My doctor told me that a woman must have at least 4 bleeds a year or she risks various kinds of uterine cancer, no matter what kinds of hormones you take.

I doubt that drug that’s up for FDA approval will get approved. And if it does, I’m sure any doctor who has any sense will realize how little research/understanding about women’s cycles exists and not trust it. (They don’t even know what causes or how to actually treat polycystic ovarian syndrom!)

I did google and google and found some medications that claim they can eliminate periods, but none that I found listed the health risks, and all of them said break-through bleeding was still relatively common. Most of them involved two kinds of birth control used simultaneously (pills+ring), which means they’re hella incovenient too.

Anyway, you just encouraged me to get my BC education. This was fun.

http://www.wyeth.com/news/Pressed_and_Released/pr06_02_2004_09_39_48.asp

And as for the creative uses of pills not designed for this, I’m by no means knowledgable on the subject, and I’m sure you know more about it than I do. It was just my impression from friends that they didn’t have any periods, period (pun definitely intended :) I suppose I could have misunderstood, of course. I was told that with most types of the pill, you could just replace the week of blanks with actives from another pack. The rationale being, as noted by the source below, that:

“With continuous hormonal use the lining of the uterus does not thicken and thus there is nothing or very little for the uterus to empty.

http://www.fwhc.org/birth-control/continual-hormones.htm

Of course, I’m not sure how reliable that information is, since a quick google review of at least semi-respectable-looking medical sites seems to come up about 50-50 on the issue of whether or not the uterine lining thickens while on the pill.

Either way, due to my inherent laziness, I’ve given up delving deeper into that mystery, favoring sleep instead.

They can’t do that with the pill anyway. There is breakthrough bleeding after a few months because the lining gets too thick. if it gets infected, you’re fucked, so no doctor would ever give a girl BC without explaining that she needs to menstruate.

The pills don’t stop the lining from forming, so there must be menstruation. they just stop ovulation, or implantation depending on which type.