New Choices for Daily Oral Contraceptives

13. May, 2009 Comments Off

A woman’s choice of oral contraceptives is her own. And because it is such a personal decision, I thought today would be a good day to discuss some of the new options out there for women. If you’re like most women, you probably dread those few days out of the month when “Aunt Flo” comes to visit. You get achey, bloated, irritable, have headaches and feel overall BLAH. Well now there is a pill that you take just as you would your usual birth control pills (mimicking a 28-day cycle). The only difference is that instead of getting a period 12 times a year, you only get it 4 times a year. These extended-cycle birth control pills contain active hormones for every day of the month, as opposed to your traditional pills that include a 21-day supply of active hormones and the last 7 contain a placebo. A few of the new extended-cycle pills you can ask your doctor about are:

Lybrel. This is a low-dose pill that should be taken continuously for one year and is meant to suppress all bleeding.
Seasonale and Seasonique. With both of these, you would take an active-hormone pill every day for three weeks. The last week you would take a placebo pill (Seasonale) or a low-dose estrogen pill(Seasonique). You will experience bleeding during that last week.