4 periods a year?!?!

I normally frown upon this level of brown-nosing, but I love you for that statement.

I depo and the way I haven't had a normal period for... damn, like 7 years!
Honestly, I have a HUGE problem with my womanhood and I hope that birth control has fucked my reproductive system. When I used to have periods, they were horribly painful, made me ill, and caused suicidal depression afterwards.
I, for one, welcome any method of stopping that supposed "natural" process - for me, hating yourself to the point of death once a month is not "natural".

Sounds awful to me.

Word. I just switched from the pill to Depo, and it's amazing how my mood has leveled out.

Biologically and anthropologically speaking you're wrong. Nomadic hunter gatherer societies, like the cave dwellers to which you refer couldn't support a woman having a child more than once every four years. The idea being a woman can't carry more than one child. When you're on the move, you have to wait until a child is around 4, and able to walk at the same pace as the tribe until you can have another child. Societies such as this kept the population down by breast feeding longer (which isn't 100%, but can cut down on the incidence of pregnancy), abortion, and infanticide, and other methods. Pregnancy is not a default state. It wasn't until much less primitive, sendentary societies arose that woman could afford the "luxury" of having a child more often. (My source on this is Guns, Germs, and Steel by biologist/anthropologist Jared Diamond.)

Asside from the pregnancy/breast-feeding argument, nutrition can also be a deciding factor in whether or not a woman gets a period every month. It's only fairly recently that most people (in the west, at least) started getting all the vitamins and nutrients we need to be healthy... and as most ladies can tell you, when we're stressed out or seriously ill, periods can get wonky or disappear completely until we're healthy again. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Nice throw.

I'm currently rockin' the Seasonale.
It's my way of telling my ovaries that I'm in control, dammit.
Seriously, though, they talk about cramping and breakthrough bleeding but I've yet to see it.

As far as I can see, it's just as safe as any other birth control pill.

One drawback, however, is that if you do get pregnant, you may not know for up to three months. That may be a problem.

i love depo.
Ive been on it since i was sixteen, and yes no periods. i first went on it because i was young and kept forgetting my pills. my mom had an IUD and so we looked into finding me something I wouldnt have to think about everyday. thats when i found out about depo. .
(sappy music starts playing)

honestly, though, last year i bought into what my girlfriends were telling me about how it was weird that i didnt have my period anymore. i switched back to the pill and i was never so hormonal. not to mention i started getting these weird migranes.

ive asked numerous doctors about the no period thing and they've all told me that theres nothing "unhealthy" about it, but i feel like its more of a pshycological thing. if it fucks with your head to not go through a cycle each month dont try depo. otherwise check it out because its really very convenient.

Let me see if I can be more clear. I'm not saying you are cavewomen, nor should you be. I'm simply saying that human beings in the modern world (not just women) do not live a strictly "natural" life style, and therefore saying something isn't "natural" isn't necessarily a valid reason to shy away from it. There are many diseases, conditions and biological processes that we have to deal with that weren't relevant when evolution was shaping our physiology, like diabetes, obesity, anorexia, lung cancer, tennis elbow, ADHD, and, for the most part, regular and repeated cycles of menstruation without pregnancy. I don't care how advanced we've become technologically, we are not divorced from the life cycle of our animal bodies.

Nature cares about one thing and one thing only, passing on genes, and therefore everything about our natural systems is geared towards ensuring that. Why does sex feel so good? So we'll fuck! If it didn't feel good, we'd all be playing racquetball every Saturday night, and the species would be in danger.

Thousands of years, sure, which on the evolutionary scale is a fraction of a hiccup, and infertility is by definition irrelevant .

Just because something is "unnatural" doesn't mean it is bad, and just because something is "natural" doesn't mean it is good.

You must not understand my point, because everything you said here pretty much backs it. Breastfeeding suppresses the menstrual cycle. So does pregnancy (obviously). Hunter-gatherer women would not be having a whole lot of periods, because most of their reproductive lives they would be either pregnant or breastfeeding. Modern women do have a lot of periods, because they have the freedom to choose not to get pregnant due to technological and societal advances. Therefore, women having to deal with a lot of periods is an issue that arose out of our advancement from our primitive, or natural, state.

Olivia, I am not saying that women's, or anyone's, bodies are unnatural. I am saying that the LIFE STYLE we all live is not natural.

You work on the computer a lot, ever gotten carpal tunnel syndrome? Why do people get it? Because our bodies aren't designed to work at a keyboard all day, evolution didn't shape us to do that. Does that mean we should all stop using computers? Of course not, but we must accept that the risk of carpal tunnel is a consequence of our choice to do things evolution did not shape us to do.

Likewise, evolution didn't shape us not to breed, it shaped us to breed, just like the birds and the bees and the bacteria. To not do so is a choice we make, in my personal view usually a rational, responsible, wise, and good choice. Even so, in making that choice, we must accept that we are going against what our bodies are designed to do.

Evolution designed me to squat in a freezing bog, but that's something I haven't done in years, and frankly, I'm not tormented by that decision.