Stay with me, guys. This is one of the best books I've read in months.
First, even if you're too much of a he-man to be caught dead with this on your reading pile, at least look at the cover on Amazon.com. Those are six of the most pissed-off women you hope you'll ever see outside of a courtroom. The author does have a biting sense of humor and she writes in a very clear & straightforward style. Several of the women on this board have already alluded to the topic of this book, and it's a subject that deserves more public education.
Second, think about the women you've spent significant time with. (I know, for some of you this won't take long.) Chances are that one day you said something seemingly innocuous and found your face peeled back by the subsequent detonation. Wouldn't you like to know how to avoid repeating the experience?
Third, perhaps an important woman in your life has had major symptoms or even health problems that seem to be very difficult to diagnose, let alone to treat. Wouldn't you appreciate a little more insight?
OK, while the testosterone-poisoned are busy writing their thread hijacks using words like "That's nothin", "cheerleader", and "her grandmother", let me speak to the rest of the inquisitive & enlightened audience.
I have an old chemistry degree but even I had no idea how much has been learned about hormones in the last couple decades. Not just women's hormones, either-- again, guys, try messing with your thyroid or your testosterone levels and see what happens. Heck, I've never even seen the word "estradiol" before, but it's a pretty important molecule. Dr. Vliet spends a couple chapters discussing how the human body manufacturers and uses hormones, in both genders, and how minor variations can have major health effects.
Then she lays into the medical community (the reason for the cover of the book). If you see a doctor when you're suffering from typical hormone-related symptoms, there's a very good chance that you'll be patted on the head, diagnosed as stressed & depressed, and given a prescription for Paxil or Zoloft. This happens to guys almost as frequently as it happens to women. Many "mental-health" medications mess with serotonin & dopamine levels even worse than the hormones are already messing with them, so in addition to a hormone problem you've now started a medication problem. At least one of the hormone effects will seriously deplete your skeleton of its bone structure, leading to osteoporosis & fractures well before you're in middle age. Again this is guys as well as women, despite the book's title. OB/GYNs are trained more as surgeons than as endocrinologists, so they tend to see a complex surgical solution for "simple" cyclical hormone swings. Although menopausal hormone replacement therapy gained a lot of bad press for its effect on breast cancer rates, it turns out that this was one specific subset of a number of hormone replacement medication choices. HMOs do not want to pay for hormone blood tests (saliva tests are cheaper though much less accurate) let alone testing of daily or even hourly hormone-level changes. They certainly don't want to pay for unconventional therapy like estradiol patches. I even learned that the major estrogen replacement medication is not a biologically identical version of human estrogen. It's made from... horse piss. (Yup, it's not just for Corona bottles anymore.) Although Premarin is a lot cheaper than "bioidentical" estrogen, needless to say the human endocrine system has a little trouble adapting to the equine urinary estrogen equivalent. At this point in the book I was sure glad that proctologists & urologists don't get to deal with hormones.
Again, speaking as a guy, I thought that the phrase "birth control pill" described a generic product. It turns out that there's a tremendous number of different formulae & brands on the market, each with a specific purpose, and many women's hormone levels change with age. One BCP will not suffice from ovulation to menopause, but most doctors are unaware of the difference. They also tend to be blissfully ignorant of the side effects of all the various mixes & doses.
The rest of the book is directed mostly to women, but if you've ever felt that your relationship has turned into an uncharted minefield then you'd be wise to read up. The connection between mental/physical well-being and hormone levels has been pretty thoroughly dissected and is more pervasive than previously thought. Dr. Vliet documents women who have serious heart attacks in their 20s-- tachycardia leading to comas-- due to hormone swings. Other severe symptoms have included chronic fatigue syndrome, osteoporosis (in their 20s and even teens), psychosis, clinical depression, severe weight gain, encysted acne, and a host of other syndromes that many doctors attempt to treat with reassurance or anti-depressants.
Even if you don't want to catch cooties from reading the whole book, peruse the chapter on symptoms & self-diagnosis. You may recognize a lot of odd symptoms that seem unconnected or even "personality quirks" that are actually being driven by inappropriate birth-control pill doses or changing hormone levels. I never knew that vertigo could be caused by rapid changes in hormone levels.
Our librarian, a good friend, just found out that her left heel is broken. It kept swelling up and was too painful to walk or to shift a clutch, and an osteopath finally found the break on a scan. She has no idea how she broke it-- it just did. She's also been working extra hours, short on staff, a bit stressed out over juggling budget cuts, looking fatigued, losing weight & drinking too much coffee. In her mid-30s she's already been diagnosed with osteopenia, which used to be thought of as an "old lady syndrome". That was the first time I'd ever heard of ostopenia, and the second time occurred when I read this book. Now I just have to find a way to tactfully direct her attention toward it...
First, even if you're too much of a he-man to be caught dead with this on your reading pile, at least look at the cover on Amazon.com. Those are six of the most pissed-off women you hope you'll ever see outside of a courtroom. The author does have a biting sense of humor and she writes in a very clear & straightforward style. Several of the women on this board have already alluded to the topic of this book, and it's a subject that deserves more public education.
Second, think about the women you've spent significant time with. (I know, for some of you this won't take long.) Chances are that one day you said something seemingly innocuous and found your face peeled back by the subsequent detonation. Wouldn't you like to know how to avoid repeating the experience?
Third, perhaps an important woman in your life has had major symptoms or even health problems that seem to be very difficult to diagnose, let alone to treat. Wouldn't you appreciate a little more insight?
OK, while the testosterone-poisoned are busy writing their thread hijacks using words like "That's nothin", "cheerleader", and "her grandmother", let me speak to the rest of the inquisitive & enlightened audience.
I have an old chemistry degree but even I had no idea how much has been learned about hormones in the last couple decades. Not just women's hormones, either-- again, guys, try messing with your thyroid or your testosterone levels and see what happens. Heck, I've never even seen the word "estradiol" before, but it's a pretty important molecule. Dr. Vliet spends a couple chapters discussing how the human body manufacturers and uses hormones, in both genders, and how minor variations can have major health effects.
Then she lays into the medical community (the reason for the cover of the book). If you see a doctor when you're suffering from typical hormone-related symptoms, there's a very good chance that you'll be patted on the head, diagnosed as stressed & depressed, and given a prescription for Paxil or Zoloft. This happens to guys almost as frequently as it happens to women. Many "mental-health" medications mess with serotonin & dopamine levels even worse than the hormones are already messing with them, so in addition to a hormone problem you've now started a medication problem. At least one of the hormone effects will seriously deplete your skeleton of its bone structure, leading to osteoporosis & fractures well before you're in middle age. Again this is guys as well as women, despite the book's title. OB/GYNs are trained more as surgeons than as endocrinologists, so they tend to see a complex surgical solution for "simple" cyclical hormone swings. Although menopausal hormone replacement therapy gained a lot of bad press for its effect on breast cancer rates, it turns out that this was one specific subset of a number of hormone replacement medication choices. HMOs do not want to pay for hormone blood tests (saliva tests are cheaper though much less accurate) let alone testing of daily or even hourly hormone-level changes. They certainly don't want to pay for unconventional therapy like estradiol patches. I even learned that the major estrogen replacement medication is not a biologically identical version of human estrogen. It's made from... horse piss. (Yup, it's not just for Corona bottles anymore.) Although Premarin is a lot cheaper than "bioidentical" estrogen, needless to say the human endocrine system has a little trouble adapting to the equine urinary estrogen equivalent. At this point in the book I was sure glad that proctologists & urologists don't get to deal with hormones.
Again, speaking as a guy, I thought that the phrase "birth control pill" described a generic product. It turns out that there's a tremendous number of different formulae & brands on the market, each with a specific purpose, and many women's hormone levels change with age. One BCP will not suffice from ovulation to menopause, but most doctors are unaware of the difference. They also tend to be blissfully ignorant of the side effects of all the various mixes & doses.
The rest of the book is directed mostly to women, but if you've ever felt that your relationship has turned into an uncharted minefield then you'd be wise to read up. The connection between mental/physical well-being and hormone levels has been pretty thoroughly dissected and is more pervasive than previously thought. Dr. Vliet documents women who have serious heart attacks in their 20s-- tachycardia leading to comas-- due to hormone swings. Other severe symptoms have included chronic fatigue syndrome, osteoporosis (in their 20s and even teens), psychosis, clinical depression, severe weight gain, encysted acne, and a host of other syndromes that many doctors attempt to treat with reassurance or anti-depressants.
Even if you don't want to catch cooties from reading the whole book, peruse the chapter on symptoms & self-diagnosis. You may recognize a lot of odd symptoms that seem unconnected or even "personality quirks" that are actually being driven by inappropriate birth-control pill doses or changing hormone levels. I never knew that vertigo could be caused by rapid changes in hormone levels.
Our librarian, a good friend, just found out that her left heel is broken. It kept swelling up and was too painful to walk or to shift a clutch, and an osteopath finally found the break on a scan. She has no idea how she broke it-- it just did. She's also been working extra hours, short on staff, a bit stressed out over juggling budget cuts, looking fatigued, losing weight & drinking too much coffee. In her mid-30s she's already been diagnosed with osteopenia, which used to be thought of as an "old lady syndrome". That was the first time I'd ever heard of ostopenia, and the second time occurred when I read this book. Now I just have to find a way to tactfully direct her attention toward it...