Beer, Beer and more Beer!! Wait – should you really be drinking beer?

April 18, 2015April 18, 201511 Comments

Beer – the cool, refreshing, golden nectar. My first beer was admittedly at a young age of 13. I hated it, but that’s what everyone else was drinking, so beer it was. As my palette has grown accustomed to the varieties and tastes I have become a distant admirer of certain beers. Particularly German Hefeweizen beers. So during my 2WW it was difficult to come all the way to Germany and avoid the stuff…..so……here I am – two beers in hand!!!

Hofbrauhaus in Munich. Mmmm Beer!

Officially, Chris and I both gave up alcohol almost 17 months ago. I say ‘officially’ because we have both had alcohol in these months as we have caved on occasion. However, we have significantly reduced our intake of alcohol to maybe one or two beers/glasses of wine a month, if at all. The reason? Because ‘they’ tell us alcohol affects both fertility and the development of the foetus in the early stages.

It is logical, after all, if alcohol is capable of making you do silly things with your mind, then surely it can affect other things too. I have no qualms in giving up alcohol, plus it saves on the purse, and reduces the calorie intake (never hurts). There are many conflicting views about the impact of alcohol on fertility.

The UK Government suggests a pregnant woman, or a woman who is trying to conceive should drink no more than 1-2 units once or twice a week (ie one small glass of wine). Their drink aware campaign (www.drinkaware.co.uk) website is quite informative about alcohol and fertility for both men and women.

One interesting bit of research I read about from Harvard University found that couples undergoing IVF found that women who drank more than six units per week were 18% less likely to conceive, while men were 14% less likely*. Although this statistic sounds quite high you will only need to drink 3 times a week or more, that is quite a lot. LAst time I drank that much was at University!! Generally, I go with the school of thought that one small drink every once in while is unlikely to have any significant impact. But as the stakes grow higher and more money is invested in our treatment, the more cautious I am about alcohol intake.

So what about that picture above with me holding two beers from Friday night? Well they actually are not mine, they are the beers of my new colleagues. BUT! I did enjoy three non-alcoholic Weizen beers! Obviously the fact that I had three meant I must have enjoyed them. It was only after one of my German students told me that he was taking a case of the non-alcoholic stuff back to Rome with him that I thought I should give it a go. Usually, non-alcoholic beers remind me of the bitter taste of Beck’s non-alcoholic that was served when I was on my tours of duty in Afghanistan. Beggars can’t be choosers, but that stuff put me off it all for several years. Well at least until now that is.

The non-alcoholic beer definitely doesn’t give you that light headed happiness feeling you would ordinarily experience with the alcoholic version. But throughout the night I realized that I felt comfortable drinking with my new friends without the pressure of feeling like I had to drink. In fact near the end of the evening, one of my friends pointed to my glass and said to the waiter “I’ll have what she’s having”, I quickly pointed out it was non-alcoholic. Obviously he immediately changed his mind, and looked disappointed at me. He was disappointed because all along he thought I was keeping up with the lads without getting pissed and I was drinking them under the table! But it was quickly laughed off and nothing more was said.

I think I will try these non-alcoholic options more. In fact, a fellow blogger (the longest journey) came up with a cracking idea….to put some juice/fizz in a wine glass to give the impression of drinking wine. Psychologically, that surely has to have the same effect as a non-alcoholic beer. Well I’m going to try it and let you know 😉

Bye Bye Bavaria! Thank you for the beer discovery!

*Harvard University Website. Alcohol hinders having a baby through IVF, couples warned.

Accessed from: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/10/alcohol-hinders-having-a-baby-through-ivf-couples-warned/

Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Trying to Conceive

April 12, 2015April 12, 20156 Comments

I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). It is a relatively common disorder of the gut. The weird thing about IBS is that no one really quite knows what causes it exactly. Symptoms are variable depending on the nature of the IBS. For me, I suffer from abdominal pain and diarrheoa. I’ve had it since I was a late teen. But I don’t really remember when it truly started, but it got worse at university. There is no cure for IBS, only treatment of the symptoms. Approximately 1 in 5 people will suffer from IBS in their lives, some may never realise they have it. Symptoms vary on scale and nature and is slightly more common in women than men.

I am writing about IBS because last night as I boarded the plane for my transatlantic flight and experienced an awkward situation. As I sat down the family next to me asked if I could switch seats with their son (about 13yrs old) so they could all sit next to each other. Sure I said, no problem, I don’t mind moving a row back! But then they pointed to the dreaded in centre seat. I had specifically booked an aisle seat because I go to the toilet a lot. And as this was a red eye flight I would not do well sitting here, I would have asked the person next to me to move at least 10 times so I could go to the toilet. I looked at the boy, realised he was 13 and thought he would be perfectly fine there, plus one of his parents could always sit on their own if they were worried about him. So I politely declined to switch seats and told them of my predicament to be near the toilet. But then the mother told me she couldn’t swap because she had a fear of flying. Yes I felt guilty, but I was very willing to swap with anyone in an aisle seat. Eventually a nice lady the other side of the plane volunteered to sit in the boys seat so I could sit in her aisle seat. But it just reminded me of the hidden side of IBS, even though I told the family my reasoning, they seemed pretty pissed at me. They didn’t understand. I know of people with IBS who have disabled toilet keys because when it is bad, it is very bad!! I don’t have this extreme requirement, but IBS is a hidden disability.

I self manage my symptoms. I know that stress makes it worse, and eating certain foods such as potatoes and pineapple can give me killer cramps and half a night on the toilet. I have simply learned to avoid certain foods or when I have a craving, give in and just expect it and manage it when it happens, I prefer it that way rather than take drugs. I tried a lot of things at university to relieve the symptoms, but ultimately cutting out the stress seemed to work the best.

In order to diagnose IBS the doctor will put you through a series of tests to rule out something more serious, like Chron’s disease, cancer of the ovaries or coeliac disease. These are tested usually with blood and stool tests. For me, the doctor said that there was a possibility of having endometriosis, which can only be detected through a laporoscopy. But before doing this invasive procedure she wanted me to try an exclusion diet to see if there were certain foods that increased the symptoms. After several weeks of hunger, cravings and a very large shopping bill, we figured that IBS was likely. So I never had a laporoscopy to rule out endometriosis. My current Reproductive Endocrinologist has suggested there is a chance I do have endo, but a laporoscopy can do more harm than good to my fertility if it is just a little bit of endo. I find it strange that I have no definite diagnosis whether I have one, the other or both conditions.

As I get further into my two week wait and I get pains even a couple of days after IUI, I wonder are they IBS pains? Or are they related to the IUI and the progesterone? What has IBS got to do with infertility? Well I didn’t think there was much of a linkage, but as always google shows you something interesting. There were two interesting conclusions that came out of my, albeit brief, search, in general the research is pretty thin on the ground.

There is no evidence to suggest IBS causes infertility. A couple of sites discuss this and conclude that there is no evidence of a linkage.

IBS increases risk of miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. A research study* looked at 100 000 women who became pregnant during the period 1990 to 2008. Of these 100 000 women 6% suffered a miscarriage, which is considered to be the ‘normal’ statistic. Of these 100 000 women, 26 000 women were diagnosed with IBS. Of these women diagnosed with IBS, 7.5% lost their babies. That is a significant difference, increasing the risk of miscarriage for women with IBS by 30%. It should be noted that IBS is linked with other disorders which are also potentially linked to miscarriage, for example chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, therefore it is not wholly conclusive evidence. The authors wanted to stress that the chance of miscarriage was still small, and that they wanted to highlight the need for more research into IBS and fertility. I have not been able to find anything more up to date than this report from 2012. Maybe they are still researching it…maybe no one carried it forward. But I think it definitely deserves some more attention.

*Increased Risk of Miscarriage and Ectopic Pregnancy Among Women With Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Khashan, Ali S. et al. Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology , Volume 10 , Issue 8 , 902 – 909

Around ovulation time women prefer men without bodily hair

April 3, 20151 Comment

I’m back on to researching the weird science of ovulation again. I discovered research* showing that ovulating women prefer men with smoother, hair free skin. Our preferences change throughout our menstrual cycle, and indeed after the menopause.

The study examined the effect of male torso hairiness on women’s attractiveness ratings by presenting pictures of men before and after the removal of body hair. Findings showed that when the women’s fertility was at its highest, they preferred males with less body hair. In addition the study found that post-menopausal women demonstrated stronger preferences relating to male body hair than pre-menopausal women. This is interesting considering the belief that women are more likely seek out more ‘manly’ features in their male choice around peak fertility as hairiness can be seen as a symbol of high testosterone levels and masculinity. Personally, I’m not fussed about bodily hair. Well at least I’m led to believe I’m not fussed, I wonder if I could conduct my own experiment with Chris…..hmmmmm…….

Weird science of ovulation – you confuse me so!

* Rantala, M. J., Pölkki, M., & Rantala, L. M. (2010). Preference for human male body hair changes across the menstrual cycle and menopause. Behavioral Ecology, 21, 419-423

Do I spend more $$ when I am my most “fertile”?

February 25, 2015February 25, 20152 Comments

Do I spend more money when I am my most “fertile’? Probably seems a bit of a strange question coming from someone who has been diagnosed with ‘unexplained infertility’. But never the less, assuming my most fertile period is when I ovulate (give or take a few days either side), do I spend more on ‘discretionary’ items?

Yesterday I heard on the radio that a Texas university discovered that ladies buy more things when they are in their fertile period of their cycle. Well this caught my attention considering not long ago I wrote a post on the weird science of ovulation. So yesterday I started to look at my own spending habits, and of course I have my credit card data, and my ovulation data from the 15 months, what do they look like together overlayed? Is there any possible correlation? I plotted ‘discretionary’ spending, which is basically any type of spending where I had a choice (I excluded groceries, bills, fuel and work expenses), against ‘peak ovulation’ days. Ovulation day is the highest orange peak, with 2 days either side of ovulation day. Here’s what my chart looked like….

Nope…doesn’t look like much of a correlation! But it was interesting to see my ‘waves’ of spending habits! This analysis is really rudimentary. What was the radio show really talking about? There must be some particular way I need to look at spending v ovulation or perhaps I don’t fit the profile because I am actually infertile?? Haha. OK, I’m being mean to myself here.

So this evening I hunted down the source of the research…Asst. Professor Kristina Durante from University of Texas. Here is her webpage, it has a link to all her research papers on it. She has done a lot of interesting social science research on ovulation and social effects. She has even given a TED Talk – Fertile, Flirty & Feisty (I love TED Talks by the way!) her approach is all related to evolutionary theory.

It turns out her research is in fact far more in depth than the radio makes it out to be…Chinese Whispers etc. Indeed, the paper merely discussed that ovulation affects women’s preferences, which might contribute to spending on positional goods such as cars and jewellery. Well the majority of my ‘discretionary’ spending included decaf skinny vanilla lattes and cookies so I think we can safely say my chart is null and void. But it was interesting anyway whilst it lasted 😎 One way to keep me busy in the 2 week wait and distract from horrible cramps and leaky vaginas – geek out!

Abstract from: Money, Status and the Ovulatory Cycle*

Each month, millions of women experience an ovulatory cycle that regulates fertility. Previous consumer research has found that this cycle influences women’s clothing and food preferences. The authors propose that the ovulatory cycle actually has a much broader effect on women’s economic behavior. Drawing on theory in evolutionary psychology, the authors hypothesize that the week-long period near ovulation should boost women’s desire for relative status, which should alter their economic decisions. Findings from three studies show that women near ovulation seek positional goods to improve their social standing. Additional findings reveal that ovulation leads women to pursue positional goods when doing so improves relative standing compared with other women but not compared with men. When playing the dictator game, for example, ovulating women gave smaller offers to a female partner but not to a male partner. Overall, women’s monthly hormonal fluctuations seem to have a substantial effect on consumer behavior by systematically altering their positional concerns, a finding that has important implications for marketers, consumers, and researchers.

* Durante, K.M, Griskevicius, V., Cantu, S.M. & Simpson, J.A. Journal for Marketing Research, 2014

Research shows that age is not correlated with fertility…um OK

February 12, 2015February 12, 20151 Comment

I’m back on my data hunt for my course project to develop a web app…and I came across a research paper that explored factors associated with fertility in a small district in India*. The abstract of the paper begins with:

“This paper focuses on the cause and effect relations on human fertility. Here fertility is used as the number of children ever born for a woman….”

Alarm bells rang as soon as I see ’cause and effect….’. But I was intrigued, so I read on. The factors that this study looked at were ‘natural factors’ (including age of woman, age of woman at marriage, religion and type of family) ‘economic factors’ (including employment of woman and spouse, income of woman and spouse) and ‘knowledge factors’ (including education of woman and spouse). I should now mention that this is clearly NOT a piece of medical research, rather came from a journal of anthropology. Studies that look at non-medical factors can be revealing never-the-less, so here we go…

I loved the result that the more educated a woman and her spouse were the fertility rate lowered. Basically you can possibly turn this around and say that the less educated you were the more likely you were to have children. I think we can guess why. But it is the way that the report concludes which makes it sound rather amusing…

“Conclusion: Higher employment, higher income of both husband and wife and nuclear family system could bring the reduction in the fertility level of the women in Kanyakumari district”

CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION – BAHHHHHH

I know that this research paper was probably trying to assess what causes the high birth rate in this particular district, but I think the translation and the way the conclusions have been made make this a paper a funny read if you are into that kind of geekery. So Ladies – lose the jobs, dumb up your brain cells and knock a few out of your husband too, and don’t worry, age is not correlated with fertility, that is if we want to learn some lessons from Kanyakumari district!

Oh yes and here is another one of my favourite xkcds.