I was on Seasonal for two cycles. The first cycle was rough because I had my period for two months of the three months.... The second cycle was great, I only had my period a week earlier than I was supposed to. Then, I chose to get the generic brand of Seasonal and I've started my period a month and a half earlier than I was supposed to. The only thing I can figure out is that the generic brand just isn't as effective as the name brand. Do you think that could be the case?
Sounds like Seasonal and your system are not playing nice. is there an expected "regulate" time period?
My gyno said that it will take one set of pills for my body to get used to it...and it did...until I switched to the generic brand of Seasonale...now it's all messed up again. I did take a few Nexium pills (samples) to control a stomach problem. Could that be the culprit instead?
I am not an expert, but the generic *should* have the exact same amount of hormones; they're regulated by the FDA so... maybe you need a totally different kind of BC. sometimes it takes a while to find the right one for you.
I had to go through several different brands of bc before finding one that didn't do bad things to my system. It sounds to me like the particular hormonal recipe of Seasonale is not working for you. If you didn't know, you can do the extended birth control method with any monophasic pill. So if Seasonale doesn't have the right balance/dosage of hormones for your body, you can still have only 4 periods a year. The big difference is that you will have to fill the prescription every 3 weeks instead of every 3 months (which could add up to a lot of money if you don't have insurance). As far as name brand vs generic, that generally shouldn't be a factor. But, it could be that for whatever reason they have the same level of the same kinds of hormones, but if they came from different sources they could affect a tiny percentage of people differently. My dad had that happen with generic vicoden once -- when he got it at one pharmacy, it did nothing, but the exact same dose from a different pharmacy did what he needed... He thought at first that a pharmacy tech was pulling some sort of scheme, but I took one of the ones that didn't work for him, and boy did it work for me! But, I have gone from name brand to generic on the same bc before (name brand Mircette) and didn't notice any difference (and I was doing the extended bc method with that at the time).
I was on Yasmin for years before I tried seasonale...and liked it, but was having terrible cramping during my periods. Now that I've been on Seasonale, the cramping isn't as bad.
