Actually, a lot of the birth controls that I've encountered are on a 24/4 day cycle to try and make it gentler on your system. Each birth control I've been on has also had very specific instructions on what to do when you miss a dose and it's nowhere near that simple (the instructions for a missed pill took up over 4 pages in one of the pamphlets I got). I find the no long term side effects bullshit. My mother was diagnosed with estrogen based breast cancer 3 years ago and NONE of my doctors will even entertain the thought of putting me on anything other than the absolutely lowest estrogen dose out there and the only reason they're entertaining *that* thought is because I'm on birth control for a medical necessity. Given my mother's medical history they wouldn't want me on birth control at all if I didn't need it.

And my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer as well but the doctor said it was because she had a hormone imbalance. The doctors think that if she would have been on birth control at some time in her life her hormones would have balanced out.

having twenty days on and eight days off still means you skip a day that you would normally be taking it, and skipping a day here is (with most pills) the absolute worst time to miss one. if you have already been taking the pills for, say, fourteen days, missing one won't increase the risk of pregnancy by much (if at all), but, while you can safely miss seven days for a period at the end of the month, missing one immediately or soon after this makes a woman much more likely to ovulate, and thus makes her more susceptible to falling pregnant. of course there are many types of pills so not every kind works in this way but this is how most of the common types work. ideally you shouldn't skip days at all, but it's better to skip one in the middle than to have eight days off (if there is no other option). hell, i'd rather take the dog-saliva-covered one than have an eight day break! although if the OP takes them for medical purposes and not for contraception then possibly it would be perfectly fine for her to skip one or to have eight days off.

Actually, if you start the placebo pills a day early, and start your next pack on the same day you would normally, you'd only need the back up method for a week (according to the pack I have).

Actually, I think it's more like 5%, but I agree. I was about to comment on 95 when I saw this one. Your chances of getting pregnant if you miss a day are LOW, but they're still higher than if you DON'T miss a day. Same with your chances of getting pregnant if you take the pill one day at 9 am and the next at 9 pm. This is actually why I'm not personally on a once a day birth control method, because my schedule is erratic and I don't want a baby.

i think "shut the **** up" was a bit harsh. it is true that all pills are different, but i think most people were speaking on a general basis.

TWENTY of the pills are placebos?! That's more than two-thirds of a woman's cycle. You've got to be ******** me. Where did you even get that from? That wouldn't be effective at all. There's about a week's worth of placebo pills, since that's the amount of time a woman menstruates. You'e in no place to criticize other people for their lack of knowledgte.

You clearly don't know what a placebo is. Placebos are used for medical studies, they're not given to general patients.

actually, in most birth control pills, there are twenty-one proper pills, for the three weeks of the month that a woman doesn't menstruate, and then the woman takes seven days off from taking the pills in order to have a "period". to make it easier for a woman to keep in the habit of taking the pills, the packets often contain seven pills that are just something like sugar (some are iron tablets) so you can continue to take one each day as normal. so they aren't exactly a placebo in the sense of being a "control" for a medical experiment, but they are similar in that they are a pill that doesn't actually do anything. obviously taking these is optional. ps: i know that not EVERY type of pill works in exactly this way, some have different amounts of pills, in some there is one week with a lower dose of hormones, etc, but this is how most common types work.

Definition from the American Heritage Dictionary: Placebo - a substance containing no medication and prescribed or given to reinforce a patient's expectation to get well. Definition from Random House Dictionary: Placebo - a substance having no pharmacological effect but given merely to satisfy a patient who supposes it to be a medicine. They are not just used in experiments although that is one use. I admit I had the 20-day assbackwards in my comment, but some of you people come off as really dumb when you try to correct usage, grammar, and spelling in people's posts as some kind of gotcha. You really don't know what you are talking about.