Chiropractic Care…well, sort of

Okay, so I broke down and went to a Chiropractor. Now I’ve been to Chiropractors before. In fact, I believe they do good work and can heal certain muscular, joint and alignment issues. But after my husband’s constant barrage of scientific studies citing all kinds of devastating chiropractic mishaps, I’d pretty much sworn off them entirely.

Until last week, when my writing partner practically insisted I go see his Chiropractor or else stop bitching about my constant back pain. I succumbed to the not so subtle peer pressure and made the appointment.

The Doctor had asked me to bring my MRI films, X-rays of my back, and any doctors’ records I might have about my herniated disc (L5 S1 in case you were wondering.) This sent me into a slight panic since I am, without doubt, the least organized woman on the planet. I spent the next two days dismantling my house in search of those damn films and records.

Miraculously, I found a thick, overstuffed manilla folder labeled “Healthcare – Debra” crammed into my disorderly file cabinet. A cursory perusal of the folder showed various films, radiology reports, and several detailed drawings of recommended physical therapy exercises. I proudly tucked the folder into my tote and headed out apprehensively to meet the bone-cracking doctor.

After a lengthy interview, during which Doctor John, as he’s called, took a lengthy history from me and explained why chiropractic care could help me enormously, he asked to see the films. I happily complied and turned over the entire packet.

He paged through the documents carefully, offering a few compulsory, “mmm hmms,” and nodding thoughtfully. Then he pulled out the stack of films and began to inspect them one by one. I admit that his befuddled look was slightly alarming to me. I worried that perhaps he’d discovered something even more serious as he examined the magnetic images of my spine. Too fearful to ask, I simply sat, perched on the edge of my chair, awaiting his assessment.

He held up the final film, looked at me directly and said with a delivery as deadpan as Bob Newhart’s, “Thank you for bringing me your mammogram pictures. But I don’t think they’re going to be terribly helpful in relieving your back pain.”

I was mortified. OMG, how did I do that? What an idiot! He offered a few comic, yet tasteful comments about how we women always seem to work our mammary glands into any situation. But even his lighthearted, affable tone couldn’t minimize my embarrassment. After a while, I did regain my composure and we moved through the exam and treatment uneventfully.

I like this Doctor. I do. And I’m going back. Despite the fact that I’m certain to be the butt of humor at his next Chiropractic convention, and will forevermore be shorthanded in the office as the “breast lady.” I suppose it could be worse. I could have brought him a colonoscopy report.

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Turkey sex

They're real and they're spectacular!

I heard this interview on NPR the other day with Stephen Dubner, the author of Freakonomics, and I just can’t get it out of my mind. He asked Kai Ryssdal what percentage of the 40 million Thanksgiving turkeys Americans will eat this year are products of artificial insemination. Ryssdal made a few guesses and then Dubner amazed him with the answer; 100%.

Although I didn’t quite understand why, I found that factoid moderately disturbing. Then, Dubner went on to explain why our friendly fowl aren’t doing it anymore these day. This put me over the edge.

As is usually the case with sex, it’s all about appetite. Only in this case, it’s more about human appetite than turkey hunger. You see, Americans have an overwhelming preference for breast meat. (I’ll leave you to unravel the psychology behind that.) So to meet the demand for that most sumptuous body part, the turkey industry turned their backs on traditional turkeys in favor of breeding the broad-breasted white turkey which has been selectively bred to have the largest breasts possible.

The caveat to messing with mother nature, however, is that sometimes there are serious repercussions. According to this chick from the USDA, the turkey breasts are now so large that they actually get in the way and make old-fashioned turkey sex impossible.

Isn’t that…ironic…and…weird? So to satisfy our appetites for breast meat, we’ve done away with turkey coitus. Somehow that just doesn’t seem right to me.

I was explaining this to my dancer friend the other night and she said it sounded a lot like what happened in her burlesque dance class this week. For anyone who doesn’t know, Burlesque is a form of dance designed to allure and tease men sexually. She usually draws a big crowd on Wednesday nights. But this week a couple of the regulars were missing. When she inquired as to their whereabouts, she learned that one of the women couldn’t dance for a few weeks due to breast enhancement surgery. The other was out because she had had to schedule her quarterly Botox treatment that day. (Apparently, you cannot dance the same day you inject.)

At first I didn’t make the connection. But after a moment, I realized how frightfully similar these human behaviors were to our abstinent avians. The truth is, we spend so much time trying to force our bodies to look sexually appealing that we skip the act that might really lead us to sexual fulfillment. The women in the dance class spent time, energy and wads of cash to look alluring in order to attract romantic (or sexual) partners.

The turkeys were being designed with ever-increasing sexual organs, only to be unable to actually follow through with the act. The only difference I can see here is that, unlike the turkeys, the women actually chose their bodily disfigurement. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not slamming anyone for choosing cosmetic surgery. I’m just pointing out that there’s often a price to pay for messing with what nature gave us.

So think twice before ingesting that hormone bloated turkey breast this Thanksgiving. Maybe a good ol’ drumstick will do the trick instead.

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…I’m Only the Messenger!

In April’s edition of “The Atlantic Monthly,” Hanna Rosin raises the question of whether breastfeeding is really the elixir it’s been made out to be, or merely an instrument of torture to suppress women and start them down the road to domestic inequity.

Breastfeeding, she argues, sets up an unequal dynamic in a marriage. And while I realize that this is an unpopular belief, I tend to agree with her. Rosin explains throughout the piece that most of us grew up with the idea of co-parenting being a reasonable, attainable goal. However, the domestic responsibilities, she suggests, begin to shift (incrementally and unconsciously) with the introduction of breastfeeding. According to Rosin’s hypothesis, once a woman becomes the sole parent responsible for her baby’s sustenance, a host of other domestic duties shift onto her side of the ledger. “She alone fed the child,” Rosin’s argument goes, “So she naturally knows better how to comfort the child, so she is the better judge to pick a school for the child and the better nurse when the child is sick, and so on.”

In addition to the disparity in domestic responsibilities, Rosin offers incontrovertible evidence to contradict the commonly held belief that breastfeeding is better than bottle feeding for the health and well-being of the baby. The truth, she concludes, after reviewing hundreds of studies and meta-analysis (reviews of existing studies), is that there is no conclusive benefit to breastfeeding. She sites numerous studies, including a well known 2005 paper in which statisticians compared data on 523 sibling pairs who were fed differently. The results looked at diabetes, asthma, allergies, childhood obesity, mother-child bonding and IQ and found no statistically significant differences. The researchers, (who in my opinion were afraid to face the wrath of breastfeeding advocates), gently concluded, “The long-term effects of breastfeeding have been overstated.”

The other issue into which Rosin insightfully delves, is the premise that breastfeeding passes necessary disease-fighting antibodies from mother to baby. “Even many doctors,” she affirms, “believe that breast milk is full of maternal antibodies that get absorbed into the baby’s bloodstream.” While this is true for most mammals, Rosen asserts that human babies are born with antibodies already in place from the placenta. Breast milk antibodies are not transferred into the baby’s bloodstream at all, but rather pass through to the gastrointestinal tract. The overall benefit, she claims, amounts to one less episode of diarrhea for breastfed babies.

Rosen elucidates that the flaws of most breastfeeding studies is that they fail to account for the multitude of socioeconomic, cultural, and intellectual variables that go along with a woman’s decision to breastfeed. “It is impossible,” writes Rosin, “to separate a mother’s decision to breastfeed – and everything that goes along with it – from the breastfeeding itself.”

Overall, Rosin, who continues to part-time breastfeed her third child, insists that the cultural bias towards breastfeeding that paints the practice as some kind of magic vaccine, is not only misleading, but also serves to entrap women and psychologically damage them by making them feel guilty, anxious and selfish if they can’t, or simply don’t want to, breastfeed.

As a loving mother who was unable to breastfeed her first child, and chose not to even try for her second, I think Rosin’s arguments are astute, thoughtful and right on. I’m not suggesting that it’s wrong to breastfeed or that it isn’t the right choice for many people. But I agree with Rosin that it’s not a choice without costs. “It is a serious time commitment that pretty much guarantees that you will not work in any meaningful way,” concludes Rosin. “When people say that breastfeeding is ‘free,’ I want to hit them with a two-by-four. It’s only free if a woman’s time is worth nothing.”