Cramping, bloating, fatigue, irritability -- indications to females that "Mother Nature's monthly gift" known as her menses is about to be dropped like a bomb.  For most women, their monthly menses is the bane of their existence, but yet, they still find comfort in its presence.  Arleena Davies is one of those women who is plagued with excessively heavy and painful periods, and for whom finding a way out of her monthly torture would be a dream come true, but 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 28-year-old. "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."
Davies is one of many women who are "on the fence" about taking birth control which allow women to have a period every three months or not at all, because they believe having a period is normal, and interrupting their cycle and not having a period for months at a time is not normal, and that taking birth control that allow them to do so would not be good for their bodies.
But one of the country's leading obstetrician/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," says Dr. Carey who practices out of the Ladies Medical Center on First Terrace, Centerville.  He says taking birth controls that eliminate your period for long lengths of time may be beneficial to the growing number of women who opt not to have children earlier in life, or control the number of children they do have.
"There is still a myth that you need a period every month even on contraception," says 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, tubes and causes a lot of 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 overabundeance of periods over the course of many years, especially during the early childbearing years.  He says not every female will develop the condition, but about 70 percent will and symptoms can range from mild to medium to severe, in which case it 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," says Dr. Carey.  "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 allow 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 says when taking birth control tablets on a daily basis you are already eliminating the natural swing in your hormonal levels which occur throughout your monthly cycle that causes ovulation and menses.  He says if you are not interested in having children that there is no need for periods.
The benefits of using the type of birth control that allow you have a period four times per year is the reduction of the development of endometriosis or other similar conditions that can lead to scarring and infertility.  Certain birth control also is helpful in reducing and even eliminating menstrual problems such as painful periods, tender breasts and improving the look of skin and hair.
Dr. Carey says reducing the number of the periods one has may seem shocking to the average female but he says the reduction of menses is all based on the natural history of women and that 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 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. "
The obstetrician says since most women were married and had children early they naturally eliminated their menstrual cycles for extended periods of time.  He says 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 were not that great.   As a result, the doctor says women actively breastfed six to eight times a day for a minimum of two years per child which meant that many women could go without seeing a period for two to three years, including the nine months they were pregnant naturally.
That he says 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 advocats of women taking birth control pills as a contraceptive measure as well as a benefit to their future reprodcutive health, like any medication, he says birthy control in general has potential side effects --  the possibility of blood clotting that can lead to a pulmonary embolism, as a clot can move from another part of the body, travel through the veins and lodge in the lungs, which can potentially be life-threatening.  The gynecologist says this was a more common occurence when the pill first was introduced in the 1960s and the dosages were about 80 percentage stronger than they are today.
The medical practitioners says birth control measures like Seasonique and Lybrel are not as popular as the regular birth control pills locally yet, but he feels there is a lot of potential for them to become a staple in the near future.  He notices many women already take the regular birth control pills in the same manner as Seasonique or Lybrel so there is only time before women properly pick up on the new brands which are specifically designed to be taken for longer periods of time without breaks.

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