The internet is rife with ways to stop your period for a night. Do any work–and are they safe?

Whether it’s for an upcoming vacation, a wedding (and honeymoon!), a work trip, or a job interview, most women have experienced the desire to stop or delay their period for a little while. While wanting to delay a period is certainly understandable and may be very tempting, trying to do so can have serious consequences, as actress Sydney Sweeney learned the hard way last year. 

Stopping your period with a combo of NSAIDs and birth control: A cautionary tale

In a recent interview with Cosmopolitan, 24-year-old Sweeney described what happened when she tried to delay her period because she had a lingerie photo shoot scheduled for an ad campaign. She explained, 

“I did not want to put a tampon in because I didn’t want to be bloated in the photos. I googled that you could take, like, three or four pills of birth control and mix it with Advil or Tylenol and it’ll make you stop your period.” 

An hour after ingesting the potent combo of NSAID drugs and birth control pills, Sweeney said she felt “dizzy and nauseous.” Eating food in a bid to settle her upset stomach only made things worse. She told Cosmo, 

“All of a sudden, I threw up in the middle of this shoot, everywhere. I was a mess. I felt so embarrassed. I was jacked on so many different hormones. And I was appalled at myself because I’m always so on top of it and professional. I had to go home.” 

Are there natural ways of stopping your period?

Presumably, given a do-over, Sweeney would do things differently. But are there other, safer means of stopping your period? 

As it turns out, the internet is rife with all sorts of questionable DIY ways for delaying or stopping your period (including, somewhat bizarrely, with lemon). 

While so-called “natural” methods for delaying a period include eating lentils or consuming large amounts of lemon juice, lime juice, or apple cider vinegar, none have any solid research to back them up. The effectiveness of these methods essentially amounts to hearsay, along the lines of “old wives’ tales.” Worse, these so-called “natural” methods of stopping your period may in fact cause other problems, such as irritating the “gums, teeth, mouth, throat, stomach, and intestines.” 

What about stopping your period with just birth control? 

So, attempting to stop your period by drinking vast quantities of apple cider vinegar, or ingesting a potent combo of multiple birth control pills and NSAIDs, are all clearly bad ideas. But what about the recommendations from reputable medical sources advising women to ask their doctors about stopping their periods with birth control? 

A Cleveland Clinic article titled “6 Safe Ways to Stop Your Period,” does exactly that. The article quotes OB/GYN Dr. Stacie Jhavieri as saying that skipping periods is “actually very safe, if done correctly.” However, the “6 safe ways” referenced in the title are actually just six different forms of hormonal birth control, and Dr. Jhavieri’s recommendations mostly amount to skipping the placebo pills found in birth control pill packs. (Taking the placebo pills as normal is what gives women the hormonal withdrawals that result in a monthly bleed–which they may consider their “period,” but which isn’t technically a period at all!)

It’s true that Dr. Jhavieri’s recommendation makes more biological sense than tripling up on birth control pills and NSAIDs like Sweeney did. After all, that’s what your birth control does: stops you from ovulating, which stops you from menstruating, all by overriding your natural cycle with a steady dose of synthetic hormones (for as long as you’re taking it). But each method of birth control still comes with side effects of its own, and the Cleveland Clinic article acknowledges that there’s still “a chance of breakthrough bleeding” with each one.

Furthermore, the Cleveland Clinic article disappointingly makes little distinction between stopping your period for a month versus for multiple months or continuously, failing to mention that ovulation⁠—again, which hormonal birth control aims to prevent⁠—has important impacts on women’s brain, breast, heart, immune, and bone health. In other words, women need to have periods, and skipping a period (and ovulation) simply isn’t the benign decision Dr. Jhavieri makes it out to be. 

Here’s a novel idea: What if we paused our commitments instead of our periods?

What if, rather than forcing women’s bodies to conform to a male-normative world without periods or cyclically fluctuating hormones, women’s fertility was respected and honored at school and in the workplace? This could look like understanding that women might want to take things a little easier while they’re on their periods. As Natural Womanhood editor Grace Emily Stark commented, “Imagine a world where Sidney Sweeney felt comfortable telling her agent, ‘I can’t do this photo shoot today, I have my period,’ without there being a stigma about it?” Even better, what if a woman “knew when she could expect her period when the shoot was scheduled, so she could plan around it?” 

That’s where fertility awareness comes in. Teaching young girls fertility awareness when they reach puberty opens their eyes to the intricate, powerful design of their female bodies. Once they know that their bodies were made good, they learn the value of what Wholistic Feminism author Leah Jacobson calls “the feminine superpowers” of ovulation, gestation, and lactation; once women understand this, it empowers them to categorically reject the alteration, suppression, and destruction of their fertility via contraception. 

A society that values the incredible contribution women make in and through their bodies will logically spillover into school and workplace policies that flex to accommodate the changing needs of women’s bodies throughout their reproductive lives, and even throughout the four phases of their cycles. The latter is known as cycle syncing, which recognizes the biological realities of the female body: women’s energy levels, moods, and nutritional needs vary over the course of their cycles.

As Grace Emily Stark noted, “when women are in tune with their bodies through fertility awareness methods and cycle syncing, they are better able to accommodate the big things that really are unchangeable in their work schedules, personal lives, etc.” When women are in tune with their bodies, rather than in autopilot mode as encouraged by hormonal birth control, they can eat, exercise, and work more mindfully to optimize each cycle phase and give themselves grace when, for instance, they have important tasks or events that can’t be rescheduled or delegated during their periods. 

A note on when to see a doctor….

I’d be remiss to end this article without acknowledging that for some girls and women, all the advanced planning and cycle syncing in the world doesn’t help them cope while on their periods. For example, I have a friend who will not go out and do anything on the first or second days of her period because she simply feels too unwell (and she doesn’t want to take birth control). 

While some women seek to stop their periods with hormonal birth control because of heavy or abnormal bleeding or other cycle-related issues, hormonal birth control only masks symptoms without addressing root causes. But the good news is that you have more choices than suffering through painful periods or going on birth control: If your period makes you unable to “do life” while menstruating, seek help from a restorative reproductive healthcare provider. 

A great place to start is by signing up for a free 15 minute guidance phone consultation with a Natural Womanhood expert advisor, who can help you find a healthcare practitioner who will acknowledge and respect your uniquely feminine health and dignity. 

Additional Reading:

Cycle syncing: how to hack the hormonal shifts of your menstrual cycle

Natural Womanhood book review: In the Flo by Alisa Vitti

Losing weight after getting off the Pill: how to listen to your body’s cues as you begin cycling again