#hormonal cycle

[auntbibby]

i had a RIDICULOUS amount of gender dysphoria yesterday

initial assumptions were that it was becuz i went to a trans women meetup…..

but maybe i was actually on my trans period???????? cuz like, i was randomly crying and shit

like, not “uterus” period but “ive got way more estrogen in my body than testosterone and i know for a fact it’s altering my reproductive systems” period

[escapisttxo]

i love who i become when im menstruating 😭😭 everyone always hypes up their ovulation phase but i get really stupid in the head and impulsive omgggggg it’s irritating truly

[unofficialchronicle]

[glowingskindiaries]

How to Build a Skincare Routine Around Your Hormonal Cycle

Your skin’s needs change throughout the month, influenced by fluctuations in hormones during your menstrual cycle. Building a skincare routine that aligns with these hormonal shifts can help you manage common concerns like breakouts, dryness, or sensitivity more effectively. In this blog, we’ll break down the four phases of the menstrual cycle, explain how hormones affect your skin during each…

How to Build a Skincare Routine Around Your Hormonal Cycle

[goldenrods]

For The First Time, Scientists Show Structural, Brain-Wide Changes During Menstruation : ScienceAlert

For The First Time, Scientists Show Structural, Brain-Wide Changes During Menstruation

The constant ebb and flow of hormones that guide the menstrual cycle don't just affect reproductive anatomy.

[adana-washington]

I’ve been procrastinating for hours now, looking for patterns in my word count. Then I found it. And it’s both weird but super fucking awesome.

Warning: If you don’t like talking about periods, A) grow up and, B) look away.

We good? Good.

So I started tallying my word count by the totals I hit for each day, using Google Spreadsheets. (I already track my word count there, so it was easy enough to just add a new sheet.) Then I made a column for the words written each day. I made a graph and started looking at it, and there was something about the two dips in word count that caught my eye.

Then I remembered this video that I’ve watched a couple times in the past few years. It’s a Ted Talk called Loving Your Lady Parts as a Path to Success, Power and Global Change. In it, Alisa Vitti touches on the four phases in a woman’s hormonal cycle, and how she can take advantage of the way her brain works during those phases. 

Here’s a general breakdown for the four phases:

Week One (Day 1-7)

Starts the first day of your period

After the achy, fatigue-y part, there’s a boost in energy, mood, optimism and brain skills

Week Two (Day 8-14)

Amps up the positive effects from Week One

Sharper memory, thinking faster on your feet

More impulsive, daring,competitive, and confident

Week Three (Day 15-22)

The first half is the Pre-PMS phase

Irritability, fatigue, and more cautious

Can be forgetful, foggy and less eloquent

Week Four (Day 23-28)

Moodiness, muscle aches, insomnia, headaches, and fatigue

Pretty much the sucky part

Good for organizing and paying attention to details

I found this fascinating, and it’s something that I’ve revisited every once in a while. I’ve always wanted to look into scheduling my work and life around these phases. So I looked at the period tracker that I have on my phone (I use Clue). I started highlighting my fertile windows, periods and PMS days on my spreadsheet. 

That’s when I realized that the two days when I cut a good chunk of my writing happened right after I started PMS-ing. Weird, but it makes sense.

So naturally, I made a new calendar, with the dates organized according to the weeks of my hormonal phases. Then I recorded my daily word counts, and added up my word counts for the week. After I looked at it as a whole, I realized some pretty awesome things.

1. The first week of my hormonal cycle is my most prolific time of the month (no pun intended). I write nearly three times more that week than the rest of the time during that cycle.

2. Weeks Two and Three are my slower weeks for writing. It’s when I struggle the most in figuring out where the story should head. I only end up writing about three days each week during that time. 

3. Week Four is when I go into Editor Mode. I’ve cut nearly half of what I’ve written during the second and third week of my cycle. So if I don’t want to end up doing that every month, I need to really look at what I’m writing during those two weeks.

4. During my Fertile Window (which starts in the middle of Week Two and ends at the beginning of Week Three), no writing gets done. I don’t get back into the saddle until the last day of that window.

5. The last day of my period isn’t a good writing day for me. If I get any writing down at all, it’s not very much.

Realizing this pattern makes me very happy. For one, it tells me that not writing everyday really doesn’t mean I’m a sucky failure. And that switching into Editor Mode in the middle of my draft isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Because in both of the previous instances, cutting those chunks of words has resulted in my story being better than it could have possibly been if I’d continued down that path.

And now that I can see this pattern, I have a major heads-up for the future. So when I start slowing down in my writing this week, I’ll know why. And I won’t beat myself up about it (nearly as much). 

I also find this hilarious because it came up in a tarot reading that I did before I started all of this word count madness. The Ten of Swords pointed to things getting better when I stopped fighting the flow and letting my intuition guide me. Or, as it turns out, working with my hormones instead of against them.

[myserendipities]

Men do go through hormonal cycles. That much is established. Their testosterone levels tend to peak first thing in the morning, perhaps in concert with circadian rhythms, and then diminish over the course of the day—though exercise can cause fleeting spikes. What science has yet to show is whether hormones dip and rise over weeks or months, as women’s do. Some researchers believe that male hormones vary with the seasons. A 2003 study found that the testosterone levels of men in one Norwegian town bottomed out in summer and reached a high in late fall. A study of Danish men found similar seasonal variations (on a slightly different schedule). If these rhythms are real, they might have to do with sun exposure, summer workouts, or winter weight-gain. But studies done in sunny San Diego and snowy Boston failed to replicate the Scandinavian findings. In a 2012 review, urologists at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston concluded that some “evidence exists to support the notion” of seasonal cycles but cautioned that more research was needed. Endocrinologist Peter Celec of Comenius University in Slovakia, thinks that men have a straight-up monthly hormonal cycle too. In 2002 he published a study showing that both men and women experience roughly lunar rhythms of testosterone; the levels in men’s saliva peaked dramatically on day 18 of a 30-day cycle. Celec’s findings have not been replicated or accepted in the field, yet he remains convinced: “I have searched the literature for negative findings, but I have not found anything.” Celec adds that if women didn’t bleed, the research establishment would likely be skeptical of their monthly cycles too.

Do Men Have Hormonal Cycles? | Popular Science

[flutteringazure]

There's a few programs on equality on the telly at the moment and I was looking forward to watching them but unfortunately I am at that point of my cycle where I am easily and greatly triggered by certain things. Hopefully I can watch this later...

In the meantime I'm going to tackle some of the backlog messages in my ask box!