Who Needs A Period?

By Sora Song Sunday, Sept. 07, 2003
    • Having a monthly period is a drag — and now, thanks to a new birth-control pill called Seasonale, it's unnecessary. Approved last Friday by the FDA, the pill contains the same ingredients found in the original Pill but works on a 91-day cycle instead of the traditional 28. Women take active pills 84 days in a row, then placebos for the final week, reducing the number of periods from 13 a year to just four.

    Though Seasonale is new, the idea behind it is not. Doctors have sometimes prescribed continuous birth control to suppress menstruation, whether for lifestyle reasons (before a beach vacation, say) or to avoid migraine headaches. One caveat: test subjects using Seasonale experienced nearly two weeks of bleeding during their first cycle. The spotting, however, diminished over time.