Are they really just sugar? If so, why do they bother making them? Since you get a whole month’s set of pills at once, wouldn’t it be more efficient to block out their section of the packaging and say “Don’t take anything on these days” or something like that?
It’s all about habit. Taking one pill from this pack EVERYDAY is much easier to remember then taking a week off and having to remember to start back up again.
They sure don’t taste like sugar!
don’t ask me how I know this
When I was on the Pill, the brand I took did not include the non-Pill pills. The packaging only held 21 per tray, but there was a reminder in the middle to wait seven days before starting the next pack. So some brands do something similar, but apparently enough women prefer to stay in the habit taking a pill every day to help them remember that most brands give them non-active pills for those days.
I Have Been Told[sup]tm[/sup] that some versions of the Pill include seven iron supplements rather than sugar pills - on the theory that you’ll be bleeding that week anyway and so could use the extra iron. I have no idea if that’s true, however.
<hijack> Anyone happen to know how double-blind clinical trials for oral contraceptives might be run? I just can’t picture a company handing out placebo sugar pills to the test subjects</hijack>
xiix - double-blind trials for contraceptive pills would not necessarily be run against placebo. There are other ways of investigating drugs other than random, double blind, placebo-controlled trials. One might test a new brand of pill against another, similar, older brand (for side-effects or effectiveness) say, but not against a placebo. This is because we already know the drugs are safe and effective and effectively any new formulation is competing against formulations already on the market, not against nothing.
Alternatively, you inform all participants in the study that they might be receiving a placebo, and that they should use another method of contraception for the duration of the trial.
Studies done on DVT and breast cancer risks associated with the OCP were cohort studies- long term follow up of pills users versus non-pills users, comparing the rate of the disease under study in both groups over many years. This type of study has it’s own problems- the groups are self selected, i.e. there may be difference in the type of women who choose never to go on the pill that make them less likely to have DVT or breast cancer anyway.
In the UK and Europe BTW, most OCPs are 21 day formulations, not Everyday (ED packets). 28 day packs are available, but only in certain formulations and are usually only prescribed for women who are known to have an issue remembering to start a new packet after using 21-day packs, i.e. teenagers and women with memory or cognitive problems.
Nationalised health systems don’t like paying for sugar pills, and a lot of women, when told what they are, don’t bother to take them, so it’s seen as an unecessary waste of money. Since the first day of the new packet is always the same day of the week, it’s really not that easy to forget, you just go “I have my period, and it’s a Tuesday- must start a new packet this morning”.
I dunno, they used to taste pretty sweet and sugary to me…
The type my gf takes have some sort of vitamin for the last 7 days. I don’t think that there’s any contraceptive reason for this, they just figure that if woman are going to be taking a pill that week anyways, they mind as well give it some health benefits.
Joey P has the right of it for most people. It is just better that they stay in the habit of taking the pill every day at the same time, instead of having to remember when to start back up.
What I find amusing is that it’s been common knowledge since the Pill came out that if you ignore those sugar pills and just start a new pack during that week you can delay your period indefinitely. After what? almost fifty years, they’re marketing “Seasonale” which is just BC pills without the reminder pills in it and they’re trumpeting about how you can get down to only four periods a year.
My mom tells me that she used to use the delay trick to make sure she didn’t have her period while on our extended three week camping trips when I was a kid back in the '60s, and that her friends would also make sure in this way that they didn’t have an unwelcome visit during the honeymoon either.
I know women who don’t bother having periods at all using this method–there’s no really good reason why we should. Once you’ve accepted the risks of hormonal birth control in the first place it doesn’t make a lot of sense to go through the whole rigamarole of periods if you don’t actually HAVE to.
Do you mean the last pertains to a test for side effects? Because a test of the true efficacy of the product would be useless if the participants used another contraceptive method. If so, do they warn them that pregnancy will be possible?
Members of the audience who are thinking of trying this at home: keep in mind that the b.c. pills must be monophasic. People have also been known to have problems getting insurance companies to pay for the more-than-twelve packs of b.c. per annum that this necessitates.
Shoot, most people I know are having a hard enough time getting insurance to pay for it at ALL!
Crappy ass health care system, grump grump…
Here’s an odd thing: the birth control I take sometimes have seven iron supplement pills along with the 21 hormone pills, and sometimes just have the hormones, with blank spaces where the iron pills would go. It seems to be random which set (with iron or without) I get for that month. Other than that, the packets are the same. I guess it’s just which one the pharmacy happens to have when I get the new packet.
The Mad Hermit- tests for efficacy on birth control aren’t done against placebo. We already know how easy it is for the average woman to get pregnant if using no birth control at all, and such a trial would be unethical now that we know that contraceptive pills ARE effective and safe.
Efficacy studies for contraceptive pills are cohort studies. They follow up pill users who use no other method of contraception (except when directed to do so because of antibiotic use, missed pills etc) over a period of time and see how many of them become pregnant. This number is then recorded as the number of pregnancies per 100 women years , also known as the Pearl Index (i.e. how many pregnancies could be expected if 100 women used the pill for one year).
So far all the brands of combined hormonal contraception have Pearl Indexes of about 99-99.9% i.e. between 1 woman in 100 and 1 woman in 1000 would get pregnant every year if she used the pills as directed.
When I was on the pill, I could only go two months without a period using this method. If I tried more than two, I would get breakthrough bleeding which would continue until I had finished that pack of pills and had a ‘proper’ period. Believe me, I tried every which way, but the only way that worked for MY body was two months on, one week off.
YMMV of course.
If I skip even one month, I get cranky and out of sorts starting the week I skip until the period arrives. I also suffer horrible cramps when it does arrive. It easier to deal with three days of bleeding than a month of irrational anger and bad moods.
I can’t go more than six weeks on or I start spotting and feel horrible. But I do go an extra week, because my natural cycles are longer than 28 days. However, I’d say it’s worth a shot, because it works fine for a lot of women.
Yup, I’m with you ladies. Two packets run together= fine, three packets run together= hormonal bitch-queen from hell with the-worst-period-ever tm at the end of it.
So I’m a six weeks on, 1 week off gal.