You don't need to take a week off the pill every month

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New info in the UK. Other places may be ahead of us on this...

New guidelines from the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH) confirm that there is no medical benefit to stopping your oral contraceptive for seven days. It's not medically neccessary. So why was it there in the first place?

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/8xy9qk/the-truth-about-the-pope-rule-and-the-seven-day-contraceptive-pill-gap

From what I remember (& i'm not going to bother looking up sources again over a decade later), the off week is there to make it more socially acceptable for women to be on birth control because it seems more natural. It's never been necessary for monophasic pills to have a break. Triphasic pills I can't comment on. It's also completely unnecessary on the ring. To be fair, I've known women who would never agree to be on the pill w/o a period because "how else would I know it's working?" (<-- this logic doesn't make sense to me, but *shrug*)

Would not being pregnant not be an indicator that it's working

I do know someone who has to have the bleed because "it's natural to bleed"

I am very happy not to.

I don't like the breakthrough bleeding either. It's more blood than lining and makes me feel more like it's an unnatural bleed.

These women aren't all sexually active. HBC is used for more than preventing pregnancy. To be fair, I've also known women on hbc who always take a pregnancy test every cycle to ensure they aren't pregnant even if they do have a period.

Also, breakthrough bleeding isn't the off week "fake period" bleeding. Breakthrough bleeding would be that which occurs during one's regular active pill weeks. And if breakthrough happens frequently, one might need a different pill or form of bc.

Thought of another reason why women don't skip the period week: insurance. Many wouldn't cover a continuous script w/o a fight. One would need 18 fills (vs 13) since each pack would only cover three weeks. (This might've changed. Most women I know nowadays have an IUD or they or their partner(s) got fixed.)

I live in Scotland so I can obtain the pill for free (Well not really free, I pay through taxes).

I have pmt issues and taking the pill didn't help much, but I didn't take it continuously, so I'm wondering if I should try it again on a continuous basis.

Surely you'd know it was working if your PMS symptoms went away? I still don't see how bleeding shows it works. I'd say it didn't work for me, pmt wise, yet was "working in the way it was intended".

I was on the pill (the three-week kind with the week break for menstruation, which was much lighter and easier to deal with than my period when not on the pill) for many years and then stopped about a decade ago because I was worried about what the hormones might be doing to me (I have a friend who was diagnosed with a kind of cancer that is exacerbated by the fluxuation of hormones, so I was a little paranoid from that). Since then I've developed some skin problems and issues with my immune system that make me wonder if I might be better off going back on the pill, if my doctor agrees. Doctors can be weird about these things--I remember when I was looking into getting my tubes tied my doctor was against it because "I might change my mind" even though I never wanted kids and that has not changed in all my years of being an adult woman.