At some point in the stories developed between my sister and myself, the following line became canonical:
"She's a sex-fiend," cried the sex-fiend. "And she's mine!"
Make of that what you will.
As for the reduced horniness when on the pill, my other sister testified rather more vividly than I wanted. [Dialogue self-censored: let's agree that it agreed with Tia's point and embarrassed me.] Hormones scare me: it's no accident that the dosages necessary to prevent inception are decreasing or that the dosages necessary to build muscles are becoming illegal. Hormones have hard-cord impacts on the body. My (pro-choice, female) friends in medicine are currently pimping the Ring--very localized hormones.
Tia: my friends have reported really damned good things from the ring. On one thread previously I talked about a friend whose body had changed dramatically from going off the pill. She first became a yoga instructor, then went on the Ring; she's thrilled (and getting plenty), but then I don't know what her testimony is worth. My MD friend is convinced that the Ring causes only local hormonal affect, that the quantity is more limited and directed than with any other delivery system.
(Potential downside to the Ring: vigorous sex might dislodge it. The contraceptive goodness would continue, but everyone would need to have a sense of humor about it. Of course there would be no STD protection.)
"Help me, Gary Farber! What phrase from The Demolished Man am I thinking of?"
Eight, sir; seven, sir;
Six, sir; five, sir;
Four, sir; three, sir;
Two, sir; one!
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension,
And dissension have begun. Helps keep the telepaths out. Handy tip. See context here, for example.
"You may remember when Ogged linked to Becks linking to this New York Times story about how birth control may lead to a diminished sex drive."
Also, nitpick: condoms, IUDs, spermicidal foams and jellies, and all other even vaguely successful methods are all "birth control." (Well, if they work, at least.) The Pill and its chemical variants aren't synonymous with "birth control." End nitpick.
14, 17: phooey. I go to the trouble of scampering off to find the exact wording, before bothering to read further, since I was asked a direct question, and to what end? Feh.
(Watched BSG "Flight of the Phoenix"; it's now just about 3:00 a.m.; absolutely should go to sleep, and not watch the last available episode on this set of DVDS until tomorrow, that is, tonight. But will I? Will I? Not if I sit around looking up answers to questions to no point whatever, at any rate.)
This may be of interest to you sex-fiends: a weird human-interest story on the front page of today's Wall St. Journal, about how increasingly, professional athletes are following the example of Ikkos (a classical Olympian, if this usage is correct (AIANSII)), and abstaining from sex in the days/weeks leading up to a major match only to engage in wild Bacchanals (B-Wo, supply accurate plural at your discretion) following their triumph. (Well not sure about the second part -- I stopped reading the article after about 2 paragraphs, and the Bachanal part was not in the lede. But I reckon it was coming.)
Why the "vaginally" stipulation? Why wouldn't they want to give one to a woman who had a C-section? (Not that it applies to Tia's situation, but I'm curious.)
I suspect it has something to do with prior cervical dilation, though exactly what, I'm not sure. However, women who haven't had a vaginal birth are much more likely to expel the IUD and/or experience pain with it.
I don't know if that's necessarily true anymore. I had a friend who tried to get an IUD, and the doctor wouldn't do it (not because she hasn't given birth, which she hasn't), but on some claim like "you've only been with guy X for a year, how do you know it will last"? I wanted to kick the doctor in the face upon hearing this story. Women my age get unbelievably patronizing treatment from doctors over sex and birth control issues. It never fails to piss me off.
I think the doctor wanted her to instead choose oral contraceptives, and my friend insisted that she'd been on them before, and because she suffers from depression, the pill just made her CRAZY. The doctor would listen to no such protestations.
33: Silvana's comment reminded me of something else that irritates me--the law in NYC (maybe it's the state) that says you have to get see a special counselor when you get an HIV test (this may apply only to clinics that receive public funds). This has actively deterred me from getting an HIV test in the past; it's time consuming; it's harder to get an appointment for the scarcer-than-doctors special counselors, and it costs as much as a whole separate doctors appointment. And the last time I went to the special counselor and he asked me when the last time I had unprotected sex was, I said I had unprotected sex all the time; I was in a monogamous relationship and both of us knew our STD status (why was I taking an HIV test, then? I needed another to be sure and G. decided he could live with that degree of uncertainty). He proceeds to ask me if we lived together, and then tells me if we don't live together, we shouldn't make that decision; we can't trust each other with our health. I was like, wtf, how arbitrary is that? Even if we were married it would be possible that one of us was cheating or lying about our STD status; you never know for sure, but eventually, if you want sex without condoms and dental dams, you take the plunge. Only I can decide when to do that--not some lame ass HIV counselor.
This is a serious discussion, and it would be inappropriate for me to interject a frightening anecdote told by a friend, who claimed that she had been born clutching an IUD in her tiny hand.
I had a college professor who used to say that love is undifferentiated arousal in the presence of an appropriate other, that is, our "emotions" are formed by our cognitive explanations for chemical states that in fact are fundamentally pretty similar; when you feel "love" and feel "fear" it's actually the same chemical condition, but you interpret it as "fear" when you're hanging over a cliff, "love" when you're with your honey.
Count me pretty dubious on this score. The two states may be difficult to tell apart endocrinologically, but that may just mean that our methods of discerning between them are poor.
Although, come to think of it, they aren't that poor: one of the chemicals associated with love specifically short-circuits the fear response. I think your prof was probably spinning a general point about epinephrine being useful for lots of things into a more specific pop-psychobio point that isn't really justified.
You know, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but doesn't this model require either an epiphenomenological explanation of the human mind or further biochemical detail of its processes? If chemical process x may be interpreted as either fear or love, aren't there, respectively, chemical processes a and b that are responsible for that "interpretation," and therefore, isn't the emotion simply (x + a) or (x + b)?
"...how increasingly, professional athletes are following the example of Ikkos (a classical Olympian, if this usage is correct (AIANSII)), and abstaining from sex in the days/weeks leading up to a major match only to engage in wild Bacchanals (B-Wo, supply accurate plural at your discretion) following their triumph."
See tangentially the article linked here, or original here, but more to the point, here. It's got "bacchanalia" and "Olympics."
I've checked, and the link to the full article still works. It also has this quote: "I know I have to be careful when I talk to a journalist, but I can say this: It wasn't the f**k-fest it is now."
44: I think he was essentially talking about sexual desire, not trust or any other quality of love. But I can't really defend his point, since I don't have nearly the neuroanatomic knowledge to back it up. It's certainly possible he was making a generalization that just sounded good.
45: can someone link a good definition of epiphenomenological? It's not on dictionary.com, and wikipedia doesn't get me anywhere either. You would need another chemical prosess to accomplish the cognitive interpretation; his point, as I took it, was just that the way the initial stimulus was represented biologically was ambiguous, and it was decisions that took into account other external stimuli--where am I? who is around me? etc, that told your brain how to further represent (and of course this process would be biological as well as cognitive) it as fear or love (or more properly, attraction). There were experiments that demonstrated this--some involving someone on a bridge I think--I can try to find them.
Thisis an analogous discussion of free will from a cognitive perspective. The experiments show that people can have the feeling of causing something in a variety of situations where they're not actually causing it, even some where they are consciously aware that they *couldn't* be causing it.
Does anyone know why you can get away with a lower dose of hormones using a ring? Is the lower does why the drive problems don't show up or is it because the hormones are localized.
If you're taking drugs that are excreted through the kidney (a certain anticonvulsant for pain--no liver interaction) or other drugs which are known to affect hormone levels and require adjustments to BC pills, does this affect the ring?
And how does the ring compare to an IUD? DO the modern IUDs also have a hormonal component?
My MD friend explained that you get away with a smaller dose because the hormones are released locally, as you guessed. The big difference between the ring and an IUD is that since the former just sits at your cervex you take it out yourself. (You take it out for a week every month to have your period. Then you put in a new one with a fresh dose of hormones)
64: Of course, I will talk to an actual doctor before I do anything. I'm not on the pill now, although I was thinking about going on it. I just like to do research--of all kinds, including stuff in medical journals--before I go to the doctor. It makes the visit more productive.
The big problem is that the ob/gyns or PCPs are generally not all that familiar with the pharmacology of drugs prescribed by pharmacists, and if you wind up seeing a nurse practitioner, they know very little about pharmacology of any sort.
I had not realized they were metallic -- always sort of assumed they were plastic, not sure why. But this gives me a new idea for a money-making scheme -- a jewelry company making IUD's from precious metals. Hand-crafted beauty for the beauty who prefers to pamper her insides. Why settle for copper when you can have 24-karat Gold with inlaid rubies?
"Okay, well, the lower dose works because it does not have to be absorbed into your blood stream through digestion. I don't know about drug interactions, but I think they're probably the same as with the pill. I'm guessing they in some way counteract the effects of the hormones. But I don't actually know."
She also informs me that there are two kinds of modern IUD: hormonal and non-hormonal (copper).
67: there are both hormonal and copper IUD's. the slightly unsettling fact about the latter is that while it's apparently very effective, the mechanism by which it works is unknown. or was at the time, this was a few years ago.
Since fiend added the information about the unknown mechanism of the copper IUD, he is not pwned even under Weiner rules. The court accordingly refuses to rule on the broader issue.
I am more than unsettled about the unknown mechanism of the copper IUD. Did they think they knew why it worked before they started implanting them into women and were later proved incorrect? Was it based on some bizarro folk birth control that I don't want to think too much about?
Yes! But not in humans. Camel drivers going on long desert journeys kept their camels from getting pregnant by putting pebbles in their uteruses (uteri?). How they figured out that that would work is a mystery we may not want solved.
You know, there's a kind of therapy for trauma, EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), that I made fun of up and down until I looked at the clinical lit and was like, holy guacamole, moving your eyes around fast really helps treat PTSD? I don't think anyone knows how that works either, at least as of a few years ago.
I don't have anything to add to the discussion other than saying I find it disstressing and depressing. Theremust be like hindreds of millions of wonen who have this problem without knowing it. I didn't nedd to hear another reason why the world sucks.
I don't have anything to add to the discussion other than saying I find it disstressing and depressing. Theremust be like hindreds of millions of wonen who have this problem without knowing it. I didn't nedd to hear another reason why the world sucks.
58: Whoah, that's insane. Thanks for the explanation JO. Hey, some enterprising philosophers among us should make that link, esp. "The response from deniers of mind" section, better-written.
As to 45, yeah, that definitely wasn't what my professor thought. He thought what I said in 54. Or your other, non epiphenomenal option.
What, no comments? Well, I'm not intimidated by a sexually forthright woman, unlike, apparently, the other commenters around here.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:32 PM
I am, though, intimidated by closing tags, it seems.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:32 PM
At some point in the stories developed between my sister and myself, the following line became canonical:
Make of that what you will.As for the reduced horniness when on the pill, my other sister testified rather more vividly than I wanted. [Dialogue self-censored: let's agree that it agreed with Tia's point and embarrassed me.] Hormones scare me: it's no accident that the dosages necessary to prevent inception are decreasing or that the dosages necessary to build muscles are becoming illegal. Hormones have hard-cord impacts on the body. My (pro-choice, female) friends in medicine are currently pimping the Ring--very localized hormones.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:34 PM
The real problem: your boyfriend isn't me.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:39 PM
You're right apo, if I had a boyfriend who wanted to have sex once a month, I could stay on birth control with no problem.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:41 PM
"She's a sex-fiend," cried the sex-fiend.
Help me, Gary Farber! What phrase from The Demolished Man am I thinking of?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:43 PM
apostropher is the pwned!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:49 PM
5: I'm your man.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:50 PM
Thank -gg--d! I was afraid that #4 was addressed to me!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:54 PM
So what, Jackmormon, your boyfriend is apostropher?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:57 PM
Funny. Apostropher doesn't look Mexican.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 9:58 PM
3: JM, do your pro-choice friends say whether the Ring causes the sex drive stuff?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 10:00 PM
Tia: my friends have reported really damned good things from the ring. On one thread previously I talked about a friend whose body had changed dramatically from going off the pill. She first became a yoga instructor, then went on the Ring; she's thrilled (and getting plenty), but then I don't know what her testimony is worth. My MD friend is convinced that the Ring causes only local hormonal affect, that the quantity is more limited and directed than with any other delivery system.
(Potential downside to the Ring: vigorous sex might dislodge it. The contraceptive goodness would continue, but everyone would need to have a sense of humor about it. Of course there would be no STD protection.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 10:10 PM
6:Do you mean Reich's blocking jingle?
Tenser, said the Tensor
Tenser, said the Tensor
Tension, apprehension,
And dissension have begun.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 10:46 PM
Yes!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 10:50 PM
Ben, perhaps your sci-fi bat signal needs re-targeting?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 10:55 PM
"Gary Farber" is just my name for whoever answers my questions.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 02- 7-06 10:56 PM
"Help me, Gary Farber! What phrase from The Demolished Man am I thinking of?"
Six, sir; five, sir;
Four, sir; three, sir;
Two, sir; one!
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension,
And dissension have begun. Helps keep the telepaths out. Handy tip. See context here, for example.
"You may remember when Ogged linked to Becks linking to this New York Times story about how birth control may lead to a diminished sex drive."
Also, nitpick: condoms, IUDs, spermicidal foams and jellies, and all other even vaguely successful methods are all "birth control." (Well, if they work, at least.) The Pill and its chemical variants aren't synonymous with "birth control." End nitpick.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 2:54 AM
14, 17: phooey. I go to the trouble of scampering off to find the exact wording, before bothering to read further, since I was asked a direct question, and to what end? Feh.
(Watched BSG "Flight of the Phoenix"; it's now just about 3:00 a.m.; absolutely should go to sleep, and not watch the last available episode on this set of DVDS until tomorrow, that is, tonight. But will I? Will I? Not if I sit around looking up answers to questions to no point whatever, at any rate.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 2:58 AM
9: It is a very common problem, I'm afraid.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 5:44 AM
This may be of interest to you sex-fiends: a weird human-interest story on the front page of today's Wall St. Journal, about how increasingly, professional athletes are following the example of Ikkos (a classical Olympian, if this usage is correct (AIANSII)), and abstaining from sex in the days/weeks leading up to a major match only to engage in wild Bacchanals (B-Wo, supply accurate plural at your discretion) following their triumph. (Well not sure about the second part -- I stopped reading the article after about 2 paragraphs, and the Bachanal part was not in the lede. But I reckon it was coming.)
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 6:28 AM
Shouldn't Becks be held responsible for the consequences of unleashing Tia on the world?
I say, toss Apo into her cage and see how long he lasts.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 6:29 AM
I gots staying power, Emerson.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 6:33 AM
Woot! Glad I could help, Tia.
Into whose cage is Apo being tossed?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 6:35 AM
I'm not picky.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 6:38 AM
What's the over-under on the Tia-Apo match? Is Apo taking any relevant medications?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 6:58 AM
What's the over-under on the Tia-Apo match?
Are you asking who is the top?
Is Apo taking any relevant medications?
None that can be prescribed.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 7:46 AM
27 -- the medication that can be prescribed is not the true medication.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 7:49 AM
talk to my doctor about IUD's
Many doctors won't put one in a woman who hasn't already given birth vaginally.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 8:39 AM
How come I just started trying to think of a pun whose punch line would be, "intrauterin' devices"?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 8:46 AM
who hasn't already given birth vaginally
Why the "vaginally" stipulation? Why wouldn't they want to give one to a woman who had a C-section? (Not that it applies to Tia's situation, but I'm curious.)
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 9:12 AM
I suspect it has something to do with prior cervical dilation, though exactly what, I'm not sure. However, women who haven't had a vaginal birth are much more likely to expel the IUD and/or experience pain with it.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 9:19 AM
I don't know if that's necessarily true anymore. I had a friend who tried to get an IUD, and the doctor wouldn't do it (not because she hasn't given birth, which she hasn't), but on some claim like "you've only been with guy X for a year, how do you know it will last"? I wanted to kick the doctor in the face upon hearing this story. Women my age get unbelievably patronizing treatment from doctors over sex and birth control issues. It never fails to piss me off.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 9:24 AM
How about "I've only been with guy X for a year, what makes you think I want to have his baby?"
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 9:26 AM
I think the doctor wanted her to instead choose oral contraceptives, and my friend insisted that she'd been on them before, and because she suffers from depression, the pill just made her CRAZY. The doctor would listen to no such protestations.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 9:34 AM
33: Silvana's comment reminded me of something else that irritates me--the law in NYC (maybe it's the state) that says you have to get see a special counselor when you get an HIV test (this may apply only to clinics that receive public funds). This has actively deterred me from getting an HIV test in the past; it's time consuming; it's harder to get an appointment for the scarcer-than-doctors special counselors, and it costs as much as a whole separate doctors appointment. And the last time I went to the special counselor and he asked me when the last time I had unprotected sex was, I said I had unprotected sex all the time; I was in a monogamous relationship and both of us knew our STD status (why was I taking an HIV test, then? I needed another to be sure and G. decided he could live with that degree of uncertainty). He proceeds to ask me if we lived together, and then tells me if we don't live together, we shouldn't make that decision; we can't trust each other with our health. I was like, wtf, how arbitrary is that? Even if we were married it would be possible that one of us was cheating or lying about our STD status; you never know for sure, but eventually, if you want sex without condoms and dental dams, you take the plunge. Only I can decide when to do that--not some lame ass HIV counselor.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 9:36 AM
This is a serious discussion, and it would be inappropriate for me to interject a frightening anecdote told by a friend, who claimed that she had been born clutching an IUD in her tiny hand.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 10:01 AM
Any doctor who left an IUD in a pregnant woman would be guilty of SERIOUS medical malpractice. I kinda doubt the story.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 10:04 AM
This was something like 30-40 years ago, and I have no reason to doubt the story.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 10:08 AM
Ah, but was she the greatest steel-drivin' ... uh, woman?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 10:10 AM
The Woman of Steel -- now a chiropractor in Alaska, I think, fighting off bears in the -50-degree cold (F or C, who cares?).
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 10:34 AM
F or C, who cares?
As I'm sure you know, John, at -50 it's almost the same.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 10:37 AM
At 40 it is the same.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 10:37 AM
I had a college professor who used to say that love is undifferentiated arousal in the presence of an appropriate other, that is, our "emotions" are formed by our cognitive explanations for chemical states that in fact are fundamentally pretty similar; when you feel "love" and feel "fear" it's actually the same chemical condition, but you interpret it as "fear" when you're hanging over a cliff, "love" when you're with your honey.
Count me pretty dubious on this score. The two states may be difficult to tell apart endocrinologically, but that may just mean that our methods of discerning between them are poor.
Although, come to think of it, they aren't that poor: one of the chemicals associated with love specifically short-circuits the fear response. I think your prof was probably spinning a general point about epinephrine being useful for lots of things into a more specific pop-psychobio point that isn't really justified.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 11:47 AM
You know, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but doesn't this model require either an epiphenomenological explanation of the human mind or further biochemical detail of its processes? If chemical process x may be interpreted as either fear or love, aren't there, respectively, chemical processes a and b that are responsible for that "interpretation," and therefore, isn't the emotion simply (x + a) or (x + b)?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 11:57 AM
Or what tom said. He knows what he's talking about. Me, I'm going back to the Whose Line Is It Anyway? thread.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:00 PM
Leave you no room for the soul, Tom and Smasher?
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:00 PM
"...how increasingly, professional athletes are following the example of Ikkos (a classical Olympian, if this usage is correct (AIANSII)), and abstaining from sex in the days/weeks leading up to a major match only to engage in wild Bacchanals (B-Wo, supply accurate plural at your discretion) following their triumph."
See tangentially the article linked here, or original here, but more to the point, here. It's got "bacchanalia" and "Olympics."
I've checked, and the link to the full article still works. It also has this quote: "I know I have to be careful when I talk to a journalist, but I can say this: It wasn't the f**k-fest it is now."
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:04 PM
I don't know where your soul is, Matt F, but mine is distributed across my lymph nodes.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:05 PM
"Ghost in the Jackmormon"
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:08 PM
I keep mine in Motown.
So for you, swollen glands are indicative not of illness, but of great empathy for mankind?
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:11 PM
The whole "love or biochemistry" puts me in mind of the novel A Certain Chemistry by Mil Millington. Which is pretty funny.
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:14 PM
Love in the Time of Chemistry
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:16 PM
44: I think he was essentially talking about sexual desire, not trust or any other quality of love. But I can't really defend his point, since I don't have nearly the neuroanatomic knowledge to back it up. It's certainly possible he was making a generalization that just sounded good.
45: can someone link a good definition of epiphenomenological? It's not on dictionary.com, and wikipedia doesn't get me anywhere either. You would need another chemical prosess to accomplish the cognitive interpretation; his point, as I took it, was just that the way the initial stimulus was represented biologically was ambiguous, and it was decisions that took into account other external stimuli--where am I? who is around me? etc, that told your brain how to further represent (and of course this process would be biological as well as cognitive) it as fear or love (or more properly, attraction). There were experiments that demonstrated this--some involving someone on a bridge I think--I can try to find them.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:18 PM
Here.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:22 PM
"epiphenomenological" -- should this be "epiphenomenal"?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:23 PM
Yes, sorry.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:24 PM
Epiphenomenalism.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:24 PM
Phenomenology.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:25 PM
Thisis an analogous discussion of free will from a cognitive perspective. The experiments show that people can have the feeling of causing something in a variety of situations where they're not actually causing it, even some where they are consciously aware that they *couldn't* be causing it.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:25 PM
Does anyone know why you can get away with a lower dose of hormones using a ring? Is the lower does why the drive problems don't show up or is it because the hormones are localized.
If you're taking drugs that are excreted through the kidney (a certain anticonvulsant for pain--no liver interaction) or other drugs which are known to affect hormone levels and require adjustments to BC pills, does this affect the ring?
And how does the ring compare to an IUD? DO the modern IUDs also have a hormonal component?
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:47 PM
DO the modern IUDs also have a hormonal component?
Some do, some don't.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:52 PM
My MD friend explained that you get away with a smaller dose because the hormones are released locally, as you guessed. The big difference between the ring and an IUD is that since the former just sits at your cervex you take it out yourself. (You take it out for a week every month to have your period. Then you put in a new one with a fresh dose of hormones)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:53 PM
Sounds like you might want to talk to, um, an actual doctor about this stuff, though, Bostoniangirl.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 12:54 PM
64: Of course, I will talk to an actual doctor before I do anything. I'm not on the pill now, although I was thinking about going on it. I just like to do research--of all kinds, including stuff in medical journals--before I go to the doctor. It makes the visit more productive.
The big problem is that the ob/gyns or PCPs are generally not all that familiar with the pharmacology of drugs prescribed by pharmacists, and if you wind up seeing a nurse practitioner, they know very little about pharmacology of any sort.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 1:00 PM
a former gf had a copper IUD and, after an uncomfortable two or three-day adjustment period, absolutely loved it.
come to think of it, i did too.
Posted by fiend | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 1:13 PM
copper IUD
I had not realized they were metallic -- always sort of assumed they were plastic, not sure why. But this gives me a new idea for a money-making scheme -- a jewelry company making IUD's from precious metals. Hand-crafted beauty for the beauty who prefers to pamper her insides. Why settle for copper when you can have 24-karat Gold with inlaid rubies?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 1:18 PM
"come to think of it, i did too."
Where did you put it?
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 1:19 PM
I asked my wife, who uses the ring, and she said:
"Okay, well, the lower dose works because it does not have to be absorbed into your blood stream through digestion. I don't know about drug interactions, but I think they're probably the same as with the pill. I'm guessing they in some way counteract the effects of the hormones. But I don't actually know."
She also informs me that there are two kinds of modern IUD: hormonal and non-hormonal (copper).
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 1:30 PM
67: there are both hormonal and copper IUD's. the slightly unsettling fact about the latter is that while it's apparently very effective, the mechanism by which it works is unknown. or was at the time, this was a few years ago.
68: do i need to draw you a picture? :)
Posted by fiend | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 1:43 PM
What are the current rules on pwnage/jinxage? Are we over that?
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 1:45 PM
Since fiend added the information about the unknown mechanism of the copper IUD, he is not pwned even under Weiner rules. The court accordingly refuses to rule on the broader issue.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 1:52 PM
I am more than unsettled about the unknown mechanism of the copper IUD. Did they think they knew why it worked before they started implanting them into women and were later proved incorrect? Was it based on some bizarro folk birth control that I don't want to think too much about?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 1:58 PM
Was it based on some bizarro folk birth control
Yes! But not in humans. Camel drivers going on long desert journeys kept their camels from getting pregnant by putting pebbles in their uteruses (uteri?). How they figured out that that would work is a mystery we may not want solved.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 2:02 PM
Camel-drivers, eh?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 2:07 PM
You know, there's a kind of therapy for trauma, EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), that I made fun of up and down until I looked at the clinical lit and was like, holy guacamole, moving your eyes around fast really helps treat PTSD? I don't think anyone knows how that works either, at least as of a few years ago.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 2:20 PM
I don't have anything to add to the discussion other than saying I find it disstressing and depressing. Theremust be like hindreds of millions of wonen who have this problem without knowing it. I didn't nedd to hear another reason why the world sucks.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 2:45 PM
I don't have anything to add to the discussion other than saying I find it disstressing and depressing. Theremust be like hindreds of millions of wonen who have this problem without knowing it. I didn't nedd to hear another reason why the world sucks.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 2:46 PM
58: Whoah, that's insane. Thanks for the explanation JO. Hey, some enterprising philosophers among us should make that link, esp. "The response from deniers of mind" section, better-written.
As to 45, yeah, that definitely wasn't what my professor thought. He thought what I said in 54. Or your other, non epiphenomenal option.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02- 8-06 7:29 PM