Lol, that is so funny. I have a plant at the shop in a planter by the bay door and I kept forgetting to water it where it was at. I told my husband that plant must be drought tolerant it hardly got watered all winter and him and all his friends died laughing. I was like what's so funny and JD said we water it for you all the time but not in a way you would like, lol. I just walked away. Its doing better than the one I water so maybe they have something there, lol.

Birth control pills may help mask menopause symptoms By TOM VALEO Published March 28, 2006 All women can expect to enter menopause sooner or later, but women taking birth control pills may not notice, at least for a while. In the meantime, they can expect several benefits from the pill beside avoiding an unwanted pregnancy: They will avoid some of the most conspicuous signs of menopause, such as hot flashes, night sweats and irritability. "A woman on the birth control pill is getting hormones at a level above what her ovaries would produce,'' said Dr. Catherine Lynch, director of General Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa. "When a woman goes into menopause, the ovaries basically shut down and no longer produce estrogen or progesterone in any significant amounts, so a woman taking the birth control pill in the standard fashion of three weeks on active pills, followed by one week of inactive pills, often won't have any symptoms of menopause until that pill-free week. She may not even realize she's in menopause because she's getting adequate estrogen and still cycling.'' During the week when she is not taking active birth control pills, the woman may even have a "withdrawal bleed" caused by the sudden drop in estrogen. A withdrawal bleed is easily mistaken for a normal period. And if the woman is taking continuous-use birth control pills, she will take inactive pills only one week out of every 12 instead of every four, so she will have a withdrawal bleed no more than once every four months. "So a woman who's, say, 51 and taking Seasonale one of the continuous-use birth control pills isn't going to have hot flashes or night sweats for 12 weeks, because she's having estrogen provided for her by the pills,'' Dr. Lynch said. "She may experience symptoms during the week she takes inactive pills, but just as symptoms start to climb, she starts taking active pills again, and she won't appreciate that these are symptoms of menopause.'' But that's not all. Taking birth control pills also seems to reduce bone loss. In fact, if the woman is also doing weight-bearing exercises and getting plenty of calcium, low-dose birth control pills may even help build bone density. Women on the pill also experience less iron deficiency anemia, and some studies suggest that the pill protects against benign breast disease, endometrial cancer and epithelial ovarian cancer. The Cancer and Steroid Hormone Study, the largest to investigate this last issue, found a 40 percent decrease on average of ovarian cancer in women who had taken oral contraceptives. The risk decreased as the amount of time on the pill increased, so women who had taken the pill for seven years or longer experienced a reduction in the risk of ovarian cancer of 60 to 80 percent. Some Women on the pill also experience less iron deficiency anemia, and some studies suggest that the pill protects against benign breast disease, endometrial cancer and epithelial ovarian cancer. studies suggest that oral contraceptives might even protect against colorectal cancer, uterine fibroid tumors, Alzheimer's disease and rheumatoid arthritis. Taking the pill has always meant an increase in the risk of blood clots, which can cause a stroke. But a woman who does not smoke, does not have high blood pressure, and takes a low-dose oral contraceptive can almost eliminate that additional risk. So why not just stay on the pill and enjoy all the benefits of hormone-replacement therapy, known as HRT? Because even low-dose birth-control pills deliver five to seven times as much estrogen as HRT. HRT simply gives the body back what the ovaries were producing before they were shut down by menopause. The birth control pill delivers a dose of hormones large enough to shut down the ovaries, and it's pointless for a woman to keep taking hormones after menopause has begun and she has stopped ovulating. She would be better off with hormone-replacement therapy, which would provide her with the same benefits but a lower dose of hormone. "The trick is figuring out when she is in menopause,'' Dr. Lynch said. "There are a couple of ways to test this, but they're not 100 percent reliable. She can go off the pill and see if she's still cycling, but if she's sexually active, there's an outside chance she could get pregnant. "While it's rare for pregnancy to occur at the age of 50 or 51, it can happen if you're still ovulating.'' Tom Valeo is a freelance writer specializing in medical and health issues. Contact him c/o Seniority, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731, or e-mail features at sptimes dot com. [Last modified March 28, 2006, 08:52:07] Here is a link that might be useful: from a Florida online newspaper

No I'm not a doctor. I suggest you ask your doctor what s/he means by "never go have to go through menopause." I *can* guarantee you that you will not remain reproductive for the rest of your life and that you will become post menopausal at some time - probably within the next 15 years. Whether the birth control pills keep the menopausal symptoms at bay during that time is very much an individual matter rather than a certainty. Once you have become post menopausal there are very few reputable physicians who would continue to prescribe the high doses of hormones present in oral contraceptives because of the risks these drugs pose in the post menopausal woman. So-called "hormone replacement therapy" contains much lower doses of both estrogen and progesterone and is thus safer than oc's.

I've seen so many discussions about this topic. And in almost every case, it was pretty obvious that most people were looking at the topic from their own experiences. Yes, for many of us, it's unthinkable that 11 year olds would be handed birth control pills or a supply of condoms. However, I've taught in an urban ghetto, as well as in a very expensive suburb. In the city, there was a school set aside for pregnant girls--but no high school students could get in, because it was filled with jr. high kids. And that was 35 years ago--things are MUCH worse there now. In the suburbs, we had lots of 7th graders having sex--many were charging for it (mind you, they were mostly from pretty well-off families). I feel this way about the question. A child from a family where they are teaching their children NOT to have sex at a young age, to be responsible--is going to have a really difficult time approaching those strict parents to ask for the pill, so if they think they need birth control, I'd rather they had the option of getting it from a trained health care worker. And the other side of the coin? The child who has parents who are uninvolved, maybe too poor to take the kid to the dr, even if they wanted to--well that child for sure needs to have access to birth control, if they think they might need it. Either way, more resources are always better than fewer--IMO.