Libidinal Hormones: Who is driving?

HORMONES ARE NOT DESTROYED by normal cooking heat.
Hormones accumulate in the body until they are excreted in one's urine, or ejaculated, or used up metabolically to stimulate action or relaxation. We have created an environment in which many of the constants surrounding us encourage an increased production of libidinal hormones ...

• how we grow our foods,
• our food choices,
• our hygiene and body care,
• our entertainment,
• our socializing,
• our medicines,
• our exercise frequency.

When additives and stimulants were absent in the human diet and daily physical exercise was almost exhausting, libidinal hormone presence and concentration were less.

IN THE PAST 55 YEARS, more than at earlier times in history, more persons exposed to the above factors are feeling a greater intensity for sexual release than before. This frustrates interpersonal behavior and communication and the resulting relationship often splits. The result: disharmony constantly throwing anarchy into sexual frequency. When intimate relationships are beginning, sexual frequency is often high. During periods of relationship conflict, partner separation or partnership split --- sexual frequency often drops to zero.

Fertility and Birth Control.

COPING STRATEGIES, health concerns and a balancing of one's lifestyle all share the same information. What does not work for birth control often raises difficulties concerning fertility. What is not effective for fertility may be related to birth control practices. Both sources are relevant in considering healthful lifestyle options and making choices.

THE RESULT OF PLANNING can be awareness is health.
From both a health conscious and a hypersensitive viewpoint, the use of chemical or pharmaceutical agents in any of these strategies is either unacceptable, unadvisable, or impossible. People can and have become hypersensitive to spermicidal gels, condom latex, condom lubricants, intrauterine devices (I.U.D.'s), and birth control pills. In addition, mechanical and chemical options have a tendency to fail or contribute to other health problems.

AFTER MORE THAN 35 YEARS of prescribing birth control pills, doctors have begun to inform their patients of the negating influence which some prescription drugs have on the reliability of such pills. After at least 50 years of common use, many condom users remain ignorant of the fact that almost any petrochemical product, such as petroleum jelly, destroys the strength of condom latex --- within seconds! A failure rate of 1% for many couples equals one pregnancy per year!

RHYTHM METHODS are also prone to failure because some women have menstrual cycles which vary in length and/or have fertility periods which vary in length. Such variances can be influenced by physical OR emotional stresses as well as by diet and prescription medicines. Is there possibly a dependable option for family planning satisfaction?

The Basal Body Temperature Method
is one option which empowers the couple to be self-aware, flexible in sexual practices, empathic, appreciative and trusting. If each of these characteristics can be developed and shared the couple can experience a confident, exciting and sustaining relationship.

During fertile periods the couple may choose to practice any variety of abstinence, personal or mutual masturbation, fellatio and cunnilingus, or, anal intercourse. Many intimate relationships are failing for lack of variety, lack of interpersonal consideration and lack of commitment. This Temperature Method encourages variety, and rewards respect for one another and commitment with pleasure-without-anxiety.

Dr. Silber, in How to Get Pregnant, page 92, writes:

"Of all the expensive and complicated methods for determining ovulation (fertility), there is none as effective and accurate as this (Basal Body Temperature Method) simple and inexpensive temperature chart. Frequently this chart is misinterpreted, however, and the patient thinks that she should wait until the temperature goes up (indicating ovulation) before having intercourse.

Actually the temperature does not go up until one day AFTER ovulation and by that time the egg is no longer capable of being fertilized, the cervix is closed, and the cervical mucus has become hostile to sperm. Thus waiting for the temperature to rise before having intercourse is not a way of maximizing the chances of conception but is rather an excellent method of rhythm birth control."

CERVICAL MUCUS EXAMINATION is another simple method. A cellular unit in the ovary called the follicle bursts and begins the ovulation cycle by releasing the hormone estrogen. The cervix has been closed and has very little cervical mucus at this point. With the continuing release and build up of estrogen in the body, at about the 9th or 10th day of the cycle, the copious production of a watery cervical mucus begins and increases while the cervix begins to open.

A THICKENED ENDOMETRIUM layer forms in the cervix in preparation for possible fertilization. With several days remaining before the release of the egg, --- ovulation, around the 12th day when estrogen presence will be at its highest, the open receptiveness of the cervix and the lack of defense by the now liquid mucus makes penetration into the cervix possible by sperm.

Making Contact, When?
It should be noted that while sperm can live for up to a month, and the alkaline semen protects them from the acidic membrane of the vagina ... once ejaculated into the cervical region they will only survive for several hours. For impregnation, that period must synchronize with the presence of an egg.

SINGULAR OVULATION every other or third cycle occurs in many women even though they are having a regularly timed menstrual cycle. Following ovulation and the release of the egg into the cervix, the follicle in the ovary --- releasing estrogen until now, becomes transformed into another biological unit with new functions ... called the Corpus Luteum. This new structure no longer can produce estrogen. Instead, it now produces progesterone.

UNLESS FERTILIZED NOW, progesterone will be produced over the next 10 to 14 days.
Its effect will be to force the cervix to close and to thicken the cervical mucus into a sperm-halting plug. It also softens the endometrium layer, to which an embryo would have attached in fertilization and from which the embryo would have been nourished. This lining is now shed.

A FERTILIZATION PERIOD of only about 22 hours will exist during each cycle ... and, will be successful only if the woman is releasing an egg in that cycle, and, only if a sperm enters the cervix before it closes and is plugged. What the woman has been doing in monitoring her basal temperature is recording when her temperature is low (producing estrogen) and when her temperature goes back up to normal ... beginning and continuing with the release of progesterone. So now you have 3 choices: record your basal temperature each morning; test the thickness of the cervical mucus at least daily; do both.

FOR SUCCESSFUL FERTILIZATION, timing is very important.
Health is not just a question of the physical condition of the body.
Emotions and behavior patterns can influence the body and our Life System health. A multiplicity of constant threats to our Life System encourages the development of chronic illnesses and hypersensitivities.

UNPLANNED PREGNANCIES often produce a host of health endangering emotions and behaviors for both parent and prospective child: fear, anxiety, guilt, anger, insecurity, abandonment, rejection, abuse, depression, addiction, poverty, ostracism. Every abandoned person, abused spouse, overworked parent, social assistance agency, crime plagued community, and overpopulated country will tell you: Planning is Better than any other alternatives. For birth control, self-awareness is crucial.

Cancer: The Hormone connection.
There are many forms of cancer.
Some cancers are so different from one another that they can be looked upon as different forms of disease. Others are so similar that only gender and behavior (similar experiences and exposures) separate the healthy from the diseased.

SOMETIMES ANSWERS ARE SO OBVIOUS yet we don't want to see them.
They demand self-awareness and self-responsibility and we have been "educated" to give away those freedoms to our human gods --- experts, authorities, negotiators and defenders. At other times, we have been so traumatically influenced to follow the expected and assumed (status quo) that alternatives are feared with the assumption that such a radical approach as independent thought will equal rejection by peers and society. And often it does.

WE HAVE A MENTAL BLOCK to cultural outsiders which seems to be acted out as an inability to realize that money CANNOT buy everything. Like a number of other features of Western cultures, many forms of cancer could have been eradicated and prevented centuries ago. The reason that they have not been is testimony to the spiritual immaturity and ego dominance of our societies. Prepare to be amazed. The awareness and use of the following information has contributed to REAL recoveries.

BREAST CANCER AND ESTROGEN USE have increasingly been linked during 1996-1997. Why? Until the last 100 years, the human hormonal and sexual systems functioned relatively trouble-free. During that time, humanity had come to proudly assume that such a biological process was immune to interference, and, that it conveniently, for the rational mind, functioned separately from other bodily processes. We have intentionally altered its patterns with the introduction of synthetic hormones --- which usually have negative side-effects unlike natural hormones. Yet the medical and scientific and teaching communities seem unable to go beyond judging a process as right or wrong ... and accept it for what it is.

A SIMPLE INTERPRETATION OF HUMAN SEXUALITY in terms of fertility and immunity --- is that estrogen is an immunosuppressive hormone. Every doctor and scientist should know that prednisone, an estrogen-like agent, IS an immunosuppressive hormone. Estrogen opens the female body to not only receive but also to accept a biological invader --- the sperm. In order to do this relatively selectively, safely, and non-traumatically --- the presence of estrogen gradually increases rather than being suddenly introduced.