Actually, I've done a lot of reading on the subject of menstruation and birth control in the past years, and I'm fascinated by the evidence that suggests that the monthly menstruation model may be wrong.
For one thing, the modern Pill was developed by a Catholic doctor who was looking for a form of birth control that was more effective than condoms, but would also be accepted by the Vatican as "natural." He based his idea of "natural" on both Christian theology and a mid-twentieth century model of female health - some of which ideas have since been overturned. Another consideration is that the modern diet, hormones and food additives, and poorly understood chemical interactions (medications, shampoos, pesticides, etc.) mean that modern women can start bleeding as early as 8 (!) and continue until their 50s - but until the last hundred years, a woman normally started menarche in her late teens and ended by her forties. Our bodies really weren't designed to have as many periods as we now do.
I used to have a lot of this research bookmarked, but I lost my IE and Firefox favorites when I reformatted my hard drive. The only one I can find offhand is here, but if you're interested I'll look for more.
Whether "ending the period" as described in this article is healthy or not - I don't know, but I don't have the knee-jerk objection that it isn't "natural." I'd love to do more research.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2005-12-30 02:18 pm (UTC)For one thing, the modern Pill was developed by a Catholic doctor who was looking for a form of birth control that was more effective than condoms, but would also be accepted by the Vatican as "natural." He based his idea of "natural" on both Christian theology and a mid-twentieth century model of female health - some of which ideas have since been overturned. Another consideration is that the modern diet, hormones and food additives, and poorly understood chemical interactions (medications, shampoos, pesticides, etc.) mean that modern women can start bleeding as early as 8 (!) and continue until their 50s - but until the last hundred years, a woman normally started menarche in her late teens and ended by her forties. Our bodies really weren't designed to have as many periods as we now do.
I used to have a lot of this research bookmarked, but I lost my IE and Firefox favorites when I reformatted my hard drive. The only one I can find offhand is here, but if you're interested I'll look for more.
I got this from section 2: ... "the basic pattern of late menarche, many pregnancies, and long menstrual-free stretches caused by intensive breast-feeding was virtually universal up until the "demographic transition" of a hundred years ago from high to low fertility. In other words, what we think of as normal--frequent menses--is in evolutionary terms abnormal." (The New Yorker, 2000)
Whether "ending the period" as described in this article is healthy or not - I don't know, but I don't have the knee-jerk objection that it isn't "natural." I'd love to do more research.