A New Bead on Birth Control

Behind This Funny-Looking Plastic Necklace Is Research That Could Restore the Much-Maligned Rhythm Method to Fashion

It looks like an uncommonly ugly necklace, made up of 32 oblong plastic beads. Slightly more than half are a translucent amber brown, a dozen are white, like piña colada jelly beans. One bead in the center is throat-lozenge red, and next to it is a small black plastic cylinder, which bears the necklace's brand name: CycleBeads.

CycleBeads are not jewelry, exactly. They're integral to a new pregnancy-prevention method called the Standard Days Method, developed at the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University.

The necklace is a tool that helps a woman track her menstrual cycle: Slide the little black gasket onto the fat part of the red bead on the first day of a period. Then advance that gasket across the brown beads, at the rate of one a day. When the gasket reaches the 12 white beads, pregnancy is likely if a woman has unprotected sex. (This danger zone is easy to confirm in the darkness of the bedroom, since the white beads glow in the dark.) After the gasket slides past the white beads, it resumes its march across brown beads, and pregnancy is unlikely once more.

According to two studies in the peer-reviewed journal Contraception -- one published this year and one two years earlier -- the method, used correctly, is more effective than a diaphragm and nearly as effective as a condom. This summer, the Standard Days Method and CycleBeads will be inducted into the bible of contraception, "Contraceptive Technology." Being included in the latest update of this family planning reference book used by health care professionals could feed demand for CycleBeads, which retail for $12.95, and never require a refill. In the 13 months since they became available, 30,000 women have started to use this method, according to the IRH. CycleTechnologies, the New York-based company that's manufacturing CycleBeads, projects that figure will double by the end of 2005.

Rhythm Variations

CycleBeads are the latest variation on one of the oldest methods of birth control: periodic abstinence, commonly known as the rhythm method. Of course, the old joke about people who use the rhythm method is that they're called parents. But experts say gains in knowledge about women's fertility make "natural family planning" methods far more dependable than they were decades ago.

"These methods can be very effective [at preventing pregnancy] when used correctly," said Paul Blumenthal, an associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and an adviser to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The catch: They require more effort than taking a pill, slapping on a contraceptive patch or slipping on a condom. Today's methods -- which include the basal body temperature method, ovulation/cervical mucus method and the symtothermal method -- all depend on pinpointing the day a woman ovulates, so she can avoid unprotected intercourse and therefore pregnancy. This requires either daily temperature taking before budging out of bed in the morning (a slight rise in "basal body temperature" indicates ovulation), or daily examining of cervical secretions (which become wet and slippery during ovulation), or daily testing of the urine for chemicals released at ovulation. Natural family planning also requires a woman to be a fastidious accountant, charting all of her bodily observations and using those data to carefully calculate her possible fertile days each month.

For women who feel like they can barely keep track of their car keys, that can be a tall order.

"These methods are just too complicated," said Victoria Jennings, director of the IRP. "It takes two weeks to train a provider on these methods at minimum, and eight sessions with a client to learn how to use these methods."

CycleBeads are Georgetown's attempt to make natural family planning user-friendly: no thermometer, no cervical mucus, no math -- just move that black rubber gasket across a bead each day.