Advice Goddess

Whiff the wrong man

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Q: I admire that you often addresearch to your columns, so I thought I’d ask you about an article Iread on birth control pills. Apparently, taking the pill can cause the“wrong” man to smell good to you —a man you might not be into once you’re off the pill. Unfortunately, Iexperience severe mood swings when I’m not taking the pill —uncontrollable rages for about a week a month. But, now I’m worriedthat I’ll choose a partner I’ll lose interest in reproducing with whenI’m off the pill. Also, I wonder whether being on it is lying about whoI am. Of course, if I can’t control my mood swings, it won’t matter,because I’ll scare every man away!

—Medicated

A: It seems those health class videos about getting your period — “You’re a woman now!” — were a tad incomplete. One week a month, you’re also Chuck Norris. 

The cause of your rage probably isn’tall the people saying deeply offensive things to you like “Are youusing that chair?” but a nosedive in your level of “the happy hormone,”serotonin. Dr. Emily Deans, a psychiatrist with the terrific blog“Evolutionary Psychiatry” on PsychologyToday.com, explains that yourperiod gets launched by a drop in progesterone, “which can interfere abit with the machinery that makes serotonin. This can lead to hunger,cravings, agitation, insomnia, irritability, and rage” or, to put it inrelationship terms: “Someday, my prince will run.”

Deans says the pill can help alleviatethese symptoms, and certain variations seem especially helpful: the24-day pill and the three-monther (meaning Auntie Flo visits only onceevery three months). The problem is the issue you brought up. Thearticle you read references the research of Swiss biologist ClausWedekind, who made a bunch of women sniff a bunch of men’s stinkyT-shirts to study the pill’s effect on mate preferences. Women whoweren’t on the pill went for the smell of men with dissimilar immunesystems — men withwhom they’d produce children with a broader set of immune defenses.Women on the pill preferred the smell of men with immune systemssimilar to theirs (the immunologically redundant), probably because thepill chemically mimics pregnancy and cues a genetic adaptation thatleads women to seek out kin to protect them when they’re pregnant.

If that isn’t enough bad news for you,the pill’s pregnancy simulation seems to kill the attractiveness bumpwomen get at ovulation, their most fertile time of the month, whentheir faces, scent, and other features become subtly more appealing tomen. (It may also lead ovulating women to dress and act lessprovocatively than they otherwise would.) In a study by psychologistGeoffrey Miller, female lap dancers not on the pill earned an averageof $276 a night whereas those on it brought in only $193, makingpill-using lap dancers $80 less hot and sexy to men per night. 

So, the answer for your mood swingsis…count to 10 when you get angry (because it sometimes takes that longfor your rocket-propelled grenade launcher to warm up)? For a morepeaceful alternative, Deans advises that some women’s PMS symptoms arealleviated by certain antidepressants (SSRIs, or selective serotoninreuptake inhibitors, such as fluoxetine and sertraline) but notes theirproblematic downside: “Nothing kills sex drive like an SSRI!” Deans hashad some success prescribing bupropion, a non-SSRI antidepressant shecalls “unlikely” to be a sex drive killer, but observes that “it can beagitating and cause insomnia.”

As a possible non-drug alternative,Deans suggests magnesium malate supplementation: “Five hundredmilligrams of magnesium malate at bedtime seems to help with anxiety,rage, and PMS symptoms such as cramps and headaches,” she says.“Magnesium is typically low in standard American diets and not found inlarge amounts in multivitamins and is generally safe if you have normalkidneys.” Deans adds that cycling from a low-carb diet to ahigher-carb, low-protein diet three days to a week before starting yourperiod can ease PMS symptoms, possibly by helping with serotonin uptake.

There is a prejudice that you’re abetter person if you just try to meditate yourself out of your rage onthose weeks when you find yourself in the mood for long walks on thebeach followed by a home strangling. But fixing brain problems bytaking a pill is really no different from taking insulin for diabetesto keep from going into a diabetic coma. You’re just taking a brainthat’s slacking off in the neurochemical department and bringing it upto par. Especially once you’re in a relationship, a little “betterliving through chemistry” (or diet or vitamins) certainly seemspreferable to doing “the little things” to keep your love alive — like sticking Post-its around the house with cute little messages like “Homicide comes with a stiff prison term.”

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