April 26th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
The Jamaica Observer has published a list of menstrual myths, apparently as a public service to its readers. Among the fallacies:
- Do not go to a funeral and look at the dead while having your period as this will cause your bones to rot.
- If a menstruating woman cans fruits or vegetables, the fruits will spoil in the can.
- Dentist visits should not be done during the menses, because fillings put in during this time will fall out.
- During menstruation a woman should not go hunting as the animals will smell her blood, which will drive them away.
And if you happen to be from New Jersey and of Italian descent, stay away from the tomatoes.
Tags: custom, folklore
Posted in Menstruation, Newspapers, Television | 3 Comments »
April 25th, 2010 by Chris Hitchcock
This week was a big one for media coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Pill. And it looks like this is also being taken as an opportunity to reflect on women’s history over the past 50 years, which will also be a good thing. Women often lose our history, and those of us who are 70 now grew up in a very different reality than those of us who are 20. I am 45, smack in the middle of that span, and it’s very interesting to me to look both forward and back. We are living through incredible changes in social history, and we need to know this to understand what is going on today and what will happen tomorrow.
The pill made the front cover of Time magazine. The author, Nancy Gibb, makes some very good points about how the existence of the pill changed young women’s ideas about the possibility of planning a career path that included being sexually active (probably in the context of marriage) but with control over the timing of pregnancy.
There’s a Time editorial here.
And there are a few interviews with Nancy Gibb, the author of the Time article, on Time’s own web page, on CNN, and NPR (Gather.com).
In the Huffington Post, Christianne Northrup discusses important social and medical context for decision-making about contraception, including the Pill.
Katrina Onstad wrote about the pill’s birthday in Chatelaine magazine.
Books and book reviews on the anniversary of the pill:
Michelle Goldberg reviews a new book about the pill in the American Prospect.
Tags: birth control pill, Media, oral contraceptive pills, social history, the pill turns 50, women's liberation
Posted in Birth Control, books, magazines, Media, Newspapers, Pharmaceutical | Comments Off
April 23rd, 2010 by Chris Hitchcock
Recently the New York Times published a long article entitled the Estrogen Dilemma. It’s an article rich with many issues, and previous blogs have critiqued its uncritical acceptance of the timing hypothesis, and its failure to distinguish between the transient symptoms of perimenopause, early menopause, and the rest of your long, healthy, post-menopausal life.
But it is quite remarkable to me that, when speculating about potential hormonal treatment for poor memory and issues of staying on task, the only steroid hormone that seemed to be on anyone’s radar was estrogen. The writer had a lot of space (7600 words) and gave the scientist a lot of freedom to speculate, so I’m guessing that the absence of progesterone in the article is a true representation of her conceptual blind-spot. Progesterone was mentioned a few times, in the context of protection from uterine cancer, and in the context of using MPA (a synthetic relative) as a possible scapegoat in interpreting the WHI randomized hormone therapy trial data. But never did I see any suggestion that progesterone might be anything other than a necessary evil.
In fact, there are some intriguing new research areas that look at progesterone as therapy in neurological domains.
So, in a free-wheeling article about how scientists are exploring possibilities, it’s interesting that the possibilities seem to be limited by a cultural bias towards estrogen.
Tags: big pharma, estrogen, hormones, neurology, progesterone
Posted in Menopause, Menstruation, New Research, Newspapers | Comments Off
April 20th, 2010 by Laura Wershler
I read The Birth-Control Riddle by Melinda Beck, published today in The Wall Street Journal with interest and frustration. As a veteran pro-choice sexual and reproductive health advocate, I’ve spent decades contemplating this ”riddle”. I have two specific comments in response to the piece, and a few suggestions for potential follow-up stories.
1) I find it discouraging, but understandable, that the article failed even to mention fertility awareness based methods (FABM) of birth control, which when taught so that women/couples can use the method effectively and confidently have a 99.4% effectiveness rate. Don’t take my word for it. The German study called: The effectiveness of a fertility awareness based methods to avoid pregnancy in relation to a couple’s sexual behaviour during the fertile time: a prospective longitudinal study was published in the prestigious journal Human Reproduction in late 2007.
In addition to the typical North American dismissiveness (by healthcare providers) of FABM as ineffective, is the dismissive response given to North American women who express an interest in learning FABM. A quick google search or a week’s hits on a google news alert for “Fertility Awareness” (the secular, pro-choice variation of the religiously contextualized Natural Family Planning) quickly establishes the burgeoning interest and use of these methods by young American women. Why is this so readily ignored by the mainstream sexual and reproductive health community (of which I am a part)? I have been mulling over this question for years. I have arrived at several answers. How I would love to see a journalist, any journalist, start asking this question.
2) My second comment is that this article is a missed opportunity. It is useless merely to list (yet again) the birth control “choices” available to women, as if just knowing about these methods of contraception should make the problem of unintended pregnancy go away. Of one thing we can all be certain: it can’t and it won’t. What this piece lacks is any attempt to explore in depth the writer’s accurate but unexamined statement – Why are the numbers so high? The answer is a complex tangle of cultural, religious, behavioral, educational and economic factors. Why not make an effort to get to the bottom of the so-called birth control riddle?
Should Beck be interested in continuing to write about this issue, one angle she might consider exploring is barriers to access to information, support and services for women seeking to use non-hormonal methods of birth control effectively and confidently, including diaphragms, cervical caps and fertility awareness based methods. This is a huge issue of concern to me and the many women who can’t, won’t or don’t want to use hormonal birth control.
I have a theory that a good number of unintended pregnancies happen because women are finding little or no support to access and effectively use non-hormonal methods. Yet this lack of support is not enough to keep them on the pill, patch or ring, or to agree to submit to invasive shots or implants. Therefore, care providers’ dismissal of young women’s requests for non-hormonal methods may actually be the cause of some of the unintended pregnancies we seem to be so puzzled by. Another issue not being talked about is that some women are getting pregnant while using the pill, patch or ring. These unintended pregnancies, which oddly don’t seem to pull down the “typical use” effectiveness rate of these methods, is partly behind the growing interest in IUDs. The other reason IUDs are growing in popularity is backlash against traditional hormonal methods. Continue reading...
Tags: Birth Control, birth control pill, contraception, contraceptives, hormones, journalism
Posted in Birth Control, Newspapers, Pharmaceutical, Philosophy | 6 Comments »
April 19th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Jerilynn C. Prior, Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research
I just read “The Estrogen Dilemma” in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, and I feel like weeping—in sorrow and deep sadness. This article by Cynthia Gorney is about energetic, intelligent women who feel they must take estrogen in order to survive perimenopause yet have deep worries about its risks. I know personally the anguishing changes that erupt during perimenopause. “The Estrogen Dilemma” also evoked my frustration and even rage. It is wrong that symptomatic women in the midst of the long and stormy midlife transition have to face a conundrum—to take estrogen or not. It arises from a Nixonian-style cover-up of three proven and important-for-women truths: 1) Perimenopause causes higher and not lower estrogen levels. (By perimenopause I mean the transition from fertile menstrual cycles to menopause, or the life phase beginning one year beyond the final menstrual flow.) 2) Progesterone, estrogen’s essential partner hormone, in contrast to estrogen, truly is lower in perimenopause. 3) Women survive perimenopause and “graduate” into a less symptomatic menopause.
Are estrogen levels low in perimenopause? No. Taking all perimenopausal women together (a meta-analysis of published levels comparing within-center young with perimenopausal women) estrogen levels are 26 percent higher (1). For symptomatic perimenopausal women like Cynthia Gormley and myself, estrogen swings to Everest-like peaks and may intermittently be a 1000-fold greater. Perimenopause, for some of us, is estrogen’s storm season (2).
Despite that, ever since estrogen was first discovered in 1926, anything ailing women has been deemed “estrogen deficiency.” And often inappropriately so treated. Thus, estrogen levels must be dropping and low in perimenopause when women become symptomatic—it makes sense because we know that perimenopausal women are running out of their store of ovarian follicles that, after all, make estrogen. That perimenopause-dropping-estrogen idea fits with the fact that perimenopausal women begin to have night sweats. But it doesn’t fit with the reality that night sweats begin while women are still having regular menstrual cycles (3) and thus still have adequate estrogen levels (but the misunderstanding of what causes hot flushes is yet another story).
The evidence that perimenopausal estrogen levels are higher than in the sexiest 20-something is strong and consistent (1;4-9). Why are media articles, consensus documents and authorized definitions still talking about dropping estrogen levels? A cover-up. The first clear evidence for higher estrogen was published from a Melbourne epidemiology study in 1995 (10). The back-story here is telling—the authors measured estrogen levels that were variable but at least a quarter of them were much higher than expected. However, their interpretation was that estrogen levels were dropping. That’s because levels in the 45-55 year old women with regular cycles (whom they wrongly called premenopausal) were higher than in those who’d been without flow for three to 12 months (10). That illustrates the power of what I call “the estrogen myth.” I, who at the time was suffering with puzzling sore breasts, heavy but regular flow and mood swings, was ecstatic to see data that explained my experiences. However, I was horrified at the erroneous interpretation—my colleagues and I wrote an impassioned letter to the editor demanding that the authors “let the data speak” (11).
Now to the second cover-up—lower perimenopausal progesterone. If this were a world where women’s health was guided by science rather than by power-over-women, we would all know that perimenopause, besides being a time of higher estrogen, is a life phase in which progesterone is too low. You ask, “Why are lower progesterone levels important? I thought it causes PMS and breast cancer.” This ignoring or blaming of progesterone is the second major cover-up, and not just for 15 years, but since estrogen’s discovery in the 1920s. Framing women’s reproduction only in terms of estrogen creates the postulate that “Estrogen’s what makes a girl, a girl.” The estrogen myth further asserts that estrogen is the female hormone, much as testosterone is the only important male hormone. Continue reading...
Tags: big pharma, estrogen, guest post, hormones, Menopause, perimenopause, progesterone
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Newspapers, Pharmaceutical | 2 Comments »
April 18th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Paula S. Derry, Ph.D.
Déjà vu
An article in today’s New York Times Magazine recounts the author’s experience with a debilitating depression that began during her perimenopause, the transitional time leading up to menopause. For her, prescription estrogen was a life-saver that alleviated her symptoms. The article places her experience in the context of research on the Timing Hypothesis, an idea that arose after the Women’s Health Initiative, or WHI, research project. WHI clinical trials documented that hormone supplements after menopause did not, as had previously been assumed, lower a woman’s risk of heart disease. Heart disease risk was not lower, and, in fact, when a number of chronic illnesses were considered together, the medication did more harm than good overall. The Timing Hypothesis is the idea that the WHI was fundamentally flawed, because hormones must be started right around the time of menopause to have a health-promoting effect and the subjects in WHI were on average over 60; if started when a woman is older, when chronic illnesses have already started, the hormones are actually harmful rather than helpful. The Sunday New York Times article presents this idea uncritically, without quoting any of the many experts who do not find it plausible or convincing, and, in addition, presents a lurid, unscientific description of perimenopausal hormonal dynamics with words like “ricocheting hormones” and an “upheaval” that causes a “hellacious strain” on the brain. The author suggests that WHI was a poorly planned study that asked the wrong questions with the wrong methodology. The Timing Hypothesis, if true, might lead to a cure for Alzheimers and have other important health repercussions.
Time for a reality check.
Let’s go back in time to before the WHI research. Beginning in the 1980s, professionals asserted that hormone therapies were safe and effective to prevent chronic illnesses, especially heart disease, in postmenopausal women. This idea was aggressively promoted, and it was not limited to women around the time of menopause. Clinical trials are required to prove that a new medication is safe and effective before the Food and Drug Administration will approve that medication. However, once approved and available on the market, it is okay for doctors to use their judgment and prescribe the drug for whatever use they believe is reasonable. Many of the claims for estrogen were for this kind of off-label use because there was no clinical trial proof that estrogens reduced heart disease, made women “feel better,” or improved their lives in many other ways being claimed. However, other kinds of evidence made it seem plausible. There were “biologically plausible” mechanisms–this means that because of things we know about the body–like the fact that there are estrogen receptors in the brain–it is plausible, we can hypothesize a way that estrogen would have a certain health effect. There were the personal experiences of women. There was the idea that menopause was intrinsically unhealthy and that women were not meant to “outlive their ovaries.” Using estrogens was compared by some to using vitamin supplements or to a diabetic using insulin. There was a strong conviction among certain enthusiastic scientists and practitioners, some of them highly respected individuals, that it was all so. Professional groups of various sorts frequently issue opinions about medications; here, many groups offered the opinion that all women be offered hormone treatment. Physicians were encouraged to prescribe hormones for disease prevention because it was so certain that it would help their patients, rather than waiting for the slow process of clinical trials to take place. Wyeth, a pharmaceutical company, asked the FDA to approve estrogen for heart disease prevention even without clinical trials. Continue reading...
Tags: depression, estrogen, guest post, heart disease, hormone therapy, hormones, Menopause, perimenopause, timing hypothesis, WHI
Posted in Menopause, New Research, Newspapers, Pharmaceutical | 1 Comment »
March 24th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
London newspaper The Telegraph reports on the development of a new medical treatment for dysmenorrhea, or painful periods. The article contains very little information about the new pill — most of the article describes the variety of misery some women experience with menstruation. The only information about the new medication is that the drug blocks vasopressin, a hormone involved in regulating uterine contractions and thus a cause of menstrual cramping.
But I was struck by this sentence in the second paragraph:
But now [women with painful periods] might no longer have to soldier on stoically after researchers have developed a pill which could put an end to the root cause of their discomfort.
See that? Women with cramps aren’t whiners or crybabies or just making excuses. They’re hard-working troupers who soldier on stoically despite being miserable.
Tags: Communication, Dysmenorrhea, Language, Menstruation, pain
Posted in Dysmenorrhea, Language, Menstruation, New Research, Newspapers, Pharmaceutical | 2 Comments »
March 9th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by Amber Steele, University of Cambridge
There have been a couple of stories in the press recently touting a study by Joanna Spencer and colleagues suggesting that PMDD may be genetic. I had a cursory look through the paper and read the article. Changes in dendritic branching of neurons in the limbic system across the menstrual cycle, owing to changes in estrogen, has been well documented in the female mice and rat. Additionally, changes in neuronal activity and accompanying receptor activity is also well document during periods of hormone change, again in the female mice and rat models. Individual differences in how this change occurs and the fact that it can be linked to differences in genes make sense. It seems that Spencer et al., have identified one of probably many genes that mediates these differences. This is not the first time that a gene of this kind has been identified or implicated. For example, Susan Girdler at Chapel Hill has done some interesting work on PMDD and suggests a genetic i.e., differing protein response to a hormone, difference in response to progesterone that might, in part, explain symptoms associated with PMDD.
The fact that Spencer et al., found a relationship to anxious behavior does not say anything conclusively about PMS or PMDD. It only states that if you have this variant then your levels of anxiety may change as estrogen fluctuates.
The news article is exploiting the findings from the Spencer study to construct a simplistic view of varying responses to hormone change within and across women. I suppose the author of the news article thought it might be interesting to examine the debate on whether or not there is a “clinically disordered” state during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle in some women and whether it should be recognized officially. While it may do this, it also perpetuates misunderstandings and stereotypes about women’s hormones and their emotional states.
Amber Steele is a graduate student at the University of Cambridge with a biomedical background. She is writing a thesis is on wellbeing over the menstrual cycle and how it relates to hormonal “biomarkers” cortisol and progesterone.
Tags: genetic research, guest post, PMDD, PMS
Posted in New Research, Newspapers, PMDD, PMS | Comments Off
February 10th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Guest Post by David Linton, Marymount Manhattan College
Four years ago I published an article in Sex Roles (March 2006) about the twists and turns of the media coverage of a scandal that came to be known as “Camillagate.” It concerned the publication of a surreptitiously recorded phone chat between Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, and his lover, Camilla Parker-Bowles, that occurred in 1993. The reason the mild sex banter between two horny middle-aged royals got so much attention was that at one point they made joking references to tampons in an erotic context. The exchange was widely misreported with a distorted claim that Charles expressed a desire to be transformed into a tampon. It even became the basis for a skit on Saturday Night Live (only a small portion of it is available now online).
At the time I predicted that Charles would never get away from the tampon association. What I could not predict was how nuanced the forms of mockery would be. Who could possibly have guessed that the story would play out as a means of bolstering George W. Bush’s faltering reputation by contrasting his macho style with the more effete image of The Prince of Wales?
In October 2005 as Charles was about to visit the U.S., he told an interviewer in London that he hoped to speak with President Bush about improving relations with Muslims. The thought of a Brit having the temerity to advise Bush so enraged some in the right wing that they attacked with menstrual guns blazing. A blog called “The Citizen Journal: Conservative Political Forum, Articles & Resources” headlined a brief screed, “’Prince Tampon’ aka Prince Charles to lecture Bush on Muslims!!” (exclamations in original). The next day (Halloween!), the blog of a woman named Debbie Schlussel, a self-described “conservative political commentator,” echoed the same theme and in a far more vicious tone. Her piece was titled “Another Halloween Costume: Tampon Man Now Islam’s Envoy to U.S.” She repeated the phrase “Tampon Man,” “Prince Tampon,” “Prince Charles of Tampon” or “Tampon Prince” eight times and also included a crude cartoon depicting a box of Tampax with legs and arms and several tampons sticking out of the top, one with a crown and Charles’ face with the caption, “Sweet Camilla, Your wish is granted.”
Whew! What a lesson! Would it be any wonder that men, particularly any men exposed to this kind of vitriol, would conclude that menstrual contact of any kind must be avoided at all cost? The threat to one’s social standing is too great. If the reputation of an heir apparent of a great nation can be so publicly bashed over an innocent and misreported sex joke, can any man escape menstrual mockery?
The public’s fascination with the story has manifested itself in curious ways as it has settled into the realm of popular myth. In 2006 a British paper, the Daily Star, ran a survey to mark the 130th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone asking its readers to select “the biggest phone scandals of all time.” To the paper’s surprise, Prince Charles and Camilla’s “saucy” chat edged out all others including soccer super star David Beckham’s text sex exchanges with Rebecca Loos (number two on the list) and Richard Nixon’s Watergate recordings (number four). Further evidence of how well entrenched the tale has become is revealed by how efficiently and subtly it can be evoked. An episode of the cartoon program The Family Guy once had the lead character say on the phone “I want to be your tampon,” and a ballet performance titled “Diana the Princess” choreographed by Peter Schaufuss in London in 2005 featured dancing tampons. Is it possible that one day “Charlies’ tampon” will be as familiar an allusion as “Achilles’ heel?” It would be shorthand for any man who even toyed with the thought of voluntarily exposing himself to anything menstrual. Continue reading...
Tags: boys/men, guest post, Humor, shame, SNL, tampons
Posted in Celebrities, Communication, Internet, Men, Menstruation, Newspapers, Television | 2 Comments »
February 2nd, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
There’s been quite a bit of internet buzz during the last week or so about a study conducted at University of St Andrews and Edinburgh University by Tom Kelsey, in which he and his colleagues develop a computer model of how a woman’s supply of eggs declines over time. The scaremongering accompanying news reports of this study is reminiscent of the 1980s kerfuffle about how women over 40 were more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to be married. Some headlines are proclaiming “Women lose 90% of eggs by age 30″ and advising women who want to be parents to act quickly. Some are even recommending fertility screening analogous to cancer screening.
Before you ladies under 30 rush off to get impregnated, let me point out a few things. First, this study is a computer model. It is not definitive evidence that women cannot conceive after 30. Second, there has been ongoing new research in the last several years that suggests mammals may be able to produce new ova, contrary to conventional doctrine that females have a fixed reserve of egg cells enclosed in the ovaries at birth. Although there are many skeptics, there is still a great deal that is unknown about how the ovaries work.
Third, it only takes one egg cell to make a baby.
Tags: anatomy, Communication, critical thinking, ovaries
Posted in anatomy, Communication, Internet, New Research, Newspapers, ovulation, Reproduction | 3 Comments »
January 4th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling
Back in November, we commended a bold student columnist for taking on menstrual sex in the student paper at Chico State University. In yesterday’s edition of The Faster Times, columnist Veronica Mittnacht advises a reader about how to broach the subject of period sex in a casual relationship, and works to normalize menstruation – even heavy flow.
Fortunately, most men, even if they don’t really like it [menstruation], know enough to pretend not to mind, because, after all, most women do it, and there’s not much men can do about it. And for your purposes, for now, pretending is enough. There’s still the occasional guy who can’t handle blood, but the bell curve compensates by giving us the occasional fetishist or enthusiast to make up for it.
Tags: heavy bleeding, Menstruation, Sex, sexuality
Posted in Menorrhagia, Menstruation, Newspapers, Sex | 3 Comments »
December 10th, 2009 by Laura Wershler
Mammograms showing healthy (left) and (right) cancerous breast. Courtesy of the National Cancer Institute.
Can having too many menstrual cycles give you breast cancer? That’s what one might conclude from two unrelated articles that appeared in national newspapers this week.
First was Nicholas D. Kristof’s Op-Ed in the New York Times. Kristof had recently attended a symposium exploring whether certain common chemicals are linked to breast cancer and other ailments. The role of estrogen – both the real thing our bodies produce and the pseudo-estrogens – in breast cancer was his major example.
The real thing:
One theory starts with the well-known fact that women with more lifetime menstrual cycles are at greater risk for breast cancer, because they’re exposed to more estrogen. For example, a woman who began menstruating before 12 has a 30 percent greater risk of breast cancer than one who began at 15 or later.
The pseudo-estrogens:
One class of chemicals that creates concern — although the evidence is not definitive — is endocrine disruptors, which are often similar to estrogen and may fool the body into setting off hormonal changes. This used to be a fringe theory, but it is now being treated with great seriousness by the Endocrine Society the professional association of hormone specialists in the United States. …These endocrine disruptors are found in everything from certain plastics to various cosmetics.
(Do you ever wonder, like I do, why the birth control pill is not considered an ‘endocrine disruptor’ when that is exactly what it is?)
The second mention of the connection between too many periods and breast cancer came in dietician Leslie Beck’s Food For Thought column in Canada’s Globe and Mail. She was reporting on a new study showing that women with breast cancer need not shun soy:
By acting like weak forms of the body’s own estrogen, some experts have worried that soy isoflavones could possibly promote cancer growth. That’s because certain risk factors for breast cancer, such as beginning your menstrual period before age 12 or starting menopause after 55, are related to the length of time breast cells are exposed to the body’s own circulating estrogen. It’s thought that estrogen can promote the growth of breast cancer cells.
It’s reasonable to think that the both the writers and readers of these articles (and the many more that have surely mentioned this connection) might assume from this information that too many menstrual cycles means too much estrogen, therefore too many menstrual cycles must be a bad thing. What they don’t know is that not all menstrual cycles are created equal. It’s not necessarily about quantity, it’s about quality.
Common belief is that all menstrual cycles are ovulatory. (Unless, of course, you are using a hormonal birth control method that suppress ovulation like the pill, patch or ring.) In other words, the assumption is that if get your period you must have ovulated. This assumption is challenged by UBC endocrinolgist Jerilynn Prior, MD, and Scientific Director of the Centre for Menstual Cycle and Ovulation Research (CeMCOR). In her article Is Ovulation (and are normal Progesterone levels) Important for the Health of Women?, Dr. Prior has this to say about the connection between ovulation, menstruation and breast cancer: Continue reading...
Tags: birth control pill, breast cancer, drugs, estrogen, hormones, Menarche, Menopause
Posted in Birth Control, Health Care, Media, Menarche, Menopause, Menstruation, Newspapers, ovulation | Comments Off
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
The Jamaica Observer has published a list of menstrual myths, apparently as a public service to its readers. Among the fallacies:
