To most of us, Anya is that fabulous Buffy character, The Vengeance Demon, patron saint of women scorned. How fitting then, that Wyeth pharmaceuticals is introducing her namesake birth control pill, which stops periods altogether, come 2006.
Anya is taken year round, provides a flow of hormones non-stop, quells PMS, and prevents conception. Seasonale is a similar contraceptive; it gives you a seven day period at the end of 84 days.
But there are the side effects. Dr. Ellen Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania studied women using Anya and reported her results last October. She concluded that Anya "significantly" and "rapidly" quelled the effects of PMS in her subjects. So that's great. But what to make of this:
The only apparent negative side effect of Anya, in the initial research presented, is that women may experience irregular breakthrough bleeding, which can occur frequently during the first few months of use. At around seven months, the bleeding stopped for close to 50 percent of the women, although spotting still occurred for around 71 percent of the participants.
Think about it ladies. How many of you are happy to suffer "breakthrough bleeding" for seven months of your 12 month period-free year? Wouldn't you rather know when its coming instead of it coming up unannounced on you and wardrobe? Like, I don't know, every 28 days, nice and easy like the lunar cycle. Breakthrough, my ass.
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