to have their periods once every three months or less, because they believe having a period is normal, and interrupting their cycles, foregoing their periods for months at a time, is not normal; those who fall within this group often believe that taking these kinds of birth control would not be good for their bodies.
But one of the country's leading obstetricians/gynecologists, Dr. Reginald Carey, says contrary to popular belief, a woman having a monthly period is not as necessary or as healthy as most women are raised to believe.
"A lot of young ladies are brought up to believe that having a period every month is healthy and it induces some kind of cleansing to remove whatever they believe is in there that needs cleansing. However, the way the biological model is designed is really and truly for women to have as few periods as possible," said Dr. Carey, who practices out of the Ladies Medical Center on First Terrace, Centerville. He believes taking birth control that eliminates periods for long lengths of time may be beneficial to the growing number of women who opt not to have children earlier in life or those who want to control the number of children they have.
The myth
"There is still a myth that you need a period every month, even on contraception," said the medical practitioner. In fact, on [a television medical show], about 18 months ago they were talking about periods being bad for you or, rather, too many periods being bad for [feminine] health -- the reason being the increase of a lot of endometriosis cases [a condition where the lining of the womb gets outside of the womb and attaches itself to pelvic structure, ovaries or tubes, causing irritation] and complications that arise from them in women who choose to delay or limit their childbearing. This produces many internal mini periods in addition to the external monthly periods you see every month, which in turn is not good for you."
Endometriosis is associated with an overabundance of periods over the course of many years, especially during the early childbearing years. He said not every female will develop the condition, but about 70 percent will, and symptoms can range from mild to severe; in severe cases, the condition can cause scarring of the womb, ultimately rendering the woman infertile.
"[Doctors] were not facing an abundance of women having this condition when they were having children younger and eliminating periods naturally from pregnancies and breastfeedings," said the doctor. "We [medical professionals] are not saying that women should just go out and have a bunch of children to naturally avoid this problem if they really aren't ready for children yet. We are saying that if they are not going to decrease their periods naturally, the next best thing is to do it artificially with birth control pills like Seasonale/Seasonique, which allows women to have only four periods a year, or Lybrel, a relatively new birth control pill designed to be taken year-round without any placebos or pill-free intervals."
While it may not sound natural or even healthy to most women, the doctor said, when taking birth control tablets on a daily basis, women are already eliminating the natural swings in their hormonal levels that occur throughout their monthly cycles, which cause ovulation and menses. If a woman is not interested in having children, there is no need for her to have periods, he advised.
Benefits
The benefit of using the type of birth control that allows a woman to have a period four times per year is the reduction of the risk of developing endometriosis or similar conditions that can lead to scarring and infertility. Certain birth control may also be helpful in reducing or eliminating complications with menstruation, such as painful periods and tender breasts, as well as improving the look of skin and hair.
Dr. Carey says reducing the number of periods one has may seem shocking to the average female, but the reduction of menses is all based on the natural history of women; the idea of menstruation has become a bit skewed in today's society due to advancements in education, technology and family planning.
"In a lot of cultures, particularly in the Indian and the African cultures, young women, when they start seeing periods at the age of 12, 14 and 18, at the latest, they are married. This sort of activity happened in The Bahamas in the 1940s to the early 1960s as well, because the school-leaving age back then was 14 years of age. While young men were choosing vocations, callings or professions, young ladies were taught to be wives, [and] by 16 years of age, the young women were prepared for marriage. So at a very young age, a lot of women were having children from the age of 16 to 20," he said.
The obstetrician believes that, since most women were married and had children early, they naturally eliminated their menstrual cycles for extended periods of time. He said that, during those years, in many societies and before the invention of the birth control pill, women knew that if they breast fed "properly", the chances of getting pregnant would be reduced. As a result, women actively breastfed six to eight times a day for a minimum of two years per child, which meant that many of those mothers could go without seeing a period for two to three years, including the duration of their pregnancies, naturally.
That, he said, changed with the education revolution in The Bahamas. "Normally only people who had the money could send their children to school, high school or abroad to further their education. So when everyone started going to high school, it meant you left school at 16 or 17 years of age [instead of 14]. Some young ladies who could afford it even went to college. Instead of just focusing on getting married and having children, young women went out to get jobs. Now, in modern times, we are having less and less children per generation. We are down to 2.25 children per family in the United States or even one child in some cultures, compared to the times of our parents and grandparents, who, on average, had eight, nine or even more children."
Although Dr. Carey is an advocate of women taking birth control pills as a contraceptive measure with benefits to their reproductive health, he advised that, like any medication, birth control has potential side effects; there is the possibility of blood clotting that can lead to a pulmonary embolism -- as a clot can move from one part of the body, traveling through the veins and become lodged in the lungs, which can be life-threatening. The gynecologist said this was a more common occurrence when the pill was first introduced in the 1960s and the dosages were about 80 percent stronger than they are today.

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