My Hormones Made Me Do It!

Hormones make us do wild, emotional things - just ask any teacher of middle school students! I remember being on recess duty when there was an especially harsh "throw water bottles at each others' junk" game

going on. Why middle school age boys like to whip hard objects at each others penises and scrotum (is a bunch of scrotum called scroti?) alludes me and perhaps has been a curious question since the beginning of time.The girls took sides regarding which boy should be defended, with one girl actually scratching the " bad boy" in the head. Often times my role at that school was to sit the small class down and unpack the heightened hysteria.

Another day a recess fight between two boys landed them in the main classroom with the math teacher. She was an incredible woman and did a wonderful job following their completely sporadic conversation and moods. As I joined the group, the boys were just beginning to find common ground between them...sobbing about all their fears and difficulties in life. These boys went from anger and defensiveness, to bonding over how hard life was as a twelve year old all in the span of twenty minutes.

Dear friends, we all get slammed by hormones. This is a fact of being a human. When we are young we begin cycling at about eight years old. Our hormones begin to surge in during periods of time letting us get used to the natural chemicals that will keep us hostage for the next forty years or so of our lives!

When we get to eleven and twelve years old those hormones start really pushing our bodies into new shapes, changes in voice pitch, pimples, and more intense sexual reactions to stimulation. There also is natural practicing of the equipment, shall we say, and this can cause great distress to boys in the locker room when their penises just decide to rise to erection when they are all changing. Those dang hormones making us do all this stuff!!

We get loaded up with natural hormones, and then things fly...sometimes literally. I remember one guy friend was a little shell shocked with he moved in with his girlfriend. "I didn't know that P.M.S. stood for Pack My Suitcase!" Oh what a ride it all is.

Women definitely can be taken over by hormones during much of their lives. We start cycling at age eight, get the full blown monthly slam, pregnancies can thrown in a huge curve ball, and then peri - menopause is just a bizarre surreal existence. My second hot flash of peri-menopause occurred in Deb's Natural Gourmet market in Concord, Ma. The fire department had to be called in and I am not kidding. It was a 911 alert and I did not make the call because I was passing out after being thrust into the dairy cooler by a friend I hadn't seen in five years. Oh hormones, you make my heart sing...you make everything groovy...wild thing....

Alas, it is not only women who go through hormonal insanity, much to the chagrin of you men out there who don't listen to the very real annoying things that you do and discount it all when we are foaming at the mouth while shoving sweet, then salty, then sweet, then chocolate, then sweet, then salty, in to our mouths. Men actually have cycles as well. When men begin to have a decrease in testosterone it can be very difficult. Testosterone begins to decline for men in their 30s. If there is low testosterone then men can feel very tired, depressed, anxious, weak, and lose their sex drive. This can lead to erectile dysfunction. Testosterone is also very important for overall body health.

And while we have heard about women affected by natural hormones going off the edge, men injecting hormones think they are succeeding having an edge, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Drugs/middle-age-men-turn-testosterone-edge-health-risks/story?id=17203276

Hormones are natural in the human body and they have their own ebb and flow which both men and women need to learn to accept in themselves and in each other. At some points in our lives, both men and women can have a spike in hormone levels, a significant change in hormone balance, or a decline in hormone levels. Both genders react to the hormone amounts being secreted, and both genders are greatly impacted emotionally and physically by their hormone levels. When our hormones are doing their wild things, we all can be uncomfortable. I will never forget the look on my ex husband's face when he met me in the grocery check out line with a package of bacon I had asked him to run and get. I was about five months pregnant with our first daughter and was craving a good bit of bacon. When I turned the package over to look at the 'bacon window' I saw a display of white fat. I began to both sob and yell at him in line. "This is a terrible package of bacon! Can't you see all the fat? Where is the bacon? Where is the bacon here?!" He looked worse than a deer in the headlights!

By the second pregnancy his reaction was less of shock and panic and more direct. I had taken an entire half gallon of vanilla ice cream and covered it in peanut butter and then poured chocolate syrup all over it. I snuggled my eight month pregnant body into the bed and dug in with a huge spoon. It looked delicious. Then I spooned it into my mouth. Tears began to drip out of the corner of my eyes. "This is not as good as I thought it would be..." I can still feel the disappointment and wave of despair related to that discovery twenty seven years ago!!

My ex husband didn't even look up from his book. "Next time maybe you shouldn't use all the ice cream for a craving. Try out a little bit first."

 But of course I had no choice -  my hormones made me do it!