Why Dying Sucks for Us (But Shouldn’t)
by Stefani Ruper | Sep 23, 2013 | Blog, Mental Health |
It’s funny. Sometimes I think I spend most of my time on this blog trying to drum up ways to legitimize inappropriate topics for it rather than actually writing. Fear of rejection? World of Warcraft? The nature of human community? Why not? I can manufacture a paleo reason to talk about anything.
Today’s topic, I do think, however, has serious paleo resonances. I do a lot of talking about the paleo diet (and did even more in my book, here), and I even talk about the paleo lifestyle, which includes things like play and ample sleep on this blog. And we like to talk about differences between how we live today and how, presumably, many of our ancestors did. How did they think, live, eat, sleep? Beyond that, even, we get to ask: how did they relate? Love? Act? Is that important for us now?
Sometimes I think what’s most important is not figuring out what ancestors did, but rather different things that we do in different cultures today, and comparing them. This enlightens us to how incredibly conditioned we have all been.
For example, we know well that beauty norms come largely from culture. Whether we like big noses or small noses or men in high heels versus women in high heels is all a matter of perspective. We can dig deeper than that, however.
What about our basic fears, our basic hopes, our basic loves?
Here’s one example I’ll delve into at another point in time: consider the notion that we do not have capitalism because humans are inherently selfish, but rather that we are selfish because we have capitalism, the idea being that we have to become defensive and self-aggrandizing in order to be safe and hold our own. Culture over time can make us fearful and think of ourselves as more selfish than we are, and it sits so deeply in our psyches that it’s nearly impossible to find.
Which in a roundabout way brings me to today’s topic: why are we such a mess about death in American society?
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I began having panic attacks about dying when I was five years old. I laid in bed at night, shaking with a racing heart, terrified of the abyss. I imagined winking out of existence and sobbed in abject horror. This was largely, I believe, because I was not raised in a religious or openly spiritual household that talked about that kind of thing. This notion, however, presumes that there is something terrifying at all that needs to be reconciled with a spiritual viewpoint. Why was I terrified of dying before I even read my first novel?
By the time I was in first grade, I had been exposed to two things. I was exposed to media in which death is portrayed as the one thing to fear and avoid at all costs, and I was exposed to our culture response to it. In TV and in movies especially we portray death as the ultimate horrible end. People and story plots go to the most incredible length’s to preserve lives — this simplistic and dramatic trope is, in fact, the dominant plot thread in most of Western story-telling. This indicates a more broad abhorrence of and distance from death in our culture as a whole, but in the media, and as a child, I was bombarded with it and all its terrifying might without context. Worse is the aftermath. We dress in black. We weep. We sob. We storm. We conduct solemn funeral processions that last days. 100 years ago, I might wear a black dress for a whole year if my betrothed happened to past.
I was exposed to a barrage of negative images around death as a child. And I am of course similarly exposed today: the act. The event. The response. All of it terrified me for most of my life. What is this horrible thing, this non-existing thing, this thing that everyone talks about in hushed voices only and that is far away from me, far away from my life, and this horrible, gaping, looming threat? Because the worst part of it all, to me, is that we continue to portray and treat death as the most abhorrent curse without ever sharing our experiences or thoughts or doubts around it.
The roots of the Western fear of death run deep, deep, deep, deep. Fortunately for me (!?), one of my specialties in my work as an (aspiring) philosopher is existential despair and dread and nihilism in general. So I have learned a fair bit about it and have come to grips with so much of it that I feel quite at peace with all of it now. There’s too much to go into in any great detail here, though our estrangement from nature, our (waning?) investment in supernatural deities, and our Christian/Judaic/Islamic heritage play no small role.
This, however, is not how it has to be done.
Consider the funerary practices of the Maori culture in New Zealand:
At one point while living in Taiwan I became close friends with a Maori woman. She expressed to me that she was puzzled over our fear of death. She thought (and I do now, too), that a great deal of it has to do with our cultural practices. For the Maori, when a family member is nearing death, everyone related is called to their home, and they throw a day, or two-day, or week, or however-long-they-choose party for the ailing member. They have festivities and the children gallivant and play out in the fields and everyone does what they can to be present with their precious loved one in the time remaining, full of laughter and lightness. And then they bid her farewell, surrounding her on her deathbed as she dies. If she does not pass, everyone goes home and comes back to Ethel’s Goodbye Partay 2.0 the next time she looks like she might be ready.
Being closer to death, this Maori woman I knew thought that it was less of a big deal, for one. She was familiar with it. She wasn’t raised to fear it, to cloth herself in black, to be private about her feelings, and to stand in awestruck terror in front of corpses. She was, instead, encouraged to be close to death, to be present with it, and to be familiar with its processes. Psychologists know well that a large portion of our fear comes from the unknown and from things about which we perceive we have no control.
Looking at this Maori culture demonstrates that we don’t have to be as afraid of dying as we have been conditioned to be. Many other cultures around the world shed similar light on the topic. Hell, Buddhists don’t think there’s a “self” that exists to die anyway, so what’s the big fuss about? Of course holding that belief and practicing is easier said than done, but that is the goal of much of the tradition. Non-attachment is the name of the game.
One more example is something – one of my favorite belief systems – called the Religion of Nature. One of its primary tenants is that we are inherently natural beings, part of a great cycle of good and evil and death and rebirth. It’s all inevitable. It’s all a part of the process. What have we to so intensely fear? Death is as much a part of life as anything else. In fact, one thing you may want to consider is a biological fact popularized (somewhat) and interpreted by famed biologist Ursula Goodenough:
Life used to exist solely in unicellular form. This form was, more or less, immortal. It did not have to die as it regenerated itself and reproduced. But in order to utilize more cells and grow into larger organisms, life needed to burn more energy. More energy meant more oxygen. More oxygen meant burning more strongly, more brightly. It meant that life became a flame that had, necessarily, to be extinguished. Death, it turns out, is the biological price of life. Without it, no advanced lifeforms would exist. With out death, so the evolutionary story goes, none of us would be alive.
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All of which is to say that there are tons of things in our culture that make death more terrifying than it needs to be. The process of death as we portray it, and the way in which we mourn it, and the incredible, terrifying distance we give it from our everyday lives (not to mention our increased ability to avoid it with medicine…leading to an even greater attachment to immortality) is a bit absurd, and it’s everywhere. It demonstrates an underlying terror in our psyche, but we cannot chip away at that terror unless we start recognizing all of it’s sources.
And the reason I bring this all up, and on a paleo blog, to boot, is three-fold.
1) Anxiety is a huge problem for the modern world. A large portion of our anxieties, I think, lie in our unresolved feelings regarding both the deaths of those around us as well as our own looming mortality.
2) Looking at the variety of cultures around the world and at the variety of ideas out there like the religion of nature demonstrates just how culturally conditioned we are in our basic fears and hopes and loves and dreams. We do not have to be any particular way. We do not have to feel a certain way. There are biological imperatives, sure. Of course we do not want to die. Of course we want to be loved. But we have choice and agency and the ability to feel any number of different things. The only thing to do with that choice is to act on it.
3) If paleo is about natural stuff, and if my writing on this blog is about being natural women, then we might have the leeway here to consider what true naturalness means.
If you are attached to immortality, if you believe in God or gods or any number of things, or you don’t, whatever, that is awesome. I give giant thumbs up to all metaphysical views.
But we should, individually and together as a community of beings, to be able to, no matter what our belief systems, consider ourselves a part of the natural world, and love ourselves for all of that. When we wrap ourselves up in fear of death, and when we distance ourselves from it and erect barriers in our lives to avoid confronting it, we distance ourselves from perhaps the most essential part of being human. And of course we cannot ever learn how to love that part of ourselves.
We cannot–or at least I now refuse to–hate or fear or resent our bodies for degenerating. We cannot live in terror. We cannot fight constantly against a natural process and expect that we will maintain positive mental health. I refuse to be upset that I live so precariously on the edge of life. I am what I am–no more, and no less. I am a body. I am a woman. I am a speck of universe-dust come alive. More importantly, perhaps is the fact that death runs on its own clock. And as it does, I can only breathe. I can only peacefully accept my place in the overturning processes of the cosmos. I accept and embrace my fragility as it is, and do my best to live a life that floats among the chaos.
The universe is rife with uncertainty, though we can still be certain of our power and serenity as natural beings in a natural world. None of us can beat death. But we can dance against and around it, and live courageously into a future that is unknown.
Where does your energy go?
by Stefani Ruper | Aug 13, 2013 | Blog, Mental Health, Self-love |
I had a conversation in early May of this year that sticks with me. I think of it often, like it’s stuck to the insides of my skull and I could not scrape it off even if I wanted to.
A friend of mine and I sat on a hill of grass overlooking Boston as the sun set. I wondered aloud to him — “You know that feeling of bliss, of being so in love with the world, and so passionately delighted to be alive?”
“Yeah,” he responded, a bit of wist in his voice.
“Didn’t you used to feel that way all of the time? I used to feel that way all of the time. It was my default. Now — I’m lucky if I can muster that feeling up for a few brief moments every month. What happened?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied.
Then, at the same time, we both said, “It’s because we’re adults.”
The difference between childhood and adulthood is mostly responsibility, in my opinion. It’s about having to take care of things. It’s about having things be at stake in your decision making. And it’s not not just anything at stake in your decision making, but important things. Your health, the health of your significant other, parents, and children, your career, and your ability to keep putting food on the table are just a few examples. Your ability to pay for insurance and to have a roof over your head. Looked at from this angle, being an adult is about bearing stress. It’s about juggling all of these things and taking care of so many people. Stress is worry — it takes your brain’s resources and directs them towards managing your responsibilities.
The thing is, however — that this worry is the precise thing that separates us from the youthful joy of being alive.
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So it’s not the responsibility that robs us of freedom and joy per se. But it’s the mental energy that comes along with it.
Think about the times in which you happily engage others, really enjoy yourself, and spread love. Think about the times in which it is easy to be open, to be loving, and to be joyful. Are they not the times in which you are the most unburdened and free? In which you are unafraid, and do not bear the weight of fear and stress?
Alternatively, think about times of your life in which you have had many things to worry about. Do you not feel curled into your own self? Do you not feel as though it is more difficult to positively engage the people around you? Ever have an impending deadline and snarl at every person who approaches your workstation? God forbid they disrupt your ability to get the damn thing done on time.
To be honest, all of this is okay, I think. It makes perfect sense. I see it as a matter of energy. Each of us only has a given amount of energy. This energy can be directed anywhere — toward sadness, anger, play, delight, or diligent work. But it cannot go everywhere. And it is limited. And your biological priority is taking care of yourself and your responsibilities first and foremost (or your offspring and family, but that’s just as draining.)
So when you are worried, anxious, stressed, or have any kind of mentally-demanding challenge floating arond in your brain, you direct your energy inward. You do everything you can with all of the resources at your disposal to manage your responsibility. You might overshoot and give it more energy than it needs, but you are still doing your best and you need to be understood and forgiven for that. On the flipside, when you are not anxious, stressed, or have inner-problems toward which you need to direct energy, then you are liberated to give your energy to other things. To happy things. To external things. You are free to play, free to laugh, and free to love.
The reason I bring this all up is because I think it is one of the most important factors for overall wellness.
We talk about stress a lot in the health world. But what do we mean by this, and what is its real effect? What are the different kinds of stress? How should we handle it?
Understanding stress in this way helps me navigate it better and reduce it. I know that my body directs all of its energy toward my responsibilities because it is doing its best to keep me alive. But does it have to? Can I not allocate time for certain worries, and firmly tell my brain to cool it at other times, and let the gratitude and joy of liberated living flow into that vacuated space?
Understanding stress in this way makes me forgive myself for being stressed in the first place, too. It’s okay — I understand now that my body and my brain are doing their best to help me. I understand that they demand my energy because they think they need it in order for me to be safe. Sometimes I don’t need them to do this, and I can tell them to relax and take a break for a while. On the other hand, sometimes I really do need to give 100 percent of my energy to the problem I am dealing with. When this is the case, I let myself do it.
I understand that I actually need to devote all of my energy to stressful events sometimes. This is important. In some sense, it’s an acceptance of my basic humanity and fragility where I let my need to take care of things override my desire to feel or ability to act outside of this stressful zone. I let my stress run its course through me without resistance. I give myself to the demands my situation has put upon me, and I let my brain do the mental work it wants to do. When I can accept and live through times of crisis in this way, then even the fact that my brain has demanded 100 percent of my mental energy does not make me feel as wretched at it normally does, because I know that this is the best and most efficient way to weather the storm. My stress and I in this case work together rather than against each other.
This works for me in a million different realms, particularly when it is a professional or social situation that demands thought and care. This is especially important for me as someone who’s job it is, literally, to think. Though it works in myriads of other ways, too, particularly in how I relate to myself and manage my relationship with myself.
Many of us worry about our health. Or we worry about how loved we are. Or how beautiful we are. Or something. But how much energy do we need to give that? What does your brain need in order to efficiently achieve a level of safety and love? Do you let your stress have the time that it needs? Do you let yourself think and research health issues the appropriate amount of time? You can do it too much, and you can do it too little. What is right for you? What is the best way to work with your stress and the mental energy it is demanding, rather than against it?
All decent food for thought, in my opinion. What do you think? Do you experience a limited amount of energy that can either go inward or outward? What helps you feel positive and share your positivity rather than being curled inside of yourself?
What helps you feel the grand joy and excitement of being alive?
What are your strategies for keeping stress from getting in the way?
The Art of Non-Attached Pleasure: How Letting Go is the (or One) Key to Peaceful Progress and Maintenance
by Stefani Ruper | Jul 1, 2013 | Blog, Mental Health, Self-love, Stress |
The last post I published here was about my recent test results. Everything out there is better than it was before, huzzah! My male sex hormones are down, and my female sex hormones are up. My fasting insulin is improving, and my thyroid levels are inching normal, too.
Perhaps best of all, however, is that I have a libido again. I have consistently clear skin for the first time in three years. I have a curvy but fit body that maintains its weight naturally. I don’t have to monitor calories. Things aren’t perfect — but they are leaps and bounds on the rise.
What has facilitated this recovery and rise?
Part of it has been diet, absolutely. The specific troubleshooting I did within the paleo template was also crucial. A big part of my problem was fiber (more on which in future posts). The amount of fiber I ate contributed to inflammation, which piggy-backed onto hormone flucutations and gave me cysts on a regular basis. I also added magnesium back into my life, which has been a godsend if there’s ever been one.
Another part of it has been stress reduction in my life as a whole. My living environment used to be stressful. My academic life carried a high amount of worry and stress. My life as a health advocate had its own troubles. Having a project such as The Book hanging over my head didn’t help, either. Working on all of those things has done enormous things for my wellness.
But I have come to believe that the most important part of my healing has been healing my relationship to healing. Let me explain.
As I moved forward with my acne, my hormone problems, and my concerns about my body in general, I was attached to what I achieved. I focused on the results. I wanted clear skin. I wanted libido. I wanted menstrual cycles. Every time I tried a new tact and didn’t achieve what I was looking for, however, I became more frustrated. I got more afraid, more angry, and more disheartened. “It’s been years, mom!” I have whined several hundred if not thousands of times in the last stretch of my life.
Then, whenever things started to improve, I got even more anxious because I didn’t want them to go away. If I managed to have clear skin for a week, I’d have an unhealthy amount of hope about it sticking. I’d be a freak about it. I’d do my best to stay away from mirrors and such, but I couldn’t help but always be on the lookout for more acne, safeguarding myself against that demon that had haunted me for so long.
And I was stressed about it, and it hurt the quality of my life, and also my physical body, I am sure. I didn’t want to stress about it, but I know it sat in the corners of my brain, haunting me silently.
I wanted to heal, and I wanted proof of healing. Now.
Today, I have “healed.” I have hacked the things that needed hacking in my body and in my life. I have seen a lot of improvement. It’s tempting to become attached to my clear skin. It’s tempting to get invested in my slim body. A part of me feels a strong pull to put all of my happiness and confidence into those things, and to fall back on my own model of feeling sexy, healthy, and happy because I was meeting some standard of health and appearance. Who doesn’t want to look in the mirror and see a stereotypically hot woman staring back at her?
The thing is, however, is that I have realized as I have healed that the most important thing for my wellness right now is not being attached to those things at all. The acne will not be perfect. I will probably always get some breakouts. I might even fall back into serious skin issues. More important still are the truly inevitable things. My body is aging every day. I will not always been the young little thing flying around the dance floor. Some day I will lose everything my physical body has to offer. We all will.
Most of you know I am a student of philosophy of religion in my “real life.” Most of the world’s religious traditions speak to what I have been wrestling with on some level, and one of my favorite strands of thought on it goes something like this:
We are here to delight in the good things we have, but we must be able to let go of them. Just as the leaves fall every autumn, so nothing good or bad lasts forever. This is an inevitable fact of being alive.
With health, relationships, statuses, jobs, and just about anything else in our lives, we are always in relationship. In these relationships, we have the choice to stitch our skins to the good stuff and bleed when inevitably torn apart, or we can hug and kiss and nuzzle them with loose, loving, and forgiving arms.
The more I learned to accept that the good, fun things like six pack abs and good health I get to delight in will not last forever, the more peace I developed in my healing and my maintenance of good health. I can do my best, but I cannot maniacally monitor, shape, and control everything that happens to me around the clock. More importantly, I cannot base my happiness on my clear skin. If I did, then I would be hurt by the stress of maintaining it and by the stress of (maybe) losing it.
Instead, if I base my happiness say on my gratitude for the good health I get to have now, and on my relationships, and on my purpose and on all of the beaty and love in the world, then I can delight in the good stuff without anxiety and be happy. Otherwise I’d just walk around worrying all of the time. Someday it might all fall to pieces, and I have got to be okay with that happening.
I remember after paleo fx this year I wrestledsignificantly with the question of what we were all doing there. Why bother troubleshooting health so vociferously? Why keep looking for perfection in a body? Why keep optimizing? I think this sits at the heart of that trouble I had. Physical health is so important, but it has got to be folded into healthy minds and healthy hearts, at peace with existing no matter what instability and tremors live within them.
At least for me. I love your thoughts, as always.
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Enjoying the good stuff without anxiety is so important to me that I’ve written several guides to help you do the same. Want to lose weight in a healthy way while loving yourself? Check out Weightless Unlocked. Looking for a general guide to eating for health (and libido!)? My best selling Sexy by Nature has all the details.
Photographs and longevity: can one snapshot of your smile predict how long you’ll live?
by Stefani Ruper | Dec 5, 2012 | Blog, Mental Health |
Obviously, when we’re talking about how long we are ever going to live, the “diet hypothesis” holds. Poor food choices make us ill, and these illnesses make us die sooner. They also generally degrade our physical functions, and as our telomeres and organs deteriorate increasingly into shreds, we become weaker and weaker. Just about everybody who has ever written about longevity and food has the general idea right: food matters.
On the other hand, I am now coming to believe that so long as no drastic health issues are at stake, the perfect diet is not necessarily the path to a long life (or at least definitely not the sole path). If you look at studies done on centarians the world over, what we find over and over again is not necessarily that they eat a certain diet. Some eat lots of pork, others a fair bit of rice, others tons of home-made yogurt, for example. I know one woman who eats frozen dinners. Doctors and health theorists argue over what the perfect longevity diet might be all of the time. But there really never has been shown to be a bulletproof, universal, centenarian-begetting diet, so far as I can tell. Usually they stick to whole foods. That seems to work quite well.
From my perspective, the real common variable is that centenarians (and especially the springy ones, not the bedridden) tend to live simple and happy lifestyles. Relatively healthful food, very little stress, some sleep, some walking. There’s actually a fair bit of data that demonstrates the benefits of walking. And personally, what I have found in my observation is that those people I know and read about whom are both elderly but still enormously youthful… they exist in existential satisfaction. Whether at peace because of their communities and family, or because they have faith, or are committed to charity, or because they are immersed in passionate pursuits, their degree of satisfaction with existence stands out as their primary characteristic. In my opinion.
Plenty data show that stress weakens the immune system and decreases lifespan. Here, here, and here, for example. And many show how crucial both metabolic and psychological stress are for cellular decay, for example, here.
But what about the converse? Why not think about it in terms of the opposite of stress? Of peace, of contentment, of authentic happiness?
Which brings me to my favorite study this week: Smile Intensity Predicts Longevity.
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The study, found here, was conducted on 196 Major League Baseball players from the 20th century. MLB players were chosen because fairly good data about their lives already exist. The researchers did their best to control for factors that have already been found to influence longevity:
“The Baseball Register (1952) and Lahman (2006) allowed us to control for numerous factors related to longevity, such as year of birth, body mass index (BMI), career length (a reflection of continued physical fitness and performance), career precocity (Abel & Kruger, 2005, 2006, 2007), marital status (Lillard & Panis, 1996), and college attendance (Kalist & Peng, 2007).”
They didn’t look at diet at all.
What they did was study the intensity of the smiles on each of the MLB player’s official baseball cards. What they found was striking:
Controlling for the above variables, the degree of smile authenticity in each photograph taken decades ago remained significantly correlated with longevity. The more authentic the smile, the longer the player lived.
How do you know what an authentic smile is, you ask? It’s called the Duchenne smile (wikipedia it, here), and it’s a pretty well-known and well-regarded marker of happiness in psychological studies. It is the smile that pulls at muslces around the mouth and particularly the eyes… the smile that you feel when you’re laughing, or hugging someone you love. Try comparing it to the smile you muster up for strangers you pass in the hallway on a bad day. There is a world of difference.
We can see that difference in photographs, and calculate it precisely. And from that, we have found that authentic happiness predicts longevity.
Players who had Duchenne smiles were half as likely in any given year to die than non-smilers.
Players who had Duchenne smiles had greater longevity predictions than those who wore partial smiles, but not in a statistically significant way, who in turn did not differ significantly from non-smilers. ( “Adding smile ratings led to a significant improvement in predicting mortality, χ2(2, N = 162) = 8.2, p < .017.”) This seems to indicate that partial smiles sat somewhere in the middle, whereas non-smilers experienced reduced longevity and Duchenne smilers experienced increased longevity relative to them.
The study concludes with two interesting notes: 1) that physical attractiveness was not a significant correlate with longevity, and 2) that teaching ourselves to smile can actually influence our emotions (more in which in subsequent posts).
In other studies, individuals instructed on how to make Duchenne smiles generated patterns of regional brain activity associated with subjective enjoyment (Ekman, Davidson, & Friesen, 1990). If the phenomenology and expressions of emotion are hardwired (Ekman, 2007), individuals whose underlying emotional disposition is reflected in voluntary or involuntary Duchenne smiles may be basically happier than those with less intense smiles, and hence more predisposed to benefit from the effects of positive emotionality. Attractiveness did not influence longevity.
And, again, they didn’t even look at diet. We might argue that each of these players was born into a more traditional diet, and perhaps a fairly homogenous one– and therefore the variable would not have been as significant for this group, but these men still probably ate things such as carbohydrates, nuts, nightshades, rice, and lots of other ~paleo/non-paleo foods we are worrying about these days. I’d bet they ate dairy and wheat products, too. Which isn’t to say, of course, that a better diet would not have helped them live even longer. I certainly think that it would. But this goes to show that the amount of authentic joy in your life really is a major player in your lifespan.
More on happiness, longevity, and how to make it all happen forthcoming.
Psychological stress and female hormones: a recipe for fertility disaster
by Stefani Ruper | Oct 10, 2012 | Blog, Body, Fertility, Hormones, HPA axis, Hypothalamic Amenorrhea, Mental Health, PCOS |
While the title of this post may sound hyperbolic, it nonetheless is grounded in truth. There are a wide variety of dietary and lifestyle factors that affect reproduction. Stress may be one of the greatest of all.
What
Dozens of studies performed on cynomolgus monkeys, bonobos, chimps, and baboons have demonstrated that having low social status–even while maintaining the exact same diet at high social status individuals–induces impaired fertility in primates.
Human models, while approximations, do not differ. In some, a simple progesterone-dampening effect occurs, in others the levels decrease precipitously, in most cortisol levels skyrocket, but in general a wide spectrum of reproductive disorders- from hormone deficiency to full-blown long-term amenorrheic infertility- follow from psychological stress.
This is something about which I have written before, and it’s a serious problem, causing not just outright and obvious infertility but also sneakily impaired and sub-optimal fertility all across the country.
How
Pysychological stress wreaks all sorts of havoc on the body. Most importantly, cortisol levels rise, and the body’s inflammatory and immune responses become impaired. Blood sugar levels rise, and insulin levels rise, too. When these things happen, healing cannot occur, and tissues become progressively damaged with time. This applies to reproductive tissues as much as it does to the rest of them. Hypercortisolemia is good for nobody.
Several hormone responses also occur. Three of the primary ones are as follows:
1) As I mentioned, due to elevated cortisol levels, insulin levels may rise, and testosterone levels rise right alongside it. This is because insulin directly stimulates testosterone production in the ovaries. This is bad for reproduction because a proper balance between testosterone and female balance needs to be maintained in order for proper reproductive signalling and tissue development to occur. One particularly potent way in which this imbalance often hurts women is in the hormone condition Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. It is not the only thing that contributes to PCOS– definitely not– but it can play a big time role in it. For more on stress and PCOS (and overcoming PCOS!), check out the book I wrote.
2) Moreover, another effect that may occur as a result of stress is an increase in production of DHEA-S, a hormone produced in the stress glands. DHEA-S is, like all other hormones, an important and very healthful hormone in proper balance. But if the stress glands are in overdrive, they might over-produce everything, including DHEA-S. This is detrimental, because DHEA-S is also a classically male sex hormone, and it plays a role similar to testosterone in PCOS. DHEA-S in excess blocks estrogen signaling, interferes with LH and FSH signaling, and also increases hormonal acne. DHEA-S can play a role in both type I and type II PCOS.
3) Finally, the brain, via the hypothalamus, sometimes turns off pituitary activity in response to stress. This often leads to a cessation of LH and FSH signaling–the two primary pituitary signalling molecules–which in turn decreases levels of estrogen and progesterone in the blood. Recall that reduced progesterone levels are one of the primary markers of reproductive distress in primate studies. Prolactin levels may also decrease. These facts make it impossible both to ovulate and to menstruate.
*Graphic extracted from PCOS Unlocked: The Manual.
These three categories– testosterone elevation, DHEA-S elevation, and pituitary decreases may occur differently in all women. And there are a wide variety of other, more subtle, hormonal responses that also occur, especially when considered in conjunction with all of the other bodily stress that follows from psychological woes.
All that being said, STRESS IS BAD. We know some of the reasons why, as I’ve explained above. Others likely exist. Even if you don’t have infertility problems, you may have hormone imbalances or deficiencies, and those can be just as insidious. Eat right, sleep right, live well, breath deeply. Repeat.
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Stress is a significant problem for women’s health, and particularly women’s hormonal health. This is manifested in a wide array of problems, but also most predominantly these days in the condition PCOS, or Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome.
You can read more about stress and it’s interplay with cysts, as well as how to overcome it all, in my guide, PCOS Unlocked: The Manual.
by Stefani Ruper | May 31, 2012 | Blog, Body, Carbs Fat Protein, Fertility, Food, Hormones, HPA axis, Hypothalamic Amenorrhea, Mental Health, Paleo Diet Basics, PCOS, Sleep, Stress, Thyroid |
I spend a disproportionate amount of my time telling women to eat carbohydrates.
In the paleosphere, it is incredibly common to eat a low carbohydrate diet. Plenty of people use low carbohydrate diets to lose weight, to sharpen insulin sensitivity, and to reduce appetite in the short term.
A low carbohydrate diet can also be therapeutic for people with cancer, migraines,and chronic infections or psychological disorders.
On the other hand, low carbohydrate diets can be a significant tax on people, women especially.
Because low carbohydrate diets are so popular for weight loss, it is common for women trying to lose weight and to “look good” to exercise often, eat very few carbohydrates, fast, and restrict food intake. The more of these restrictions a woman undertakes at once, the more and more her body reads this as living in a starved, stressed state.
The effects of this are significant: adrenal glands work overtime, livers get tired from performing so much gluconeogenesis, insulin sensitivity drops, body fat levels fluctuate, sleep quality decreases, and libido and fertility decrease.
The problems that come from a low-carbohydrate diet of course don’t affect every woman. Each of us is different. But women who experience stalled weight loss, low-thyroid symptoms, menstrual dysregulation, sleep and or mood and mental health related issues may find significant relief from adding carbohydrates back into their diets.
If you are trying to lose weight, take a look at my program, Weight Loss Unlocked, which will help you lose weight in a healthy, safe, and balanced way. Check it out here.
Also, this is my favorite paleo cookbook with plentiful carbs in it. It’s by Russ Crandall, and he’s an amazing chef, as well as one of my favorite people of all time.
Carbohydrates are beneficial for fertility and health because…
-Glucose is necessary for the conversion of T4 to T3 in the liver.
Without adequate glucose, the liver struggles to make enough T3, which is the form of thyroid hormone critical for healthy thyroid function.
Without sufficient T3, hypothyroidism results. Hypothyroidism is implicated in mood disorders, reproductive irregularities such as PCOS and amenorrhea, in skin conditions, and in weight gain, among other things. (For more on how to figure out your particular type of PCOS and how hypothyroidism may be at play, see my program PCOS Unlocked or read my post on the causes of PCOS)
Many women, contrary to popular paleo belief, in fact lose weight once they add carbohydrates back into their diets. This is because the carbs help the body produce more T3.
(Now, low carb dieters might be quick to point out that the liver can manufacture its own glucose. Certainly, the liver is capable of producing its own glucose with gluconeogenesis, but that process can become taxed over time, particularly if the liver is already taxed from poor eating habits in the past, mineral deficiencies, stress, or calorie restriction.)
-Glucose elicits an insulin response, which in turn spikes leptin levels in the blood.
This is a short-term spike, so eating carbohydrates should not be used as a replacement for body fat, which is the primary long-term secretor of leptin.
However, moderate, regular consumption of carbohydrate spikes leptin frequently enough to help signal to the hypothalamus that the body is being fed. Leptin is absolutely crucial for reproductive function. Without leptin, the hypothalamus does not tell the pituitary to produce sex hormones, so it doesn’t.
–Insulin is also an important signaler of the “fed” state.
In addition to leptin, the hypothalamus also responds to insulin. These two hormones are largely responsible for the female body determining whether it is in a “fed” state.
Being in a fed state is critical for convincing the body it is in a healthy enough environment to reproduce, have a libido, and also lose weight.
–Moderate carbohydrate intake is associated with better mood, stress-reduction, and sleep quality.
I see this in my work and in anecdotes, as well as in many controlled studies.
Carbohydrate intake boosts tryptophan levels in the brain, and tryptophan is the protein precursor to serotonin. Getting at least some carbohydrate in the diet helps with the vast array of issues associated with serotonin deficiency which include moodiness, stress, and insomnia. People have been shown to sleep better if their dinner includes carbohydrates in it.
This is especially true for women.
For a look at the details and complexities of the issue, see Emily Deans writing here and here. The primary takeaway of this point being that while the exact mechanism of carbohydrates boosting mood and sleep quality is unknown, carbohydrates still appear to be a healthy, and in many cases necessary, macronutrient.
Carbohydrates for fertility and health
The main point here is that carbohydrates are not just okay but important. For women who have appetite control problems, sugar addictions, and a lot of weight to lose, absolutely I believe a low-carbohydrate diet can do them wonders. For women who struggle with menstruation, fertility, stress, exercise performance, or any other hormonal oddities, carbohydrates help assure the woman’s body that she is healthy and fed. This is crucial for reproductive health.
In all cases, diet is a matter of personal physiology and experimentation. If a woman’s body works better on carbs, she should eat them, and delight in those joys rather than worry needlessly. At the very least, they are not harmful, and at their best, they are life saving.
This concept is central to my program Weight Loss Unlocked. If you are interested, it will help you figure out which path to weight loss is best for your unique body and metabolism.
Carbohydrates to eat:
-Starchy tubers such as sweet potatoes, batata, jerusalem artichoke, cassava, tarot, and bamboo. Regular potatoes are fine, too, but they contain fewer vitamins than their sweet counterparts. Of the sweet potatoes, Japanese sweet potatoes are the most delicious, in my opinion, followed by white sweet potatoes and then yams and regular orange sweet potatoes.
These starches are composed primarily of glucose.
–Fruits. All fruits! Berries and cherries tend to have more glucose than fructose, other fruits tend to have more fructose than glucose. This is not a huge point of difference but I have noticed that some women tend to do better on glucose-heavy or fructose-heavy carbs. I personally have an easier time with weight maintenance with fruits than with starches. I talk about this idea more in depth in that Weight Loss program for women I use with my clients.
-Rice Both white and brown rice are fine, but are fairly nutrient-poor.
Brown rice contains anti-nutrients in it’s shell, so white rice is more innocuous in terms of nutrient absorption. Wild rice is another option that I like. Pink rice is something that my friend Noelle from Coconuts and Kettlebells really loves and is a unique way to incorporate rice into the diet! (By the way, if you haven’t listened to The Paleo Women Podcast featuring myself and Noelle, you need to! We are the BEST and we will explain to you ALL THE THINGS. Find us here!)
-Vegetables of course are great, but they do not count for carbohydrate consumption. I know that most of the carbs in vegetables are glucose, but much of it them are also tied up in fiber, which is broken down and turned into short-chain fatty acids by gut bacteria. For this reason, vegetables alone cannot make up a woman’s carbohydrate consumption. Instead, starchy tubers and fruits work the best.
How much carbohydrate to eat for women:
For a woman recovering from stress, metabolic distress, and hypothalamic amenorrhea, I recommend eating between 100-200 g/day. That goes for athletes as well. And for pregnant women. At least 100 g/day.
I typically recommend that women start with 100 grams of dense carbohydrate like starches and fruits and experiment from there. You can definitely eat more than that – I know that I do. But you could also eat a bit less, especially if you prefer a lower carbohydrate appraoch to health.
Remember, you do not necessarily need to eat high carbohydrate. You can, but you don’t have to. It is only that a diet with at least some carbohydrates can really help with fertility, hormone balance, thyroid, and weight loss problems.
Carbohydrates elsewhere in the paleo blogosphere:
Chris Kresser and Chris Masterjohn: Cholesterol, mostly, also: Telltale signs you need more carbs
Jimmy Moore: Is there any such thing as a safe starch?
Jamie Scott: A Week of It
Paul Jaminet: Higher Carb Dieting Pros and Cons (includes a discussion of the “longevity trade-off”)
Cheeseslave: Why I ditched low carb
Beth Mazur: Why I don’t eat low carb
Julianne Taylor: Okay, People, Carb’s Don’t Kill
Melissa McEwen: What the bleep do we know about carbs
While you’re at it, go read Melissa’s post on Why Women Need Fat.
Don’t forget this is my favorite paleo cookbook full of good carbs.
And especially don’t forget to check out Weight Loss Unlocked if weight loss is one of your main goals right now, The Paleo Women Podcast, which is just so much fun, and my best-selling book Sexy By Nature, all great resources for all things women’s health, happiness, and fertility!
