Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You're Taking, The Sleep You're Missing, The Sex You're Not Having, and What's Really Making You Crazy
Julie Holland
Language: English
Pages: 387
ISBN: 2:00341001
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A groundbreaking guide for women of all ages that shows women’s inherent moodiness is a strength, not a weakness
As women, we learn from an early age that our moods are a problem. Bitches are moody. To succeed in life, we are told, we must have it all under control. We have to tamp down our inherent shifts in favor of a more static way of being. But our bodies are wiser than we imagine. Moods are not an annoyance to be stuffed away. They are a finely-tuned feedback system that, if heeded, can tell us how best to manage our lives. Our changing moods let us know when our bodies are primed to tackle different challenges and when we should be alert to developing problems. They help us select the right tool for each of our many jobs. If we deny our emotionality, we deny the breadth of our talents. With the right care of our inherently dynamic bodies, we can master our moods to avail ourselves of this great natural strength.
Yet millions of American women are medicating away their emotions because our culture says that moodiness is a problem to be fixed. One in four of us takes a psychiatric drug. If you add sleeping pills to the mix, the statistics become considerably higher. Over-prescribed medications can have devastating consequences for women in many areas of our lives: sex, relationships, sleep, eating, focus, balance, and aging. And even if we don’t pop a pill, women everywhere are numbing their emotions with food, alcohol, and a host of addictive behaviors that deny the wisdom of our bodies and keep us from addressing the real issues that we face.
Dr. Julie Holland knows there is a better way. She’s been sharing her frank and funny wisdom with her patients for years, and in Moody Bitches Dr. Holland offers readers a guide to our bodies and our moodiness that includes insider information about the pros and cons of the drugs we’re being offered, the direct link between food and mood, an honest discussion about sex, practical exercise and sleep strategies, as well as some surprising and highly effective natural therapies that can help us press the reset button on our own bodies and minds.
In the tradition of Our Bodies, Our Selves, this groundbreaking guide for women of all ages will forge a much needed new path in women’s health—and offer women invaluable information on how to live better, and be more balanced, at every stage of life.
about MDMA is that it also triggers oxytocin release, creating feelings of closeness and connection. Since the 1980s, this drug has been growing in popularity. Emergency room visits reporting Ecstasy use increased from roughly 4,500 to 10,000 between 2005 and 2011. (I do feel compelled to offer, for comparison, the emergency room visits related to misuse of prescription medications, which rose from 636,472 to 1,345,645 between 2004 and 2010.) I believe the rising popularity of this drug reflects
Endocannabinoids?” Nature 396 (1998): 636–37; Florence Williams, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012). 102 cannabinoid receptors: Ester Fride, “The Endocannabinoid-CB1 Receptor System in Pre- and Postnatal Life,” European Journal of Pharmacology 500, no. 1 (2004): 289–97. 102 given to newborn mice: Ester Fride et al., “Critical Role of the Endogenous Cannabinoid System in Mouse Pup Suckling and Growth,” European Journal of Pharmacology 419, no. 2
Evanthia Diamanti-Kandarakis et al., “Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: An Endocrine Society Scientific Statement,” Endocrine Reviews 30, no. 4 (2009): 293–42. 278 decreased sperm quality: Elisabeth Carlsen et al., “Evidence for Decreasing Quality of Semen During Past 50 Years,” British Medical Journal 305, no. 6854 (1992): 609. 278 abnormal testes development: N. E. Skakkebaek et al., “Association Between Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome (TDS) and Testicular Neoplasia: Evidence from 20 Adult
qualitatively different, especially in the emotional realm. The question is: are they physiologically different? Early results suggest they are. During orgasm, fresh oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood floods the brain. Leading up to orgasm, a series of brain blood flow changes occur. First is activation of the somatosensory cortex, the part of the brain that maps out bodily sensations. Next seen is decreased blood flow to the frontal cortex. You want less frontal flow because you need your foot off
is a downside. These same attributes may also make us more inclined to suffer from depression and anxiety. In childhood, no difference exists in the prevalence of depressive disorders between girls and boys. In adulthood, women are twice as likely as men to experience depression and two to four times more likely to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder like panic attacks or generalized anxiety. The increased risk begins early in adolescence as puberty strikes. It ends by age sixty, when hormonal