Body hacking! (or, more about my tits)

Sorry it's been awhile. This winter, within the space of five months, I got married, defended my PhD thesis, and got a job in the midwest (which starts in the Fall). So it's been a pretty big year.

But now onto the fun stuff. Recently, I've continued my project with body hacking - this time, the attempt was to rid myself of the dreaded PMS.

You may remember my rant about xenoestrogens in the environment and what they might be doing to women's bodies. Well, since then, I've gotten rid of most of the plastics in my food prep/store arsenal, and I eat fewer things out of cans or plastic containers. Canned tomatoes are right out.

Why the paranoia? Because PMS. For me, "PMS" manifested as the (fairly typical) mood swings, fatigue, allergies, and bloating - and swollen, tender breasts. But this was not run-of-the-mill breast tenderness; this was "ohmigod it hurts to walk down the stairs because they're moving" and "wtf none of my bras fit me anymore because they're swollen." This was half the month spent in pain and shame.

I've lived with this since the end of 2006.

I went to the doctor for it - four times. The first time, my doctor prescribed Yaz (a birth-control pill). It made me suicidal (like, I'm Winona in Beetlejuice suicidal) for the whole week I was on it. The second time, my doctor gave me a pamphlet about PMS and told me to avoid alcohol and caffeine (because they make one retain water, and people assume that swollen tissues in the body must be due to water retention). Fair enough, but giving up alcohol and caffeine didn't work. The third time (which was this January), the doctor (who has been my functional GP for three years) tested my thyroid and told me to see a "women's doctor." The fourth time (seeing the women's doctor, the same one I saw the first time), my doctor wanted to put me back on my antidepressants and get a Mirena IUD, and she recommended that I seek counseling.

This all made me feel really angry, and disempowered, and hurt, and belittled. The various tests I had gotten showed that something was clearly wrong with my body - my thyroid hormones, though within normal range, were in the lower third of normal. My testosterone, which I demanded be tested at the fourth appointment, came back "a touch high" (my other gripe with this doctor is that she never tells me the actual results of my tests - including a high cholesterol reading in 2008 which she told me was "fine," but then said that I should "stop eating fried foods and meat" - which is extra funny because I've been vegetarian for 15 years. I found out later that my LDL had read 170, which is crazy high for someone my age and health). This fourth doctor also simply refused to test my estrogen and progesterone levels, even though I asked her.

Anyway. I considered the Mirena IUD, because the doctor told me that I would "stop ovulating," and therefore the monthly hormonal fluctuations would stop. But then I read a paper (Barbosa et al. (1990) "Ovarian function during use of a levonorgestrel-releasing IUD." Contraception 42.51) that showed that, although the various hormone levels of women with a hormonal IUD were lower than those in the control group, the levels were still high enough for ovulation to occur (read: you could still suffer the PMS). I did not bother arguing with doctor #4 about this point. The Mirena is also not covered by my insurance, and would cost about $500 to put in. I also have no need for a new birth control method. In short, it would have been a lot of money for something that may or may not have fixed my PMS, but would have introduced an artificial hormone into the area of my reproductive organs (a progestin, which is not biologically identical to progesterone but is meant to act similarly in the body. Don't get me started on non-biologically-identical hormones.)

Experiment #1: Left back at square one, I tried doc #2's suggestion (found in the handy "you and PMS" pamphlet). I gave up caffeine and alcohol, got regular cardiovascular exercise (despite my running allergy), ate protein at every meal, and took a ton of supplements (which have worked for me in the past and were recommended in Esther Blum's Eat, Drink, and Be Gorgeous: evening primrose oil, Omega 3s, DIM, Vitex, B vitamins, milk thistle, Alpha-Lipoic acid, calcium, and magnesium. It should be noted that Esther Blum also recommends going caffeine-free for PMS and associated breast issues).

Did that work? A bit - the girls were in less pain than they had been in previous months, though the swelling didn't go down at all. This got me through to mid-March, and boy was I miserable - no coffee, no alcohol, tons of pills every day, and running to boot (if I skipped a day of running, my running allergy also came back). AND my tits still hurt. So I started reading again, suspecting that my hormones were still out of whack.

Experiment #2, which I started March 13, was to go dairy-free. I kept eggs at first (though I've already lost my taste for them), but no yogurt, butter, milk, cheese, or anything derived from milk. The reasoning behind this experiment is that dairy products contain mammalian estrogens, which act like estrogens in the human body. I hypothesized that my body was getting too much estrogen from the dairy I was eating (and, to be clear, I was not eating a lot of dairy before this experiment, and almost all of it was organic - I will cite more about dairy and estrogens in a later post). Just to keep it scientific, I added back in caffeine and alcohol, and cut down my supplement intake to evening primrose oil, Omega 3s, a liver support (B vitamins, milk thistle, and alpha-lipoic acid), and Vitex and DIM between ovulation and bleeding (though I'm rethinking this and considering taking the Vitex throughout the cycle and the DIM only in the first half). Heck, I even mostly stopped running.

And guess what? IT WORKED! Since March 13th, I have been pain-free (through one complete menstrual cycle). All my bras fit. And I noticed significantly less bloating and fatigue in the days before bleeding.

So it's a win. Bodily, I don't feel 100% (sugar or gluten will be my next opponent/experiment), and I could still stand to lose some weight (so I might start running again), but holy damn leaving the breast pain behind is a revelation.

Alors, bienvenue, a (once again) vegan lady!

One word: plastics

A disturbing new study is out which has found high levels of BPA in many of our food-preserving vehicles (by which I mean "cans"). BPA is already known to have effects on erectile/reproductive function and hormone production/reception. Also, news articles upon news articles (reporting on scientific studies, of course) continue to warn the public about the dangers of phthalates, chemicals added to tons of plastics to improve their plasticity.

Right, okay, so throw out all those canned tomatoes (cans of acidic foods tend to leach more BPA than cans of alkaline foods), stop drinking stuff bottled in plastic, or cans (yup, soda cans too), start buying phthalate-free cosmetics (moisturiser, nail polish, eyeshadow, powders, hairsprays, and more!), don't forget the phthalate-free vibrator (just when you thought your vag was safe from chemicals) - why am I still upset about all this information?

Both BPA and phthalates are "xenoestrogens", which means that they act like estrogen in the body. *All* of the hullaballoos I've been reading in major news sources about the dangers of these chemicals have only addressed the dangers these chemicals pose to *boys* and *men.* Are women not affected by excess estrogen? Are girls and women miraculously exempt from the consequences of these endocrine disruptors**?

No! But, of course it is only when the masculinity of young boys and the reproductive abilities of grown men are being threatened that journalists and the government feel the need to raise the red flag. God forbid my son be effeminate! (Or grow up with undescended testicles, or tiny penises.) God forbid that adult men not be able to stick it to their ladyfriends (or manfriends)! God forbid that all these fetuses come out female instead of male!

Thank you, sexist media, for warning us about threats to male health.

My question: where the heck are the studies about women?? And since there are such studies, why the heck is Big Media not reporting on it? Doesn't our health count?

**Disclaimer: I am a lady who is quite sensitive to excess estrogen and xenoestrogens in my body. I would hate to develop breast cancer, ovarian cysts, reproductive problems, diabetes, etc. because health organizations and the government failed to see that putting hormones into everyday products was a detrimental thing.

parents just don't understand

Thank you, Paul Kurtz, for founding the Center for Inquiry. Thank you for restoring my confidence in science (and a little more confidence in scientists themselves). I feel like I can finally be comfortable saying that science is not itself a religion, a faith followed by educated 19th-century men. When scientists let science do the work it is supposed to do (namely, adhering to the scientific method without a care as to whether your hypotheses are correct or incorrect), it is a very good thing, a very rational thing.

I realize that much of my dislike of science has stemmed from a dislike of particular scientists.

First, the holier-than-thou group: because they study science and the 'real world', they think that they are better (i don't know how - morally? physically? mentally?) than us lowly scholars of literature and culture. They talk down to us, they lack interest in our own observations, they lose themselves in experiments, dreams of saving the world. The problem with these people is that they lack a certain respect for cultural awareness, social history, communication and persuasion of the masses. Societal change can only operate through a societal conversation. Without the knowledge of how people communicate, persuade, interact, and how they have done so over time, how can one expect to implement whatever precious discoveries one has made? In their wonder at the beauty of nature, moreover, they sometimes lose a sense of the beauty of humanity, the beauty of personalities and social bonds, the thunderstorm of the creative mind. Good poetry, an ancient piece of glassware, can be just as awe-inspiring as the proton pump that allows Venus flytraps to snap shut so quickly.

The second group of scientists that irk me are those who have something seriously invested in the results of their experiments. These people aren't really doing science, yet they feel free to design their experiments or skew their reporting of their results in such a way as to draw conclusions that are unrealistic for the scope of their experiment. Most of these people are social scientists, I suppose. For example, though, the still unsolved claim that abortion raises a woman's risk of getting breast cancer. (oh and check out this creepy as hell website)

The third group, particular to my field of study, is the group who (badly) tries to use scientific method in the humanities. Many of these people would fall into the second group (biased scientists), and think that they can "prove" things about literature, societies, cultures, by use of hypotheses and tests. Why do they irk me? Some don't know how to run an 'experiment' on literature, or history. I'm still not convinced that the scientific method can be used to study the psychological or cultural aspects of our world. (Here I think of the colometric studies of 19th-century German scholars that prove whether text manuscripts are accurate or not). The other reason why they irk me is that, due to the nature of the field itself, these scholars cannot act like other scientists - they cannot collaborate with their peers, they cannot expect to publish a study which culminates in negative or inconclusive results. Just once, I would like to read an article that proves to me that Plato's chronology can't be pinned down. Just once.

addendum to previous

For a look at a scholar who has done some very interesting cultural things with her science background, check out Anne Fausto-Sterling's work.

A new humanist from the humanities?

Has anyone read the book by John Brockman, Science at the Edge? I'm intrigued by anything about the so-called "new humanists" (of which I count myself), but I was particularly disturbed by some of Brockman's opening statements.

First, he seems to assume that humanities is a closed-circuit discipline, firmly and irreversibly separated from the "hard" sciences. I partly agree with this, though I see many of my colleagues (all in the humanities) attempting to bridge that gap in their research and writing. It is certainly something I intend to do (maybe unsucessfully) in my upcoming dissertation. He seems to define the "new humanists" as scientists who have recognized the apparently dismal state of the humanities and choose to communicate their research in a humanist way to the general public - i.e., what their scientific knowledge means for you. What irked me first is the way that he continually disses 'the humanities' (as if they were monolithic anyway). He assumes that humanities 'icons' are not interested in science, not interested in communicating anything other than pessimistic messages about the "sick modern society." He describes the state thusly:

"Meanwhile, the traditional humanities establishment continues its exhaustive insular hermeneutics, indulginig itself in cultural pessimism, clinging to its fashionably glum outlook on world events." (p.4)

This he contrasts with the "openness" of science, which explores endless questions, without bias, accepting of contradictory findings, always studying some objective "something." His "new humanists," the scions of a more optimistic and useful intellectual endeavor, come strictly from the world of scientific study, not from the humanities.

To be fair, his critique is of those academics whose scholarship operates uninformed by the 'scientific' aspects of their field. He states:

"One can only marvel at, for example, art critics who know nothing about visual perception; 'social constructionist' literary critics uninterested in the human universals documented by anthropologists; opponents of genetically modified foods, additives, and pesticide residues who are ignorant of genetics and evolutionary biology." (p.3)

This is something with which I firmly agree. But researching this material and using it is not outside the ability of humanities scholars. At any rate, it is just as feasible as Brockman's scientists who use their research to make claims about modern cultural issues without studying history or literature or the theories of cultural studies. Moreover, I think his faith in the ability of science's cultural claims is a bit unrealistic: one of the reasons the humanities distanced itself from the sciences in the first place (beginning perhaps with anthropology in the early 20th century) is that the humanities allows for the notion that no science is entirely objective - there is always a subjective (human) element in the creation of scientific knowledge. The scientific method failed to provide consistent data in the early studies of human cultures. Cultural theory, history, etc. aim partly to identify and account for this subjectivity of study. It began as a corrective for science's claims of authority and objective truth.

Similarly, I agree with Brockman that the past is not useful when studied merely for the past's sake. History should be (but arguably always is) a 'presentist' project. I think, though, that there are humanities scholars who can manage to create useful and accessible scholarship for the modern day.

Another one of his points that I find interesting (and useful for a debate about the various merits of the humanities and the sciences) is his assertion that "humanities academians talk about each other, [while] scientists talk about the universe." (p.6) His assesment of the scientific community (in opposition to the humanities community) is interesting:

"[Scientists] are both the creators and the critics of their shared enterprise.... Through the process of creativity and criticism and debates, they decide which ideas get weeded out and which become part of the consensus that leads to the next level of discovery." (p.6)

This brings up an interesting observation of mine, namely, that the scentific community is in fact looking for a consensus. They work collaboratively, they encourage collaboration, and their work is conceived of as a useful piece of a big puzzle, one which they should share with the rest of the scientific community. Humanities academics work in an entirely opposite way. We are taught to guard our opinions as intellectual property, we are taught not to work in groups (much less publish in groups), and we are taught to differentiate our own independent voices from those voices that have gone before us. We are not (at least nowadays) looking for consensus, or seeing our work as a piece of an objective identifiable puzzle.

But why would the humanities want to look for consensus? Our barest assumptions - that study itself is a subjective process, that interpretation is unique and dialogic and changing, that what we study is also always changing - lead us to believe that there is no pinnable objective "thing" parallel to that real and present universe that the scientists supposedly have, and no concrete method comparable to the scientific method, which, as Brockman states, functions broadly across the scientific disciplines. Where this leaves us, though, is unclear. Certainly, the in-fighting of academics in the humanities does not help the society as a whole learn and progress. Collaborative and dialectical work should be encouraged and rewarded in the humanities. Scholars should make an effort to learn the science of their field as well as the literature, history, etc. But those people who work in the humanities should not be discounted as lost causes; there is a prodding from their side as well for more 'humanist' modern work.