Lybrel: No More Periods with this Birth Control Pill?

Lybrel is a new birth control pill manufactured by Wyeth. What is unique about Lybrel is that it is the first birth control pill designed to suppress menstruation altogether. The birth control pill itself is made up of two hormones: ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel. Both of these hormones are already used in most birth control pills.

The traditional pack of birth control pills has a week of placebo pills, designed to create a regular monthly menstruation period. Lybrel is designed to be taken every day, keeping the level of hormones high enough in a woman's body that she will not menstruate.

The premise isn't entirely new. In 2003, Barr Laboratories released a pill called Seasonale. As its name suggests, it was designed to reduce the menstruation cycle to four times per year. And while Seasonale was the first birth control pill designed to suppress menstruation to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, numerous other manufacturers followed suit.

This ability to suppress or banish menstruation isn't as new or scary as it seems at first glance. The week of placebo pills designed to create a menstrual cycle in the traditional birth control pills was more for cultural reasons than medical ones. From the very beginning, the birth control pill had the power to suppress menstruation. In fact, the week of placebo or so-called "sugar pills" merely stops the flow of hormones to create a phenomenon called "break-through" bleeding. The monthly symptoms and bleeding that a woman on birth control pills experiences isn't technically menstruation anyway.

A fertile woman's body releases an egg from an ovary every 28 days or so. This egg travels toward the uterus via the fallopian tubes. If the egg is fertilized, it will be implanted into the nice, thick nest awaiting it in the uterus. If the egg arrives unfertilized, both the egg and its nest will be washed out of the uterus via the monthly bleeding from the vagina. That is menstruation.