Thursday, December 05, 2013
The power of negative influence
We cannot bring someone down unless we are first on the ground ourselves. We cannot lift someone up if we are not already up in spirits. Likewise, we speak badly of others when we feel badly of ourselves. And we speak kindly of others when we value ourselves.A beautiful article. Our love must be self-giving, but we must have a self to give, which distinguishes it from codependency, a distinction I often struggle with.
Labels: a full life, love
Family planning in Kenya
The international community seems to be making a bit of a one-sided push.
The article was quite informative on a number of statistical issues. However, a reading of the article also reveals the unfortunate conflation of the terms “family planning” and “contraception.” Contraception is but one aspect of family planning, and the two terms should not be used interchangeably. Lest this view be seen as nitpicking, let us examine the implications of equating family planning with contraception.I think the author is a Kenyan woman, for what it's worth.
Labels: contraception, family
Pope remains Catholic
Well, that's a relief.
It turns out that the pope still teaches what anybody with an ounce of common sense knew he taught all along. The only people who managed to convince themselves otherwise were members of the MSM and hysterical Reactionaries who seriously believed the MSM hype that he was somehow abandoning the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of human life.
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Goodbye, Winamp
Not religion related, but a significant part of my youth is about to disappear.
Labels: computers, technology
As a counterbalance to Justine's seriousness
I present this comic from "Mary is my homegirl", entitled "When someone I don't know well ask for my opinion on birth control".
Labels: contraception, humor, NFP
A little Mark Shea on Hell
Are many saved or are few saved? Both, I guess.
Now another aspect of Catholic tradition that has plagued simplifiers down through the ages is the question of hell: Will many (or all) be saved or few? And there have always been Catholics who emphasize either the fewness or the manyness of the saved—and who cite various authorities in the Tradition itself as backup for their views. That’s not hard to do since the Tradition has, in fact, two irreconcilable (for human intellect) strains of teaching, both originating in Jesus himself and both faithfully transmitted by the apostles.And he quotes a little B16 in Spe Salvi, who notes something that I like to note:
Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation.Which is what I always say to people who ask me how I could reconcile the idea of God's love with sending people to Hell. I don't think God "sends" anyone to Hell, per se. But they, through their free will, choose to experience this love as pain, and since free will is real, no one does anything to stop them, once they've made their decision. It's a bit harder to paint God as a monster from this perspective. IMHO, of course.
Labels: catholic, love, religion
Monday, December 02, 2013
Compassion outside of a church
From NPR:
A Mormon Bishop in Taylorsville, Utah, went to great lengths last Sunday to teach his congregation a lesson. David Musselman disguised himself as a homeless person and walked around outside before the service. Then, in character, he walked up to the pulpit and asked to deliver remarks. He tells Ari Shapiro what happened next.Intense, and not very surprising. Some good, and a lot of bad.
Labels: religion
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Fertility Awareness Products
On first learning about NFP, some might complain that it takes work, and there is a risk of being inaccurate. Isn't there an app or some sort of wrist-band you can strap on that just tells you if you are fertile or not? Isn't there some sort of easier way? Well technology is enhancing all areas of our lives, why not fertility awareness?
A couple of interesting products I have come across, but have not bought or tested, so this is no endorsement, but I simply wanted to point them out as worthy of notice.
1) OV-Watch Fertility Predictor
Website: http://www.ovwatch.com/
A couple of interesting products I have come across, but have not bought or tested, so this is no endorsement, but I simply wanted to point them out as worthy of notice.
1) OV-Watch Fertility Predictor
Website: http://www.ovwatch.com/
To quote the vendors: "OV-Watch is a clinically proven, patented fertility predictor that helps women determine their most fertile time of month. It is a wrist-mounted, bio-sensing medical device that tracks a woman’s individual body chemistry to find the 4 crucial days before ovulation."
Yes, it is like a digital watch you wear at night while you are sleeping. It monitors the chloride ions, which surge in the days preceding ovulation due to hormonal changes.
Pros: Can help you conceive! Seems like it is easy to use!
Cons: Costs well over $100, and has to be refilled with monthly sensors that cost about $40 a month. Cheaper if bought in bulk.
**Warning: The makers of OV-Watch state, "OV-Watch® is not intended for contraception and should not be used by
women who are monitoring their cycles for the purpose of avoiding
pregnancy." ***
2) Fertility Microscopes:
Ovuscope
And also there are various similar products on Amazon.com.
This is basically a fancy magnifying glass or mini-microscope. It is based on the premise that a woman's saliva crystallizes and forms fern-like patterns, only around the time of the month she is most fertile, with maximum "ferning" occurring when she ovulates. This is again due to the surge in chloride ions due to rising estrogen levels. Other times of the month the saliva just dries up in irregular forms with no noticeable patterns.
If you work in a place with access to microscopes, there is no need to purchase this product. I tested the concept by spitting on a slide at the time of the month when I predicted that I was ovulating and checked to see the pattern. I got the following images I took through my iPhone. I learned the technique of holding the iPhone camera up to the eyepiece from my students who were too lazy to draw what they saw under the microscope. I have to saw, the image quality is pretty good!
3) Kindara - Fertility Tracker App for iPhone
This product I have been using for several months now, and switched from the free to the pay version about a month ago, although I haven't noticed many differences in the upgrade. (Which is a good thing for those using the free version!)
This app is both sophisticated and user-friendly. You can use up to three different indicators to track fertility (BBT, mucus, and cervical checks). You can also add in your own additional customizable data. You can input as little or as much information as you want. It predicts your fertile window and your next period start date. It is easy to use if you are new to Natural Family Planning. However, I wouldn't use this app in place of doing your research and reading the literature on NFP and taking a class with a trained instructor.
This product I have been using for several months now, and switched from the free to the pay version about a month ago, although I haven't noticed many differences in the upgrade. (Which is a good thing for those using the free version!)
This app is both sophisticated and user-friendly. You can use up to three different indicators to track fertility (BBT, mucus, and cervical checks). You can also add in your own additional customizable data. You can input as little or as much information as you want. It predicts your fertile window and your next period start date. It is easy to use if you are new to Natural Family Planning. However, I wouldn't use this app in place of doing your research and reading the literature on NFP and taking a class with a trained instructor.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Article Review: NFP Effectivness to Avoid Pregnancy
Article #1:
The effectiveness of a fertility awareness based method to
avoid pregnancy in relation to a couple’s sexual behaviour
during the
fertile time: a prospective longitudinal study
Hum. Reprod. (2007) 22 (5): 1310-1319. doi: 10.1093/humrep/dem003
Link to free access of article:
Summary (Excerpted
from abstract with some modifications)
A study was conducted in Germany with a cohort of 900 women who
charted data from 17,638 menstrual cycles using a version of the sympto-thermal
method to avoid pregnancy. The symptom-thermal method uses a daily temperature
readings, cervical discharge, and optional cervix checks. The results showed 99.4%
effectiveness when used “perfectly” (no unprotected sex during the fertile
window) and showed 98.2% effectiveness when used “imperfectly” (some sexual
relations took place during the fertile period.)
Some Background Information
Warning, biology primer, please skip this if you already know basic
human sexual biology: Men are, generally speaking, always fertile from
the time they hit puberty, although fertility does decline with age. Women
however, are infertile most of the time, with a limited window during which
conception takes place. Obviously, for conception to take place, the egg (ovum)
needs to be released from the ovary (ovulation), and usually this only happens
once a cycle. The egg usually only lives for about 12 hours, and then dies if
it is not fertilized. So technically speaking, the fertility window is a matter
of hours, not days. However, sperm can live for days in the woman’s
reproductive tract! Say sexual intercourse occurs two days before ovulation,
the sperm is actually nourished and aided by the woman’s mucus in this time to
survive and reach the egg. Thus although 48 hours passed between intercourse and
ovulation, a woman may well become pregnant. In fact the most fertile time in a
woman’s cycle is the few days preceding ovulation,
and the chance of pregnancy rapidly declines once ovulation occurs. Thus it is
not simply enough to find out when a woman ovulations, but to plan for, or
avoid, pregnancy, a couple should ideally be able to forecast and predict about
when ovulation will occur. However, the old-school biology textbook notion of a
28 day cycle with ovulation on day 14, is far from the reality of most women.
Thus simply counting days after the commencement of a new cycle is ineffective
at planning and avoiding pregnancies. (This is the old rhythm method that is
rightfully discredited.) /biology primer
The symptom-thermal
method (STM) is based on two primary signs of fertility in a woman: basal
body temperature and mucus discharge. For most women there is a spike in
temperature on the day of ovulation, and the body temperature will remain
raised until the end of the cycle. There will also be an increase in mucus in
the days approaching ovulation, typically with the maximum discharge associated
with the day of ovulation. (Of course this is ascertained only after the mucus
has decreased again.) The reality of this method is slightly more complicated,
and can involve also cervical checks and other changes a woman may notice.
Please do not use this summary an effective way to learn
STM! In fact one of the keys to success in this study, the authors claimed, was
the excellent quality of the teachers and distributed materials that were used
in training women and couples in STM. Usually women and couples are taught this
method together in a series of classes with an instructor. In the case of this
research the instructors were the only ones to know the identity of the
participants of the study, and had to form a relationship of trust with
participants in order to facilitate honesty and consistency in report back data
of a very personal nature, including details of sexual intimacy.
Key Points & Highlights
I am going to use this section to point out what was most
interesting or relevant to me. I will not be summarizing the full methods of
the research. If you want to dig that deep, I encourage you to refer to the
original article using the above link.
First of all, when I read this article I was fairly new to
NFP and what was meant by the symptom-thermal method (STM). What constitutes
STM can vary by region and teacher as well. The method used in this study is
nicely summed up by the following graphic:
I am finding that the main way different NFP methods differ,
is in how one identifies the “fertile” time. The median length of the fertile
time by the above calculations was 13 days a cycle. With all women in the study
having an average cycle length between 22 and 35 days, 13 days may seem like a
long time to abstinent. This is a legitimate criticism of the method. In fact,
as I will demonstrate in my discussion of another paper, 13 fertile days is
very conservative window. By that I mean that the probability of getting
pregnant outside that window is in fact extremely low (0.4%), and some couples
may choose to engage in some intelligent risk-taking by having intercourse on
the “edges” of this fertile window.
In fact that is precisely what some couples in this study
did. Those couples engaging in
unprotected sex during the “fertile” time had pregnancy rates of around 7.5%.
One could make the point that this is a nearly 19 fold increase, however one
would expect the pregnancy rate to in fact be much higher if couples are
engaging in sexual intercourse when a woman is “fertile.” 7.5% is shockingly
low, and the authors of the paper attribute it to the fact that couples,
although failing to adhere to the advice of abstaining from unprotected sex
during the fertile window, are still using their knowledge of fertility
awareness to avoid the few most fertile days of a woman’s cycle.
Interestingly, there was no significant difference in unintended
pregnancies in those couples choosing to use barrier methods of contraception
during the “fertile” window and those choosing abstinence.
Conclusions and
Contentions
The high success rate of avoiding unintended pregnancies is
remarkable. The pregnancy rate was 0.4 (per 100 women) for those adhering to
the guidelines, and 1.8 (per 100 women) overall, including those using the
method imperfectly over the course of a 13 cycle (approximately one year)
period.
How does this compare to other forms of birth control? Well,
I did what most teenage girls across America would do (although I am no longer
a teenager) and went to PlannedParenthood.org for some reliable information on
birth control. When I clicked a link labeled “Effectiveness of birth control” I
was sent to the following graphic:
Oh no! According to Planned Parenthood, it looks like “Fertility-Awareness
Based Methods” like STM are only 75% effect at birth control! That is no good!
However, when you click the link for “Fertility-Awareness Based Methods” it
lists out a variety of methods, including STM, which it does state as having a
less than 1% (0.4%) failure rate. So why do they lump it at the bottom with
spermicide? Maybe because they include it with the “Calendar” method which is
simply based on counting days, and other less efficient methods. Planned
Parenthood is also quick to point out that “If you have unprotected sex on a
day that you may be fertile, emergency contraception is a good option.” I’ll
try to bite my tongue here, but let me just say that Planned Parenthood, in
spite of its non-profit status, is a money-making institution, and so there is
perhaps a vested interest in listing FAB methods at the bottom of the
birth-control totem pole.
Planned Parenthood states that if you always use a condom, it will result in an average of 2 pregnancies
per 100 women (proper use), and if not always used properly and consistently,
will result in 18 pregnancies per 100 women. Compare those stats to the 0.4%
and 1.8% of STM.
What about the pill? Again, Planned Parenthood states that 1
out of 100 women who always take the
pill every day for an entire year, will become pregnant, and for women who don’t
always take the pill everyday as they are supposed to, the number is 9 out of
100. Again, STM wins.
And the best part is, STM is of virtually no cost to the
woman. There is an upfront investment in taking the time to learn the material,
and ideally attend a few classes with a trained professional. It does not
suppress a woman’s fertility, as synthetic hormones do, and has no side effects,
so the very month a woman and her partner change their mind about their desires
to conceive, they can use the same knowledge that helped them to avoid
pregnancy, to now achieve it. There are no side-effects, and there is nothing
you have to buy and keep handy in order to have sex. (Actually, it does require
investing in a thermometer, but these are relatively inexpensive, less than the
cost of condoms over a year! Plus you can use the thermometer when you are
feeling sick and wondering if you have fever!)
What about the fact that
you have a possibly long (13 day median) period of time in which you must
abstain from (at least unprotected) intercourse? This is a valid point, and one
I am still struggling with. It should be noted that the drop out rate from dissatisfaction
was 9.2 per 100 women per 13 cycles (year). This rate is low, and not all women
left for dissatisfaction with the method. Some left because of a “desire to
achieve a pregnancy (8%); separation from partner (2%); medical reasons (4%) and
most frequently (22%) because they wished to discontinue participating in the
study, although they wished to continue to use the STM.” One critique I have is
that the above percentages only add up to 36% and I would like to see a data
table of the other reasons women gave for exiting the study.
I am still wondering if
the 13 day median of a fertility is too conservative. No woman is fertile for 13 days, it is
impossible! The egg only lives for 12 hours, and sperm can realistically live
at longest for 5 days in a woman, and this is a very small percentage that can
live that long. So why the 13 day window? Because of the nature of forecasting
a woman’s day of ovulation. There is some natural variability in cycle length,
and outside factors and also impact a woman’s cycle, such as illness. So the
large window is to minimize the risk of pregnancy due to this variability.
However, my guess is, and I haven’t been tracking my own signs long enough to
know, that for some women they can learn their own biomarkers well enough, and
may have stable enough cycles, to reasonably reduce that window further. The
researchers had to define a wide window of fertility to accommodate the
diversity of cycle types, and variability for even one woman. But my feeling is
that not all women need to be as conservative, and after learning the method
and their own bodies, may be able to make some well-informed calculated risks,
narrowing the abstinence/fertility window. I am certainly not recommending this
and don’t mean to undermine the sound counseling of trained professional NFP
teachers. These are simply my own conjectures.
The next paper I comment
on will discuss be a large demographic study on the daily fertility rates of
women to examine this question of the fertility window more deeply.
Natural Family Planning - Introduction
I have a new hobby, and it is in direct relation to the fact
that I will be getting married in about one month. I find myself reading a lot
of articles on fertility awareness and Natural Family Planning (NFP.)
I have been aware of NFP for some time, but embarrassingly for someone who has
a background in biology, I was largely unaware of all the hormonal changes in a
woman’s body that occurs over the course of menstrual cycle that underpins the
observable biological markers on which NFP is based. I was also oblivious to the
various NFP models utilized, their effectiveness rates, etc. Now that I am
getting married, and have a strong motivation to monitor my own fertility, I
find myself scrutinizing NFP and wanting to know, does it really work? Can you
achieve your ideal family size through fertility awareness methods? Or will I
unwittingly conceive a honeymoon baby and find myself either pregnant or
nursing for the next decade of my life? Before I put the fate of our marriage
and family to the test, I am doing what any good scientist does first; study the
literature.
I am pulling together a series of peer-reviewed journal
articles that have helped me to answer the above questions. Reading these
articles has not only alleviated some of my fears of NFP, but I feel reading
them is empowering me through knowledge about my own body, fertility, and giving
me the ability to make decisions in my personal sexual life with my
(soon-to-be) spouse, that will allow us to time the conception of our children
in a responsible manner.
I will attempt to share my thoughts on this subject matter
in the coming days, posting one article a day on this blog. I hope you find my
commentary helpful, but more importantly, I hope others turn to the literature
themselves and do their own research. It is an under-researched area of
biology, and NFP is poorly known method of family planning. I hope that in some
small way I bring others with scientific curiosity to turn to the literature
and likewise share the fruits of their efforts.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
The pope is a priest, not a god
As Mark Shea and a dude at RCR point out.
The point of our faith is not the Pope. It is Jesus Christ. That is what the Pope himself keeps saying, to the confusion of uncomprehending progressives and reactionaries, who think the faith is about something else–in this case, the pope.
Labels: catholic
Happy blogversery and 5000th post to me
So it's been a little over ten years since I started blogging on this silly blog. I've linked to hundreds of good articles, made thousands of bad arguments, lost track of my cobloggers (when's the last time Walder posted something anyway?), and in general had a pretty good time talking to no one in particular. I've also split off my technological interests into a sister blog, and will soon do the same with my new strength training interests.
This is also my 5000th post, inclusive of cobloggers. Sweet. I used to post more than once a day, so I guess post frequency is way down, and realistically I won't do much about that. I'm not so angry anymore. Most days I'm even happy for at least a quarter of the time. Amazing stuff. Let me leave you with this YouTube video about living a full life, as found on FYHL. Also, probably the first video I've embedded on the blog. Somehow appropriate for this post of milestones.
This is also my 5000th post, inclusive of cobloggers. Sweet. I used to post more than once a day, so I guess post frequency is way down, and realistically I won't do much about that. I'm not so angry anymore. Most days I'm even happy for at least a quarter of the time. Amazing stuff. Let me leave you with this YouTube video about living a full life, as found on FYHL. Also, probably the first video I've embedded on the blog. Somehow appropriate for this post of milestones.
Labels: a full life, metablogging, personal
Different strokes for different folks
A mother who loves her teenage son as if he were still in kindergarten has a disordered love, because her love does not sufficiently appreciate the reality of the teenager and seeks union in ways that are fitting only for a younger child. Since the law of love is the ultimate foundation of ethics, failures to love in ways that recognize the reality of the beloved, the reality of the lover, or the reality of the relationship are missing the mark morally.And also, of course, how it relates to erotic love.
Monday, November 04, 2013
Being pro-life - is it about being risk-accepting?
Maybe!
I think that we are pathologically terrified of risk and I think that we have this enslavement to our own ideas of respectability, our own ideas of our life plan, our commitments, our existing duties such that something as radically changing as a new life doesn’t fit in with those existing duties. To accept that life would be the irresponsible choice, and that’s the framework from which a lot of people are operating. They see themselves as accepting consequences, as responsible. They have a semblance of a moral framework and we can’t ignore that just because it’s completely the opposite of our own.Another thing I've been trying to put my finger on. I've noticed that some people I know who are rather secular are so terrified of of the world, of anything being out of their control. It colors how they approach everything else, and I think the stress can't be good.
Labels: prolife
