By Azeen Ghorayshi Marcia Herman-Giddens first realized something was changing in young girls in the late 1980s, while she was serving as the director for the child abuse team at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. During evaluations of girls who had been abused, Dr. Herman-Giddens noticed that many of them had started developing breasts at ages as young as 6 or 7. “That did not seem right,” said Dr. Herman-Giddens, who is now an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. She wondered whether girls with early breast development were more likely to be sexually abused, but she could not find any data keeping track of puberty onset in girls in the United States. So she decided to collect it herself. A decade later, she published a study of more than 17,000 girls who underwent physical examinations at pediatricians’ offices across the country. The numbers revealed that, on average, girls in the mid-1990s had started to develop breasts — typically the first sign of puberty — around age 10, more than a year earlier than previously recorded. The decline was even more striking in Black girls, who had begun developing breasts, on average, at age 9. The medical community was shocked by the findings, and many were doubtful about a dramatic new trend spotted by an unknown physician assistant, Dr. Herman-Giddens recalled. “They were blindsided,” she said. But the study turned out to be a watershed in the medical understanding of puberty. Studies in the decades since have confirmed, in dozens of countries, that the age of puberty in girls has dropped by about three months per decade since the 1970s. A similar pattern, though less extreme, has been observed in boys. Although it is difficult to tease apart cause and effect, earlier puberty may have harmful impacts, especially for girls. Girls who go through puberty early are at a higher risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse and other psychological problems, compared with peers who hit puberty later. Girls who get their periods earlier may also be at a higher risk of developing breast or uterine cancer in adulthood. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 28332 - Posted: 05.21.2022

By Gina Kolata Are you a man worried about your testosterone levels? Hoping to give them a boost? Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, has a solution. A promotional video for a new installment in a video series by Mr. Carlson describes a “total collapse of testosterone levels in American men,” positing an explanation for what he and many conservatives see as a creeping loss of masculinity in today’s society. Chock-full of oiled, shirtless men performing vaguely masculine tasks, like turning over giant tires and throwing a javelin, the video has already been widely remarked upon on social media for its bizarre erotic imagery. But one shot in particular stands out: a naked man atop a rock pile, limbs outflung, exposing his genitals to the red light issuing from what appears to be a waist-high air purifier. Something very like the theme from “2001: A Space Odyssey” plays in the background. This is the treatment proposed by Mr. Carlson’s “documentary”: Revive your underperforming testicles with red light, in particular a device made by a little known company called Joovv. A leading endocrinologist says — no surprise — the whole thing is ridiculous, and not just because of the man receiving light therapy atop a pile of stone slabs in the dead of night. First, there is precious little evidence that testosterone “levels are declining by roughly 10 percent per decade, completely changing the way people are at the most fundamental level,” as Mr. Carlson has said. Studies examining changes in testosterone over time are challenging for several reasons, including difficulties in recruiting large populations of normal subjects, daily circadian changes in testosterone, and differences in testing methods over time, noted Dr. John Amory, an expert on male reproductive health at the University of Washington. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 28298 - Posted: 04.23.2022

by Peter Hess Of all the brain chemistry that autism researchers study, few molecules have garnered as much attention as the so-called ‘social hormone,’ oxytocin. Some autistic children appear to have low blood levels of oxytocin, which has led several teams to test oxytocin delivered intranasally as an autism therapy. So far, though, such clinical trials have yielded inconsistent results. Here we explain what scientists know so far about oxytocin’s connection to autism. What does oxytocin do in the brain and body? Oxytocin serves multiple purposes, such as promoting trust between people, moderating our response to threats, and supporting lactation and mother-child bonding. The hormone is produced primarily in the hypothalamus, a brain region that mediates basic bodily functions, including hunger, thirst and body temperature. Oxytocin-producing neurons in the hypothalamus project into other parts of the brain, such as the nucleus accumbens, where the hormone regulates social-reward learning. In the brain’s sensory system, including the olfactory bulb, oxytocin seems to help balance excitatory and inhibitory signals, improving social-information processing, at least in rats. In the amygdala, oxytocin appears to help dull threat responses to negative social information and foster social recognition. The pituitary gland controls the release of oxytocin into the bloodstream. Blood oxytocin is crucial to start uterine muscle contractions during childbirth. It also supports lactation by facilitating the milk letdown reflex, stimulating the flow of milk into the nipple. © 2022 Simons Foundation

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 28143 - Posted: 01.08.2022

By Jamie Friedlander Serrano My dad was planning a trip to Cannon Beach, a small coastal town in Oregon that I love. Yet when I sat down to email him some recommendations, I drew a blank. I couldn’t remember the name of the state park we visited or the breakfast spot we adored. Even the name of the hotel we stayed at eluded me. U.S. coronavirus cases tracker and map Since giving birth to my year-old daughter, I’ve had countless moments like this. I have trouble recalling words, forget to respond to text messages, and even missed an appointment. What I’m experiencing is often called “mommy brain”— the forgetful, foggy and scatterbrained feeling many pregnant women and new mothers experience. But is mommy brain real? Anecdotally, yes. Ask any new mom if she has felt the above, and she'll likely say she has — as many as 80 percent of new moms report feelings of mommy brain. Scientifically, it also appears the answer is yes: A growing body of research supports the argument that moms' brains change during pregnancy and after giving birth. A clear explanation for the phenomenon still remains somewhat elusive, however. There are countless variables that experts say contribute to mommy brain, such as fluctuating hormones postpartum, sleep deprivation in dealing with a new baby, anxiety over new parenthood, elevated stress levels, and a general of lives that having a baby forces. Put together, it’s only natural that changes in mental processing would occur, says Moriah Thomason, Barakett associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. When our brain needs to make space for a new priority — keeping a baby alive — remembering a grocery list takes a back seat. “Does it mean that you literally cannot do those things that you used to do as well? Probably not,” she says. “It’s just not the most important thing for you to be accessing.” © 1996-2021 The Washington Post

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 28033 - Posted: 10.13.2021

By Lisa Sanders, M.D. The young woman was awakened by the screams of her 39-year-old husband. “Please make it stop!” he shouted, leaping from the bed. “It hurts!” He paced back and forth across the room, arms crossed over his chest as if to protect himself. Two days earlier, he had inhaled a breath mint when his wife startled him. He felt it move slowly down his throat as he swallowed repeatedly. His chest had hurt ever since. But not like this. The man squirmed miserably throughout the short drive to the emergency room at Westerly Hospital, near the Rhode Island and Connecticut border. No position was comfortable. Everything hurt. Even breathing was hard. Although the doctors in the E.R. immediately determined that the young man wasn’t having a heart attack, it was clear something was very wrong. His blood pressure was so low that it was hard to measure. A normal blood pressure may be 120/80. On arrival, his was 63/32. With a pressure this low, blood couldn’t get everywhere it was needed — a condition known as shock. His lips, hands and feet had a dusky hue from this lack of well-​oxygenated blood. He was given intravenous fluids to bring up his pressure, and when that didn’t work, he was started on medications for it. Three hours later, he was on two of these medicines and his fourth liter of fluid. Despite that, his pressure remained in the 70s. He had to be put on a breathing machine to help him keep up with his body’s demand for more oxygen. The most common cause of shock is infection. But this man, as sick as he was, had no signs of infection. The medical team started him on antibiotics anyway. Could the painful mint have torn his esophagus? Up to 50 percent of patients with that injury will die. A CT scan showed no evidence of perforation or of fluid in his chest. What else could this be? There was no sign of a clot keeping blood from entering the lungs, another cause of deadly low blood pressure. An ultrasound of the heart showed that he had some fluid in the sac called the pericardium, which contains and protects the heart, but not enough to interfere with how well it was beating. He was tested for Covid and for recreational drugs — both negative. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 27981 - Posted: 09.08.2021

By Kim Tingley During menopause, which marks the end of a woman’s menstrual cycles, her ovaries stop producing the hormones estrogen and progesterone, bringing an end to her natural childbearing years. But those hormones also regulate how the brain functions, and the brain governs their release — meaning that menopause is a neurological process as well. “Many of the symptoms of menopause cannot possibly be directly produced by the ovaries, if you think about the hot flashes, the night sweats, the anxiety, the depression, the insomnia, the brain fog,” says Lisa Mosconi, an associate professor of neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine and director of its Women’s Brain Initiative. “Those are brain symptoms, and we should look at the brain as something that is impacted by menopause at least as much as your ovaries are.” In June, Mosconi and her colleagues published in the journal Scientific Reports one of the few studies to observe in detail what happens to the brain throughout the menopause transition, not just before and after. Using various neuroimaging techniques, they scanned the brains of more than 160 women between the ages of 40 and 65 who were in different stages of the transition to examine the organ’s structure, blood flow, metabolism and function; they did many of the same scans two years later. They also imaged the brains of men in the same age range. “What we found in women and not in men is that the brain changes quite a lot,” Mosconi says. “The transition of menopause really leads to a whole remodeling.” On average, women in the United States enter the menopause transition — defined as the first 12 consecutive months without a period — at around 50; once diagnosed, they are in postmenopause. But they may begin to have hormonal fluctuations in their 40s. (For some women, this happens in their 30s, and surgical removal of the ovaries causes immediate menopause, as do some cancer treatments.) Those fluctuations cause irregular periods and potentially a wide variety of symptoms, including hot flashes, insomnia, mood swings, trouble concentrating and changes in sexual arousal. During this phase, known as perimenopause, which averages four years in length (but can last from several months to a decade), Mosconi and colleagues observed that their female subjects experienced a loss of both gray matter (the brain cells that process information) and white matter (the fibers that connect those cells). Postmenopause, however, that loss stopped, and in some cases brain volume increased, though not to its premenopausal size. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 27917 - Posted: 07.21.2021

By Sally Satel For over a half-century, steroid drugs have been a mainstay of medical care, widely used to treat inflammatory illness such as asthma, skin conditions and autoimmune diseases. Less is known about their dramatic and sometimes frightening long-term effects on mood, personality and thinking. I took steroids years ago, and the side effects changed my life. Steroid medications mimic a natural hormone in the body called glucocorticoid, which suppresses immune system processes that trigger inflammation, the sources of many autoimmune and chronic disease. In 1948, glucocorticoid was first used for a chronic inflammatory disease, rheumatoid arthritis, which causes joint deformity and chronic pain. Two years later, the American physician behind the breakthrough therapy was one of the winners of the Nobel Prize. Steroids have been prescribed for many other conditions since then. One steroid, dexamethasone, has been used for people with severe cases of covid-19 and President Trump was given it when he was hospitalized for the disease in October. My story starts in 1977. I was finishing my senior year as a biology major at Cornell University when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a form of inflammatory disease in which the body’s immune system attacks the gastrointestinal tract. I had a relatively mild case — transient pain, causing me to rush to the nearest ladies’ room, and find some blood in the bowl — and so I was able to finish my final year on time and begin a PhD program in evolutionary biology that summer. My predoctoral project entailed measuring the jaw muscles of tadpoles using jewelers’ tools and a dissecting microscope. Within weeks, though, I had a “flare” in the parlance of gastroenterology — I felt weak and was having increased bouts of blood-streaked diarrhea. In mid-October, I spent five days at the hospital where my symptoms resolved on a daily regimen of 60 mg of the potent steroid prednisone. I was discharged on 60 mg per day and felt fine for a week. But soon my brain began to feel like cotton wrapped in yards of gauze. I tried to study for an upcoming quiz but I couldn’t concentrate. © 1996-2020 The Washington Post

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 27609 - Posted: 12.07.2020

By Lisa Sanders, M.D. The waiter had barely put the plate in front of her when the 46-year-old woman felt the color drain from her face. She was in Fresno, Calif., on a work trip and had come to a restaurant to meet an old friend for dinner. But all of a sudden her stomach dropped — the way it might on a roller-coaster ride. A sudden coolness on her face told her she’d broken out in a sweat. She felt dizzy and a little confused. She saw the alarmed face of her friend and knew she looked as bad as she felt. She excused herself and carefully made her way to the bathroom. She sat in front of the vanity and supported her head on her arms. There was the now-familiar stabbing pain in her stomach. She wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that. Was it 10 minutes? 15? At last she felt as if she could get up. As she hurried to meet her friend at the entrance, she felt the contents of her stomach surging upward. She covered her mouth as vomit shot between her fingers. She lowered her head and bolted through the doorway, trying not to see the horrified faces of the diners. In the parking lot, the rush of stomach contents continued until she was completely empty. Exhausted, she sank into the seat of her friend’s car. She was too sick to go back to her hotel, her friend said. Instead the friend would take her to her house, until she felt better. The next thing the woman remembered was that she was sitting on the floor of her friend’s shower, hot water pounding her back. When she could, she crawled into bed. She slept until late the next morning. She thanked her friend, canceled her morning meetings and later that day headed home to Stockton, Calif. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 27498 - Posted: 09.30.2020

David Cox Gérard Karsenty was a young scientist trying to make a name for himself in the early 1990s when he first stumbled upon a finding that would go on to transform our understanding of bone, and the role it plays in our body. Karsenty had become interested in osteocalcin, one of the most abundant proteins in bone. He suspected that it played a crucial role in bone remodelling – the process by which our bones continuously remove and create new tissue – which enables us to grow during childhood and adolescence, and also recover from injuries. Intending to study this, he conducted a genetic knockout experiment, removing the gene responsible for osteocalcin from mice. However to his dismay, his mutant mice did not appear to have any obvious bone defects at all. “For him, it was initially a total failure,” says Mathieu Ferron, a former colleague of Karsenty who now heads a research lab studying bone biology at IRCM in Montreal. “In those days it was super-expensive to do modification in the mouse genome.” But then Karsenty noticed something unexpected. While their bones had developed normally, the mice appeared to be both noticeably fat and cognitively impaired. “Mice that don’t have osteocalcin have increased circulating glucose, and they tend to look a bit stupid,” says Ferron. “It may sound silly to say this, but they don’t learn very well, they appear kind of depressed. But it took Karsenty and his team some time to understand how a protein in bone could be affecting these functions. They were initially a bit surprised and terrified as it didn’t really make any sense to them.” © 2020 Read It Later, Inc.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 27473 - Posted: 09.16.2020

by Chloe Williams A new wireless device activates a mouse’s neurons as it navigates a cage with food, hiding places and other mice, allowing researchers to study social behavior in a realistic environment1. Experiments using this setup suggest that oxytocin has distinct effects in different contexts — which may be particularly important as researchers explore the hormone’s value as a potential treatment for autism. The device makes use of optogenetics, a technique in which researchers use pulses of light to activate or silence neurons. Autism researchers have used the approach to manipulate neural circuits in mice, but traditional optogenetic devices involve a fiber-optic cable, which tethers the animal and interferes with social interactions. Other wireless devices have been able to activate neurons without a tether, but researchers have mostly used them to study social behavior involving just two mice interacting for only about 15 minutes in an otherwise empty cage — a scenario that fails to capture a full range of mouse behaviors2. The new wireless device, powered by two watch batteries, consists of a light-emitting diode attached to an optical fiber that is implanted into the brain. It has an on-off switch that allows researchers to control it remotely using a magnet placed inside the cage. Using this setup, researchers can modulate brain activity in a group of mice as they roam for days through a cage that has hiding places, platforms, a nest, food and water. The device’s designers tested it in mice engineered to express light-sensitive proteins in part of the hypothalamus. This region produces the hormone oxytocin, generally thought to reduce aggression and enhance social bonds. When delivered as a nasal spray, it improves social skills in some people with autism. © 2020 Simons Foundation

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 27369 - Posted: 07.16.2020

By Gretchen Reynolds Exercise may help change exercisers’ brains in surprising ways, according to a new study of physical activity and brain health. The study, which included both mice and people, found that exercise prompts the liver to pump out a little-known protein, and that chemically upping the levels of that protein in out-of-shape, elderly animals rejuvenates their brains and memories. The findings raise provocative questions about whether the brain benefits of exercise might someday be available in a capsule or syringe form — essentially “exercise in a pill.” We already have considerable evidence, of course, that physical activity protects brains and minds from some of the declines that otherwise accompany aging. In past rodent studies, animals that ran on wheels or treadmills produced more new neurons and learned and remembered better than sedentary mice or rats. Similarly, older people who took up walking for the sake of science added tissue volume in portions of their brains associated with memory. Even among younger people, those who were more fit than their peers tended to perform better on cognitive tests. But many questions remain unanswered about how, at a cellular level, exercise remodels the brain and alters its function. Most researchers suspect that the process involves the release of a cascade of substances inside the brain and elsewhere in the body during and after exercise. These substances interact and ignite other biochemical reactions that ultimately change how the brain looks and works. But what the substances are, where they originate and how they meet and mingle has remained unclear. So, for the new study, which was published this month in Science, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and other institutions decided to look inside the minds and bloodstreams of mice. In past research from the same lab, the scientists had infused blood from young mice into older ones and seen improvements in the aging animals’ thinking. It was like “transferring a memory of youth through blood,” says Saul Villeda, a professor at U.C.S.F., who conducted the study with his colleagues Alana Horowitz, Xuelai Fan and others. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 27368 - Posted: 07.16.2020

By Meredith Wadman In January, one of the first publications on those sickened by the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, reported that three out of every four hospitalized patients were male. Data from around the world have since confirmed that men face a greater risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 than women and that children are largely spared. Now, scientists investigating how the virus does its deadly work have zeroed in on a possible reason: Androgens—male hormones such as testosterone—appear to boost the virus’ ability to get inside cells. A constellation of emerging data supports this idea, including COVID-19 outcomes in men with prostate cancer and lab studies of how androgens regulate key genes. And preliminary observations from Spain suggest that a disproportionate number of men with male pattern baldness—which is linked to a powerful androgen—end up in hospitals with COVID-19. Researchers are rushing to test already approved drugs that block androgens’ effects, deploying them early in infection in hopes of slowing the virus and buying time for the immune system to beat it back. “Everybody is chasing a link between androgens … and the outcome of COVID-19,” says Howard Soule, executive vice president at the Prostate Cancer Foundation, who on 13 May ran a Zoom call presenting the newest research that drew 600 scientists and physicians. A second call scheduled for today will discuss incipient clinical trials. Epidemiological data from around the world have confirmed the early reports of male vulnerability. In Lombardy in Italy, for example, men comprised 82% of 1591 patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) from 20 February to 18 March, according to a JAMA paper. And male mortality exceeded that of women in every adult age group in another JAMA study of 5700 New York City patients hospitalized with COVID-19. © 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 27284 - Posted: 06.04.2020

Ruth Williams Experiments in mice and observations in humans have suggested the bone protein osteocalcin acts as a hormone regulating, among other things, metabolism, fertility, exercise capacity and acute stress. That interpretation is now partially in doubt. Two independent papers published yesterday (May 28) in PLOS Genetics, each of which presents a new osteocalcin knockout mouse strain, report that glucose metabolism and fertility were unaffected in the animals. While some researchers praise the studies, others highlight weaknesses. “I thought they were very good papers. I think the authors should be congratulated for very comprehensive studies of both skeletal and extraskeletal functions of osteocalcin,” says emeritus bone researcher Caren Gundberg of Yale School of Medicine who was not involved in the research. Skeletal biologist Gerard Karsenty of Columbia University disagrees. “There have been 25 laboratories in the world . . . that have shown osteocalcin is a hormone,” says Karsenty. These two papers “do not affect the work of [those] groups,” he adds, “because they are . . . technically flawed.” This tiny protein, one of the most abundant in the body, is produced and secreted by bone-forming osteoblast cells. In the 40 or so years since osteocalcin’s discovery, its precise function, or functions—whether in the bone or endocrine system—have not been fully pinned down. Studies from Karsenty’s lab more than 10 years ago were the first to indicate that osteocalcin could act as a hormone, regulating glucose metabolism. But the suggested hormonal function has been questioned for its relevance to humans. For example, while studies in people have shown that levels of osteocalcin in the blood are correlated with diabetes, whether this is a cause or effect is unclear. © 1986–2020 The Scientist.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 27275 - Posted: 06.03.2020

Nell Greenfieldboyce Shepherds in Christmas Nativity scenes that were painted, carved or sculpted hundreds of years ago sometimes have throats with large, abnormal growths. These are realistic depictions of goiter, an enlargement of the thyroid gland caused by iodine deficiency. The condition was common in those days in northern Italy, where the soil and water are depleted of iodine. "Goiter is more often seen in poor people," says retired surgeon Renzo Dionigi of the University of Insubria in Varese, Italy, who notes that the working classes in this region would historically not have a varied diet that might supply this vital nutrient. "That's why, probably, the poor shepherds are depicted with goiters," he says. He and his son, an endocrine surgeon named Gianlorenzo Dionigi, have for years enjoyed studying art and looking for signs of medical conditions. In the Sacri Monti ("Sacred Mountains") of Piedmont and Lombardy, they have visited chapels and churches created in the 16th and 17th centuries. "In all the Sacri Monti that I and my son visited, we have been able to observe representations of goiters very, very often," says the elder Dionigi. In one Nativity tableau from 1694, for example, a young horn player with a large goiter plays for the Holy Family. And in one fresco over the main door of the Aosta Cathedral, a shepherd with goiter plays his bagpipe for the newborn Jesus. © 2019 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 26913 - Posted: 12.26.2019

By Rachel E. Gross In the 1960s, manufacturers of the new birth-control pill imagined their ideal user as feminine, maternal and forgetful. She wanted discretion. She was married. And she wanted visible proof that her monthly cycle was normal and that she wasn’t pregnant. In 2019, the user of the pill is perceived as an altogether different person. She’s unwed, probably would prefer to skip her period and is more forthright about when it’s that time of the month. As such, many birth-control brands now come in brightly colored rectangular packs that make no effort to be concealed. But one part of the equation remains: the week of placebo pills, in which hormones are abruptly withdrawn and a woman experiences what looks and feels a lot like her regular period — blood, cramps and all — but isn’t. Physicians have widely described this pseudoperiod as medically unnecessary. So why do millions still endure it? That’s largely the legacy of two men: John Rock and David Wagner. First there’s Rock, a Harvard fertility expert and a developer of the pill. There’s a longstanding myth that Rock, a Catholic, designed the pill in the 1950s with the church in mind and included a week of hormonal withdrawal — and therefore bleeding — to make his invention seem more natural. In fact, the thought never crossed his mind, the Rutgers University historian Margaret Marsh says. Instead, it was Gregory (Goody) Pincus, the other developer of the pill, who suggested that the pill be given as a 20-days-on, 5-days-off regimen. Pincus wanted to provide women in his trials with reassurance that they weren’t pregnant, and to know himself that the pill was working as a contraceptive. Rock agreed. After the F.D.A. approved the pill in 1960, however, those few days of light bleeding took on a new significance. Anticipating the church’s opposition, Rock became not just a researcher but also an advocate. In his 1963 book “The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor’s Proposals to End the Battle Over Birth Control,” he argued that the pill was merely a scientific extension of the church-sanctioned “rhythm method.” It “completely mimics” the body’s own hormones, he wrote, to extend the “safe period” in which a woman could have intercourse and not become pregnant. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 26892 - Posted: 12.12.2019

Andrew Anthony Katrina Karkazis, a senior research fellow at Yale University, is a cultural anthropologist working at the intersection of science, technology, gender studies and bioethics. With Rebecca Jordan-Young, a sociomedical scientist, she has written Testosterone: An Unauthorised Biography. It is a critique of both popular and scientific understandings of the hormone, and how they have been used to explain, or even defend, inequalities of power. You suggest that testosterone is understood as an exclusively male hormone, even though it’s also found in women. But surely no scientist believes this. No, what we’re saying is that the hormone has a century-long biography and identity that continues to be that of a male sex hormone. That language is used by authoritative sources in the US like the National Library of Medicine, but also in many media articles. It’s an argument that has to do with how the hormone is understood, which then shapes the kinds of research questions that get asked, what kinds of research get done or not done. There’s actually almost no research on the relationship between testosterone and aggression in women. That is a consequence of the framing of the hormone as having to do with men, masculinity, behaviours understood and framed as masculine. It’s the idea that because men generally have more testosterone, somehow that makes it more relevant in men. But the truth is we know very little about it. You write that testosterone’s authorised biography is about libido, aggression and masculinity. Does this mean that testosterone is not about these things? I think that it’s still very widely understood as the driver of all things masculine. When people think about testosterone, aggression is one of the first things that comes to mind. But when you look at the evidence, there’s not good evidence at all. In fact, it’s very weak regarding the relationship between endogenous testosterone [ie testosterone that originates within an organism] and aggression. So it’s an artefact of the ideology of testosterone that we continue to believe that it drives aggression, because aggression has been framed as a masculine behaviour and testosterone has been framed as a masculine hormone. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 26883 - Posted: 12.09.2019

By Lisa Sanders, M.D. “Please find something wrong with me,” the 28-year-old woman pleaded. For nearly a year, she’d been looking for a reason for the strange symptoms that now dominated her life. Dr. Raphael Sung, a cardiologist specializing in finding and fixing abnormal heart rhythms at National Jewish Health hospital in Denver, was surprised by her reaction to the news that her heart was normal. Most patients are happy to get that report. For this patient, it seemed like just one more dead end. The patient’s symptoms started right after her baby was born 10 months earlier. Out of nowhere, her heart would start beating like crazy. At first, she assumed that these were anxiety attacks, triggered by the stress of bringing her premature daughter home. Her baby spent her first week of life in the newborn intensive care unit. When she was big enough to come home, she still weighed only four pounds, nine ounces. The new mother worried that without the doctors and nurses and equipment that had kept her alive, her tiny baby might die. But she didn’t. She seemed to thrive at home. Despite that, her mother’s heart continued to take off like a spooked horse several times a day. After a couple of weeks, her symptoms worsened. Sometimes her racing heart would set off terrible headaches, the worst she’d ever had. It was as if someone had thrust a sharp stick deep into her brain. The knife of pain quickly turned into a sense of pressure so intense it felt as if the back of her skull would blow off. Minutes later, she would feel the blood drain from her face; she’d be suddenly drenched in sweat. Her hands would curl into tight fists, and vomit would shoot out of her mouth like a geyser. Her husband joked (though only once) that she looked like the girl in “The Exorcist.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 26767 - Posted: 10.30.2019

Zoë Corbyn At a time when women’s reproductive freedoms are under attack, any suggestion that the birth control pill could be problematic feels explosive. But Sarah E Hill, a professor of social psychology at the Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas argues we need to talk about how oral contraceptives are affecting women’s thinking, emotions and behaviour. How the Pill Changes Everything: Your Brain on Birth Control is her new book about the science behind a delicate subject. Some US states have recently made it harder to get an abortion and the Trump administration is doing its best to chisel away at access to birth control. Is your book trying to dissuade women from using the pill? My institution was founded as a Christian school, but it doesn’t have a particular religious bent now. My goal with this book is not to take the pill away or alarm women. It is to give them information they haven’t had up until now so they can make informed decisions. The pill, along with safe, legalised abortions, are the two biggest keys to women’s rights. But we also have a blind spot when it comes to thinking about how changing women’s sex hormones – which is what the pill does – influences their brains. For a long time, women have been experiencing “psychological” side-effects on the pill but nobody was telling them why. The backlash we are seeing against the pill, particularly with millennial women walking away from it, I think is because women haven’t felt right on it and have grown weary of doctors patting them on their heads and telling them they are wrong. The more information women have, the more it will bring them back to the pill. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 26723 - Posted: 10.19.2019

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent Boosting testosterone levels significantly improves female athletic performance, according to one of the first randomised controlled trials. The findings come as the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) announced on Monday it would impose an upper limit for testosterone levels on trans female athletes competing in middle-distance events. Testosterone was assumed to be performance-enhancing and a factor in explaining differences in strength and endurance between men and women. However, there was a surprising lack of evidence on the impact of testosterone in women and the question had become mired in controversy following a series of rulings in professional sport. The latest research confirmed that testosterone significantly increases endurance and lean muscle mass among young women, even when given for a relatively short period. Angelica Hirschberg, a gynaecologist for the Swedish Olympic Committee based at Karolinska University Hospital and the study’s first author, said the results were the first to show a causal effect of testosterone on physical performance in women. “This has not been demonstrated previously because most studies have been performed in men,” she said. “Furthermore, the study shows the magnitude of performance enhancement by testosterone. Testosterone levels increased more than four times but were still much below the male range. The improvement in endurance performance by the increased testosterone levels was more than 8% – this is a huge effect in sports.” © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 26706 - Posted: 10.16.2019

By Emily Underwood Adrenaline. The word is synonymous with any activity that gets our blood racing, whether it be encountering a rattlesnake or watching the latest horror movie. But a new study reveals that when it comes with our body’s stress response, adrenaline may be less important than another hormone, one that seeps out of our bones. Our skeleton is much more than a rigid scaffold for the body, says geneticist Gérard Karsenty of Columbia University. Our bones secrete a protein called osteocalcin, discovered in the 1970s, that rebuilds the skeleton. In 2007, Karsenty and colleagues discovered that this protein acts as a hormone to keep blood sugar levels in check and burn fat. Later, his group showed that the hormone is important for maintaining brain function and physical fitness, restoring memory in aged mice and boosting performance during exercise in old mice and people. The findings led Karsenty to hypothesize that animals evolved bony skeletons to escape danger. The new study furthers that argument. Karsenty and colleagues exposed mice to several stressors, including a mild electric shock to the foot and a whiff of fox urine, a scent that triggers an innate fear response. Then, the researchers measured the osteocalcin in the animals’ blood. Within 2 to 3 minutes of being exposed to a stressor, levels of osteocalcin in the mice quadrupled, the team reports today in Cell Metabolism. A classic stressor in people had a similar effect: When the researchers asked volunteers to speak in front of an audience, osteocalcin levels also spiked. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 26609 - Posted: 09.13.2019