I’ve been doing the 21/7 method for 10 years now, and recently I was thinking about how they drill into us that we need to take it exactly the same time every day, or it’ll be less effective. Or when we miss it, it’ll be less effective. Make sure to use condoms for a week if we miss it more than twice. All that jazz. Women are told to opt for different methods of contraception if they aren’t able to commit to taking it 100% regularly.
From what I know, the pill works by keeping the hormone cycle steady, to prevent an egg from maturing. After 24h, there is a spike in some hormone which the pill normally keeps steady (I think it’s progesterone but not 100% sure), so we take the pill, and the hormones remain in tact.
Surely then by not taking it for 7 whole days would mess the entire thing up. How come the risk of pregnancy stays low after 7 days, if missing it for 1 day can increase it?
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The menstrual cycle is a complex interaction of hormones between the body and the egg. The contraceptive pill is only replacing half of that interaction, the egg. The body will produce all the normal hormones it does. And in a regular menstrual cycle there is a period where no eggs are producing any hormones while the body still produces hormones as usual. A lot of contraceptive pill prescriptions actually comes with placebo pills for this period to make the instructions simpler.
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