You can stop your period temporarily or long-term using hormonal birth control, prescription medications, or certain over-the-counter options that reduce flow. The approach that works best depends on whether you want to skip one cycle for an event, lighten a heavy period, or stop menstruating altogether for months or years. All of these methods are considered safe: suppressing your period has no medical downside, and withdrawal bleeding during a pill-free week isn’t necessary for health.
Skipping Periods With Birth Control Pills
The most accessible way to stop your period is to skip the placebo (inactive) pills in your birth control pack and start a new pack of active pills immediately. This works because the “period” you get on the pill isn’t a true period. It’s withdrawal bleeding triggered by the drop in hormones during the placebo week. If you keep taking active pills, there’s no hormone drop, and no bleeding.
This works best with monophasic pills, where every active pill contains the same dose of hormones. Multiphasic pills vary the dose throughout the pack, which makes continuous use trickier and more likely to cause spotting. If you’re unsure which type you have, check with your pharmacist.
Some pill brands are specifically packaged for extended use, giving you 84 active pills followed by 7 inactive ones, so you’d only get a period every three months. But you can achieve the same thing with any monophasic pill by simply discarding the placebo row and opening a new pack.
Dealing With Breakthrough Bleeding
Spotting is the main side effect when you first start skipping periods this way, and it’s the reason many people give up too early. The spotting typically decreases over the first few months. It’s not a sign the pill isn’t working. If you’ve been taking active pills for at least 21 days and the spotting is bothering you, you can take a 3 to 4 day break to let a short bleed happen, then resume active pills for at least another 21 days. Avoid taking breaks more than once a month, as that can reduce contraceptive effectiveness. Smokers tend to experience more breakthrough bleeding than nonsmokers.
The Hormonal Shot
The contraceptive injection, given every three months, is one of the most effective ways to eventually stop periods altogether. After a year of use, about 55% of people on the shot stop getting periods completely. It doesn’t happen immediately. Most users experience irregular bleeding for the first several months before their periods taper off and eventually disappear. If your primary goal is period cessation and you don’t mind a few months of unpredictability, the shot has one of the highest rates of achieving it.
Hormonal IUDs
A hormonal IUD releases a small amount of progestin directly into the uterus, which thins the uterine lining over time. About 18 to 19% of users stop getting periods entirely within the first year. That number is lower than the shot, but many more users experience dramatically lighter periods even if bleeding doesn’t stop completely. The trade-off is that hormonal IUDs last 3 to 8 years depending on the brand, making them a low-maintenance option if you want lighter or absent periods without thinking about it daily.
The Contraceptive Implant
The arm implant releases a steady dose of progestin and lasts up to three years. Bleeding patterns on the implant are less predictable than other methods. About 12% of users have no periods at 3 months, and that rises to roughly 25% by the three-year mark. However, some users experience the opposite: prolonged or frequent spotting, especially in the first few months. Irregular bleeding is the most commonly reported side effect. The implant can work well for period suppression, but it’s harder to predict how your body will respond compared to the shot or continuous pills.
Delaying a Single Period Without Birth Control
If you’re not on hormonal contraception and need to push back one period for a vacation, wedding, or athletic event, a prescription medication called norethisterone can do the job. You take a 5 mg tablet three times daily, starting three days before your expected period. Your period will be delayed for as long as you keep taking it, up to a maximum of 17 days. Once you stop, bleeding typically starts within 2 to 3 days. This is a short-term fix, not a long-term strategy, and it requires a prescription.
Reducing Flow Without Hormones
If stopping your period entirely isn’t the goal but you want it to be significantly lighter or shorter, two non-hormonal options can help.
NSAIDs like ibuprofen reduce menstrual blood loss by about 25% at standard doses (around 1200 mg per day, spread across the day). Naproxen performs similarly, cutting flow by roughly 30%. These aren’t going to make your period disappear, but they can meaningfully shorten a heavy period by a day or make a moderate one much more manageable. They work best when started on the first day of bleeding.
For heavier periods, tranexamic acid is a prescription non-hormonal medication that helps blood clot more effectively by preventing the breakdown of clots that form in the uterine lining. It’s taken for 4 to 5 days starting on the first day of your period and can substantially reduce heavy flow. It works fast, doesn’t affect your hormones, and is only used during the days you’re actually bleeding.
Fertility After Stopping
One of the most common concerns about suppressing periods is whether it affects your ability to get pregnant later. A large review of over 14,800 women found no evidence that long-term contraceptive use impacts baseline fertility. Within 12 months of stopping any hormonal method, 83% of women became pregnant, compared to 85 to 94% of women who hadn’t used hormonal contraception. The small gap is likely explained by a temporary delay in ovulation resuming, not by any lasting change to fertility. This delay is most noticeable with the shot and continuous pills, and less so with IUDs. By the one-year mark after discontinuation, pregnancy rates are comparable across all methods.
Choosing the Right Approach
- For one upcoming event: Norethisterone (prescription, start 3 days before your expected period) or, if you’re already on the pill, skip the placebo week.
- For ongoing suppression with daily control: Continuous birth control pills. You can restart periods anytime by taking a pill-free break.
- For the highest chance of no periods, hands-off: The contraceptive shot, with 55% of users period-free after one year.
- For long-term, low-maintenance lighter periods: A hormonal IUD, lasting years with minimal upkeep.
- For reducing flow without hormones: Ibuprofen or naproxen during your period, or prescription tranexamic acid for heavier bleeding.