POSTED: 5:58 p.m. PST April 2, 2003

Micki Flowers
KIRO 7 Eyewitness News Health Reporter

It's something many women have tried: taking birth control pills continuously to suppress monthly cycles. Now new research provides some answers about the practice.

Birth control monthly packets are set up to provide women a week off the hormone so they can experience a monthly cycle.

But do women need to go through a monthly period at all? Local researchers put continuous contraception to the test.

Heidi Materi experienced heavy monthly bleeding and painful cramping. So she started on birth control pills.

"And that really eased that and stopped the cramps," Materi said.

But she joined a local study to see if her monthly periods could be eliminated entirely.

"It's not a horrible thing but it's not convenient either, and you just kind of have to worry about, like is my period going to start today, do I have everything I need," she said.

ObGyn Dr. Leslie Miller, who led the research, says many women experienced irregular bleeding during the first six months, but that changed.

"By six months, 70 percent had no bleeding and by one year it was 90 percent," Dr. Miller said.

Dr. Miller questions whether women who take birth control pills need to have a period at all.

"The period week on the birth control pill is not a natural period. You bleed that week because you didn't take the hormones," Miller said.

MORE INFORMATION American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Pill Manufacturer's Website

Miller said continuous contraception appeared to offer benefits.

"We did see fewer headaches, abdominal pain, there were fewer cyclic symptoms in the ones who do it every day."

Dr. Miller says continuous contraception doesn't seem to affect fertility after women go off the pill.

But she emphasizes, the Food and Drug Administration has not approved taking birth control pills this way.