Menstrual Cycle v. No Menstrual Cycle Pt 3

The more and more I think about it, the more I feel that women should strongly look into whether unnaturally stopping your menstrual cycle is a good thing. Would you stop yourself from urinating? Would you stop yourself from having a bowel movement? Would you stop yourself from sweating? So unless you have to, why would you stop your menstruation? Again, I know first hand what's it's like to have a very heavy flow and I mean very heavy. I know it's tempting to want to just get rid of your menstruation so that you won't have problems with a heavy flow, or have concerns about soiling your clothes, or losing so much blood that you need a transfusion, with problems from fatigue from losing a lot of blood every month, taking iron pills so that you can replenish the iron in your body that's been lost, etc. All of those are real symptoms and real reasons to consider using a birth control method that you think will help you deal with the blood flow.


But I want you to ask your doctor whether taking birth control is in fact exacerbating your symptoms or whether taking this birth control will cause other more permanent problems?

I was on the Patch. And during a presentation where my radiologist and I were presenting on uterine atery embolization or uterine fibroid embolization (UFE), I asked him that same question and he said anything that has hormones in it will cause an imbalance of estrogen in your body which causes your fibroids to grow. Anything means food, birth control pills, and anything else that is known to have added hormones in it.

Some birth control has more estrogen in it than others he said; some have none and some have a lot. Some of it just depends on the strength of the birth control you use. So check with your doctor about whether the birth control you use is helping or hurting you and make sure you know the long term effects of stopping your menstruation. Again, in the sidebar of this blog are books on the subject of menstruation and birth control. Take a look at them and purchase them if you want facts about either.

Thedy B



Thedy B