Know how your body works

Knowing how your body works when you’re not using any hormonal birth control—whether it’s a pill, ring, or patch—will help you understand why having fewer periods is possible. When you’re not using hormonal birth control, you experience a menstrual cycle each month.

This cycle helps prepare your body for pregnancy. An early part of your menstrual cycle is ovulation—releasing an egg to be fertilized. Ovulation also causes the lining of your uterus to build up. If the released egg is not fertilized within a few days, your body sheds the built-up layers of the uterine lining.

This shedding is what you know as your menstrual period.

How your cycle changes with hormonal birth control

When you are using hormonal birth control—whether it’s a pill, ring, or patch—the bleeding you experience isn’t the result of a menstrual cycle. That’s because the hormones in your birth control prevent you from ovulating (releasing an egg), so without an egg, your body doesn’t prepare for pregnancy. (That’s how the Pill works to prevent pregnancy!)

As a result, your uterine lining doesn’t build up much, and there’s no medical need to shed it every month. The light, short bleeding that you experience on the Pill isn’t a real menstrual period—it’s actually a “Pill period,” which is due to the withdrawal of hormones in your active pills.

And it’s the reason having fewer periods is possible when you use hormonal birth control.