Commercial sunscreens are a danger to your health

[Leslie Carol Botha: Commercial sunscreens that contain cancer-causing and estrogenic chemicals should never be used,  the only proven safe sunscreen ingredient is zinc oxide. Sunscreens with oxybenzone, methoxycinnamate, and PABA are dangerous.]

Cureguide

by Randall Neustaedter OMD

A recent study has shown that a potent sunscreen ingredient, oxybenzone, may be a cause of endometriosis. This condition occurs when uterine tissue grows in abnormal sites in the abdomen and causes severe pain. Women are usually diagnosed because of severe cramping during their periods. In this study of 600 women, those with the highest levels of a form of oxybenzone in their urine had a 65 percent increased risk of endometriosis. Oxybenzone, like bisphenol-A (BPA), is a chemical that mimics estrogen. And endometriosis growth is fed by estrogen.

This study should be another warning sign that oxybenzone should not be put on the skin. The highest levels of oxybenzone in the urine of women in this study occurred in the months of July and August, proof that the sunscreen ingredient is readily absorbed into the bloodstream.

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Read the complete article and related information at Study: Commercial Sunscreens Linked to Endometriosis

Becoming Whole, Healthy, and Effective

We are modern women, living in developed societies, as integral participants of a culture that has made few provisions to give women, “our due respect for our sacred power of creation.” For most of us there is no Moon Lodge waiting to nurture us, no understanding community of women to pick up our work load, to give us time to be circumspect; to experience our power of creativity and renewal. No Grandmother to guide us through the mysteries of our lives. We may not even recognize the Huichol Grandmother’s sense of the sacred circle of protection that surrounds us.

Some of us are single moms, some middle-age care givers; some are, for reasons of our own, women who feel terribly isolated and overwhelmed by the responsibilities of our daily lives. We are however, women capable of building our own version of a supportive ‘Moon Time’. We can become more aware of our hormone cycle, and to the best of our ability, plan our activities to complement and coordinate, with our menstrual cycle. No matter how tight our schedule, we can all gift ourselves with some self-nurture-moments during our postovulatory phase.

“Building balance into our lives is a process, before it becomes a practice.”

— H. Sandra Chevalier-Batik, Understanding Your Mind, Mood and Hormone Cycle

Leslie Botha and Sandra Chevalier-Batik believe that learning to live within the hormonal and lunar cycle is the only way women will become whole, healthy, and effective. Women’s hormone cycles are the foundation of our power, collectively, and individually. Each cycle you pass through, is a progression of understanding and unfolding.

Read the complete article and related information at Creating Our Own Supportive ‘Moon Time’

Society for Menstrual Cycle Research
re:Cycling

Sex Ed for Teens: Where’s the Mucus?
by Lisa Leger
February 24, 2012

Teen girls are getting pregnant, in part, because they don’t understand their menstrual cycles. It’s time for sexual health educators to step up and teach girls the primary sign of fertility.

A recent report by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on teen pregnancy in the U.S., based on a survey of close to 5,000 young mothers who got pregnant unintentionally, found that half of them had not used birth control.  When questioned further, a third of those said that they didn’t think they could get pregnant. Their reasoning ties in with previous research findings that girls who get pregnant in their teens have misconceptions about their menstrual cycles. They don’t seem to understand how ovulation works and are failing to correctly identify the fertile days in their monthly cycles.

My colleagues in sexual and reproductive health education should take notice. These findings reveal a knowledge gap in sex education: Teens don’t know about the easy-to-spot sign of fertility that precedes ovulation – cervical mucus secretions. Let’s fix it by adding one simple phrase to our sex ed classes: “When you have mucus, you can get pregnant.”

We would also need to explain the ovarian cycle, how estrogen promotes cervical mucus production, the role of mucus in sperm survival and how to check for it. This is arguably among the most useful information young women and men could receive before leaving high school.

If girls had this knowledge then I believe that at least some of them would more accurately identify fertile days in their cycles and at least some unintended pregnancies would be prevented. When a girl knows that mucus on the toilet tissue means she is fertile and able to get pregnant, she may be empowered to avoid intercourse, insist on a condom if she has sex, or know if she needs to seek out emergency contraception. Or she may decide to just hang out with her girl friends. I’m not saying that fertility awareness is a magic wand. Of course, many factors influence our decision-making. But teens are capable of making wise choices when they have accurate information on which to base them.

I’ve talked to many public health nurses throughout my 20-year career as a fertility awareness instructor. They usually quibble about the effectiveness of fertility awareness as a birth control method and seem reluctant to mention the existence of cervical mucus for fear that “a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.” They worry that some students, if taught fertility awareness, might screw it up, thinking they were “safe” when they were not. But the CDC report tells us that garbled understanding about how ovulation works is doing more harm than good.

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Read the complete article and related information at Empower Teens with Education about Fertility

Friday Weird Science: Does your menstrual blood attract BEARS?!

Neurotic Physiology
Feb 03 2012 Published by scicurious under Friday Weird Science

While Sci was listening eagerly to Kate Clancy’s appearance on Skeptically Speaking last Sunday (you’ll be able to download the episode soon), I was flabbergasted to find out that there is a rumor out there that, if you go out hiking on your period…you might attract BEARS.

(I totally forgot about this until someone on Twitter pointed it out. Awesome)

Bears?!

Not only that, the rumor was apparently widespread enough that someone actually did a study to find out if it was true.

Which is good, I’d hate to fear for my life while hiking because I’m shedding my uterine lining. I’d like the think bears are more sensible than that.

But I’ll admit, a part of me was a little worried. After all, I have been camping, and had our campsite raided by bears, because someone left their toothpaste out of the bear box. Apparently bears in Yosemite National Park love them some minty freshness. And if toothpaste is on the menu, why not tampons? I mean, bears will eat most anything, right? Luckily, science is here for us, and science wants us to know, it’s ok to menstruate around bears. Black bears, anyway.

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Read the complete article and related information at Does your menstrual blood attract BEARS?!

‘Menstrual’ brain changes seen

BBC News
Last Updated: Tuesday, 25 October 2005, 09:28 GMT 10:28 UK

Women use their brains differently at different times of the month, research suggests.

Emotion-controlling brain activity increased premenstrually

Brain scans revealed mental processes can change across the menstrual cycle.

Just before a period, at the time when some women experience premenstrual syndrome, activity in brain regions that help control emotions increased.

After menstruation the activity went down, a US team from New York told Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cyclical changes

Although the researchers looked at 12 women with no outward menstrual mood changes, they say their findings could be important for understanding why some women have a particularly hard emotional time around menstruation.

PMS is believed to affect between one-third and one-half of women between 20-50 years of age.

Women with PMS may experience depression, irritability and a propensity towards outbursts of anger as well as physical symptoms such as cramps and bloating.

It confirms that the psychological health of women patients must be assessed in relationship to the menstrual cycle Chris Ryan of the National Association for Premenstrual Syndrome

In the study, Dr Emily Stern of Cornell University, along with colleagues from the Rockefeller University, used MRI scans to monitor the brain activity patterns of women as they were asked to read words with negative, neutral or positive connotations.

The 12 women were asked to perform the same task premenstrually – one to five days before their period was due – and then postmenstrually – eight to 12 days after their period.

Premenstrual syndrome

During the premenstrual phase the women showed much greater activity in frontal brain regions that help control emotions when they were reading the emotive words.

Postmenstrually, this increased brain activity had disappeared.

The researchers say it is possible that the brain changes might have allowed the women to maintain a consistent emotional state and compensate for the surging hormones that occur around menstruation, which some suggest are involved in PMS.

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Read the complete article and related information at Brain Changes During Menstruation Prove PMS & PMDD are Contrived Syndromes

89.3 KPCC

Feb. 1, 2012 | By Stephanie O’Neill |

Daniel Hulshizer/AP

Obese women who take long-term birth control injection Depo-Provera may be at greater risk for developing diabetes, according to a new USC study.

Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine found that obese women who received the Depo-Provera injection become more resistant to insulin. That means they were less able to lower their blood sugar levels, which leaves them more susceptible Type 2 Diabetes.

Researchers compared the effects of the drug on 10 obese women and five women of healthier weight. Both groups became more insulin resistant after the injections, but the obese women stayed that way. The others were better able to compensate, by producing more insulin.

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Read the complete article and related information at USC study: Depo-Provera birth control may increase diabetes risk for obese women

Huff Post
Women

February 4, 2012

Yashar Ali
Writer at The Current Conscience

Earlier this year, I was watching a repeat episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” The guest on this particular episode was Dr. Oz, who was tasked with answering a series of health questions, many of which were related to women’s reproductive health.

After Dr. Oz answered a question about douching, Oprah turned to a gentleman who was sitting in the audience and (with some humor) apologized to him for being stuck listening to all the conversation about “women” stuff and being seen on TV for participating in an episode that dealt with, among other topics, menstruation and menopause.

The gentleman turned out to be Major League Baseball player Jim Thome, who plays for the Chicago White Sox. He had brought his wife to the Oprah show as a gift, as Oprah Show tickets were nearly impossible to come by.

Oprah’s interaction with Jim Thome left me fuming. Why should we feel bad for him? Why would Oprah feel bad for him? I am an Oprah fan, but her apology was uncharacteristic for someone who spends her life advocating for and helping women.

I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t feel sorry for Jim Thome because he’s a wealthy, famous baseball player.

What I am saying is that we shouldn’t feel sorry for him because he’s a man and he doesn’t have to deal with the reality of any of the problems addressed on the Oprah show he sat in on. And instead of Oprah offering that Dr. Oz episode to Jim as an opportunity to learn more about a woman’s body — perhaps allowing him to be more supportive of his wife and female family members — he was offered an apology for having to sit in on a conversation about issues that are so central to a woman’s life.

Why is our culture so intent on protecting men from hearing about or discussing a woman’s reproductive health?

I’ve written about this phenomena in some of my previous posts. When some of the women in my life start talking about their menstrual cycles or anything else reproductive related, they stop themselves and warn me to stop listening, “But you don’t want to hear about this …”

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Read the complete article and related information at If Men Had Periods, Women Would Know All About It

re: Cycling

Read the complete article and related information at Alongside Scientists Exploring Why Women Menstruate

Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

re:Cycling

January 20th, 2012 by Laura Wershler

Photo credit: Ceridwen, Creative Commons 2.0

Is there a woman over the age of 18 anywhere who doesn’t know that taking the birth control pill can make her periods lighter and less painful? Most women know this, but not many know why. The news stories swirling around a new study about the pill and period pain will not enlighten them.

A 30-year longitudinal Swedish study has finally proved the worth of what is accepted practice in North America and Europe: the prescribing of combined oral contraceptives (COCs), or birth control pills with synthetic estrogen and progestin, to treat painful periods known clinically as dysmenorrhea.

Of course, pharmaceutical companies that manufacture COCs are probably eager for this research, as prescribing the pill for dysmenorrhea is still an off-label use in the U.S. (unlicensed use in the U.K.). Pill manufacturers may be able to use this finding to lobby the FDA (or equivalent agencies in other nations) to approve the pill as treatment for menstrual pain, leading to increased sales and insurance coverage. Perhaps that’s why news media have been treating this discovery as breaking news.

Take this headline: Yes, the Pill CAN ease the agony of period pain: Scientists confirm what millions of women already know, or this one: The pill ‘does ease period pain’, or this one: Combination oral contraception pills cut menstruation pain, or, really, any of these.

You can read the abstract of the study by Swedish researchers Ingela Lindh, Agneta Andersson Ellström and Ian Milsom, published this week in the journal Human Reproduction, here: The effect of combined oral contraceptives and age on dysmenorrhoea: an epidemiological study. The conclusions are simple: “COC use and increasing age, independent of each other, reduced the severity of dysmenorrhoea. COC use reduced the severity of dysmenorrhea more than increasing age and childbirth.”

Forget the age factor for the purposes of this discussion. The fact that COC use reduces the severity of dysmenorrhea is not astounding. This is old news. So says Dr. Steven Goldstein, an obstetrician/gynecologist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, quoted in a USA Today story:

“The study results are not surprising. It’s gratifying to see researchers documenting scientifically what practitioners have been seeing for a very long time. The amount of discomfort from a woman’s period with a combination birth control pill is a fraction of what it is without the Pill. There is a diminution of pain from the Pill.”

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Read the complete article and related information at The pill, reduced period pain and the ongoing delusion

Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

re:Cycling

Guest Post by Holly Grigg-Spall

January 12, 2012

“Less stressed, thinner and more interested in sex.” – but not buying magazines.

Photo Credit: Anthony Easton // CC 2.0

In a recent issue of the UK’s Stylist magazine — a weekly women’s glossy that is available for free at tube stations and selected clothing stores — there was an article headlined ‘What does 10 Years On The Pill Do To You?‘ As a result of my on-going blog, Sweetening the Pill, which documents my experience of coming off the contraceptive pill, I was contacted by the writer to provide some quotes for this piece. Unfortunately, I was edited out. As a journalist myself, I understood this situation has little to do with the writer’s choice of content and more to do with the magazine editor’s final say on what was most fitting for the feature. Yet the title question is the very crux of my blog: having taken the Pill for 10 years, stopping as a result of discovering the answer to this very question.

According to the Stylist piece the answer is that the Pill changes your memory skills, lowers your libido, makes you attracted to the wrong kinds of men for you, changes weight distribution, prevents you building muscles, make you retain water, make you depressed and jealous…and how can you tell if this all is just you or the Pill? You can’t and you shouldn’t try to find out, is the message here. We are advised to not take a break from the Pill, not even for a week, and if you are concerned, just ask for a different brand from your doctor. There is no discussion of non-hormonal alternatives. There is also no discussion of the benefits of not taking the Pill, of allowing your body to ovulate once a month.

My answer to this question was: “The Pill has a whole body impact. Taking the Pill shuts down a woman’s hormone cycle — and the ovulation and menstruation that is an essential part of this cycle — and replaces it with a low stream of synthetic hormones. This has an affect on every organ in the body — the impact is wide-reaching and crudely administered. The peaks, troughs, and plateaus of a woman’s ‘natural’ cycle are wiped out. The monthly hormone cycle is integral to many of the body’s central functions, including the metabolic, immune, and endocrine systems. This changes everything — from your sense of smell to your libido to your ability to absorb vitamins from your food.

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Read the complete article and related information at Off the Pill, Off the Magazines