Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research
Ladies, are your tampons doing enough? Apparently absorbing menstrual fluid without leaking is no longer sufficient: new, Brilliant pH tampons “are clinically shown to reduce the usual feminine pH increase that occurs during your period.”
But let Dr. Streicher explain in this commercial for Brilliant pH tampons.
Video should open in new window.
Of course, Brilliant also includes a “comfortable, soft plastic applicator” with “smooth rounded tip” and raised ridge for “easy grip”.
Red Moon: Menstruation, Culture and the Politics of Gender may have crossed your path as The Moon Inside You (its original title prior to 2010 its current distribution through Media Education Foundation). It is a film that has enjoyed wide release, with exhibition on French television and inclusion in an EU showcase of films that circulated last year. The broad exhibition strategy of Red Moon is fitting; it has a casual, heartfelt and humorous style that should appeal to many.
The purpose of Red Moon, as articulated by the filmmaker Diana Fabianova in voice over, is to answer this question: “At any given time, 25% of the female population is menstruating. Invisible. Discreet. Why is this normal, biological function taboo? There must be some deeper meaning.” There are problems with this statistical framing device – 25% is an over inflated number that eliminates girls and post-menopausal women as “females”. It also glosses over females that do not menstruate because of gender transformations and amenorrhea. Outside of this statistical malfunction, there are a few other facts provided through voice over which are not supported by specific research or attributed directly to any menstrual researchers. However, beyond these slights, Red Moon has great potential to make a taboo subject approachable.
When I was pregnant and then learning to breast-feed my daughter, my doula told me that breast milk had great anti-biotic properties, and that it was good to use on eye-infections and cuts. Turns out that there is science behind that. Not only that, but now scientists have shown that breast milk contains substances that may kill cancerous cells. They’re calling the extracted substance HAMLET – not sure why a substance extracted from lactating women would be named after a grieving, tortured young man struggling with suicidal and homicidal thoughts, but I’ll leave more thoughts on that to those who are better at post-modern analysis.
It reminds me of the idea of harvesting stem-cells from menstrual blood. And also some questions about that. Like, is this one of the cases where it matters what produced the menstrual blood? Not all episodes of menstrual bleeding are the same. So how does stem cell quality differ among these different sources of uterine blood?
I don’t even know if anyone is asking these questions, because there is relatively little interest or appreciation in the varieties of sources of menstrual blood and how it might change its quality.
Introducing Leak Chic.
Chella Quint celebrates Fashion Week, recently ended in London and New York, with clot couture.
StainsTM. A removable stain to wear on your own clothing as you see fit. A fashion statement that really says something, and that something is, ‘Screw you, Madison Avenue. I’m taking this one back. I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve and my blood on my pants. I’m gonna reclaim the stain, reclaim my blood, and reclaim my period.’ Because people, I’m telling you red is the new black.
Read more at Adventures in Menstruating.
Exposure to polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants is widespread, with 97% of Americans having detectable levels. Yet there have been no published studies of their effects on human fertility – until now. A study to be published in the January 26 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives reports that four PBDE congeners were correlated with longer times to pregnancy.
While this finding is expected and unsurprising, it does seem surprising that researchers have found no correlations with the presence of PBDEs and menstrual irregularity.
Because the endometrium, the lining of the uterus, regenerates each month, some researchers believe menstrual blood may be a viable source of stem cells. Stem cells have been found in the uterine lining, although it is uncertain whether healthy, viable stem cells are shed with other menstrual fluids. The research is ongoing. So Chelsea Briganti, senior at Parsons School of Design, may be ahead of her time.
Her senior thesis involves the design of a storage container to preserve menstrual fluid for later use. Her idea is to develop a design for a successful consumer product. If you’d like to help her out, click here to complete a short survey (only five questions) and contribute to her data set.
Confidential to Chelsea: Please let us know when you no longer need survey respondents.
This advert for Tampax appears in the February 2010 issue of Marie Claire, and probably other ladymags as well. It shows tennis star Serena Williams posing in a victory stance with clenched fist in the foreground, while security guards cart off Mother Nature, who is bearing a red-wrapped gift for Serena. The legend printed across the picture reads, “Serena shuts out Mother Nature’s monthly gift”.
As I said previously, I have some ambivalence about these ads. In today’s period-hating cultural climate, it takes some courage for a celebrity to appear in advertisement for a menstrual product. And it’s great to see acknowledgement that an athlete can win contests at any phase of her menstrual cycle (even the Boston Marathon).
But look closely at this ad, and read the copy. What’s missing?
That’s right – there’s no mention of blood or menstruation. The word period, itself a euphemism, isn’t even used. Only the flowery, secretive euphemism “Mother Nature’s monthly gift” represents menses.
And Mother Nature is reduced from the clever, wise-cracking Aunt Flo portrayed here to a kooky sitcom aunt reminiscent of Gladys Kravitz. Who wants to receive her gift?
Image by Brittany Reed
The FDA announced yesterday that they have approved tranexamic acid tablets for the treatment of heavy menstrual bleeding, under the brand name Lysteda. According to the press release, approximately 3 million US women experience heavy bleeding, usually with no underlying health condition. The report states that there was a statistically significant reduction in menstrual blood loss in women who received Lysteda, compared with those taking placebo.
As is the case with many newly approved drugs, tranexamic acid is not a new drug but an approval for a new usage: tranexamic acid has been used in injection form more than 20 years to reduce bleeding during tooth extraction in people with hemophilia (a blood disorder in which blood lacks a clotting factor).
Although it’s unlikely that anyone using hormonal contraceptives would also have heavy menstrual bleeding (remember, hormonal contraceptives suppress menstruation), the new drug comes with a big warning: taking Lysteda along with hormonal contraceptives increases one’s risk of blood clots, stroke, or heart attack.
I’m not a biochemist or a physician, but it sounds like Lysteda is a viable alternative for women who are currently taking (or recommended to take) hormonal contraceptives for the management of menstrual bleeding.
Illustration from Feminist Women's Health Center
The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) announced today that Mirena® has been approved for use as treatment for heavy menstrual bleeding. Mirena® is an intra-uterine device (IUD) for preventing pregnancy. It combines the technology of old-school IUDs with the hormone levonorgestrel, a synthetic progesterone.
I’m a little puzzled, though, by the apparent limited usage recommended: the press release states,
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Mirena (levonorgestrel intrauterine system) to treat heavy menstrual bleeding in women who use intrauterine contraception as their method of pregnancy prevention.
This sounds like Mirena® is approved for women who already using IUDs. So if you’re already using Mirena® for birth control, congratulations. Now you can use it to reduce menstrual flow.
For those keeping score at home, Mirena® is manufactured by Bayer, also makers of beleaguered birth control pill, Yaz.
Apropos of Chris’ most recent post, the video of Serena Williams’ new ad for Tampax just popped up in my RSS feed. You can check it out at right.
I’m so torn on this. I’m pretty certain that this is the First. Time. Ever. that the word “blood” has been used in an ad for menstrual products. Do you know what a huge step forward for body acceptance and menstrual literacy that is? When I was growing up in the 1970s, pads were advertised by showing how well they absorbed BLUE fluid. (So were diapers, by the way.) Kotex was the first company to use the color red and the word “period” in ad campaign less than ten years ago. So there is a part of me that is delighted when Catherine Lloyd Burns, playing Mother Nature, smiles slyly and says, “Well, there is plenty of blood, but none of it’s bad”.
I also enjoy seeing a powerful woman say that she isn’t afraid of menstruation, and shown succeeding athletically while menstruating. Kinda reminds me of when Uta Pippig won the Boston Marathon while menstruating.
But the core message and most troubling element of this entire “Mother Nature” campaign is the idea that menstruation is the gift nobody wants. Can’t P&G (and Kotex, and every other femcare advertiser) just promote the damn products without promoting shame and body hatred? Women will buy menstrual products without being told that periods should make them feel “not so fresh”. In fact, the ads might be more compelling if they emphasized the absorbency of the product and treated menstruation as a fact of life, rather than a secret disaster. Just spare us the blue fluid, please.
Truth or Dare (Francois Ozon, 1994)
Surprisingly this isn’t a post on Madonna, but another media artist interested in gender: Francois Ozon. His short film Truth or Dare (1994) welcomes us into the inner circle of four teenagers engaged in the game. As the two boys and two girls challenge each other with “Action” or “Verite” they address and trangress every taboo (sex between children, boys kissing boys, AIDS, girls fondling girls.) Yet one taboo will trump them all!
View a scene from the film here: http://www.francois-ozon.com/en/clip-truth-or-dare
As with most of his work, Ozon manages to engage in taboo with sympathy and emotion. He crafts films that are intimate, inviting the viewer to imagine their own sexual transgression. Screenings of Truth or Dare make a room of viewers squirm and titter with delight as they partake in the pleasure of watching this naughty game. Menstrual activists may not know whether to cheer or boo at the end. That is, of course, Ozon’s wish.
Nearly 20(!) years ago, I conducted research for my doctoral dissertation about how and what girls learn about menstruation. I researched the literature and interviewed girls ages 11-16 about what kinds of information about menstruation they received and the sources of their menstrual knowledge. Among my findings, I learned that even girls who had received adequate menstrual education from school and parents did not consider themselves prepared for their first periods. They wanted to know more about what menstruation would feel like – not more about ovaries and hormones (although research and anecdotal evidence suggests their knowledge in that area is not as well-developed as they believe). They had serious questions about whether it would hurt, how often they would need to change their menstrual pads, and other phenomenological questions about the experience of menstruation. This kind of information is seldom part of formal menstrual education, but the girls in my study found ways to seek out this information, often through girlfriends and sometimes through popular culture sources, such as teen magazines.
These issues are even more important to girls with autism or other special developmental needs. This morning I stumbled upon this discussion at change.org about how communication with one’s daughter about what to expect at menarche is even more critical for autistic girls:
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