kristindoggirl : testosterone

a whole new sway

atomic sagebrush — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:46:00 GMT

Hi! Personal update - weight 125 pH 4.5. I managed to take off another pound, but just got my 3^rd negative pregnancy test in a row, we’ve been trying for three months now and nothing, so it‘s hard to feel encouraged. I am going to have to read the writing on the wall here and turn to either vitex or a visit to the doctor’s office for medication to restore my cycles…I hadn’t wanted to do either of these things because I felt it would destroy the test of the Trivers Willard hypothesis, but I simply have to get pregnant as soon as possible due to my age. That having been said, I do believe that if I was not breastfeeding while doing the weight loss, I would be pregnant right now, and I remain convinced that if you are not breastfeeding, weight loss and vegetarian, carb based diet, is the best way to sway pink.

Ok, so now we know that there is real science behind swaying. We may not know exactly how or why it all works, but it looks very likely that it is a real possibility that we can sway our odds towards having a boy or a girl. So let’s turn our eye towards the practicalities of swaying, and envision our sway taking this information into account. (I am including both boy and girl sways in this post. I really recommend you read both, not only to see what not to do, but also to see how this meshes with your previous diet and lifestyle, and the gender outcome of your children. Please don‘t hesitate to let me know if something I have advised was not true for you.)

TTC GIRL

Before we begin, I did want to touch upon one area where there seems to be a bit of misunderstanding. A vegetarian diet does not, in any way, guarantee you a daughter or prevent you from having a son. The Trivers Willard hypothesis, and all the theories based upon it, are based on the idea that moms in the best physical condition and with the most ample resources will have more sons, and vice versa. Since a balanced vegetarian diet with a lot of quality protein (particularly nuts, eggs, and beans) tends to be very healthy, it is totally possible to have all sons on a vegetarian diet. After all, if there was a single dietary factor that always produced children of only one gender, the human race would have died out long ago. Our bodies are just more complicated than that.

After doing a lot of reading, it seems to me that there are actually two different ttc girl diets for different body chemistry. Remember, I am not any kind of expert, and this is in no way a guarantee. This is just what seems to make the most sense to me based on what I have read about the human body and the science being done. If the traditional ttc girl sway works for you, a lot of people have gotten good results with it, and as my grandma used to say, "don't mess with success!" But if it failed for you before, if you have struggled with filling out the paperwork, sticking to the very limited diet, if the supplements are making you sick, if you aren't getting pregnant, or your husband is not willing to do any kind of swaying, then you may be looking to try something new.

Diet 1 - “The Crash and Burn TTC Girl Diet” There is an old wives' tale that says, “Eat sweets to conceive girls”. And it turns out there may be something to this - Dr. Shettles and his colleagues observed that glucose is definitely present in CM and it rises in most people as ovulation approaches…possibly another reason why timing and a Trivers-Willard based ttc diet might go hand in hand. But wait - doesn't a high glucose environment sway blue? Then how could eating sweets lead to more girl babies?

Remember, researchers lowered blood sugar in rats by feeding them nothing but sugar. This is because when you eat a lot of sweets and simple carbs that elevate your blood glucose levels, your body releases insulin and your blood sugar drops.

If you believe you have a good insulin response and are not insulin resistant, the best way to go might be to skip breakfast, and eat a carb-based, low protein, low fat vegetarian diet of no more than 2,000 calories per day, where the majority of calories come in the form of quicker burning, higher GI (glycemic index) carbs. Your blood sugar will spike after you eat, but then after your body releases a big burst of insulin, your blood sugar level will drop much lower than it was before. After your blood sugar drops, you should wait to eat again until you are good and hungry, so your blood sugar is low for as many hours out of the day as possible.

By quicker burning carbs, I mean mostly white carbs such as rice, pasta, white bread, and enough fruits and vegetables to hold it all together - don‘t load up too much on fruits and vegetables, as they have a wide array of nutrients and you are trying to follow a nutrient-poor diet. You should eat carbs and fruits/vegies alone if possible - for example, rather than eating a chicken breast, rice, and a salad, just eat the rice and salad. Any time you eat carbohydrates with protein/fat, it slows down your insulin response. However, be sure to eat a small amount of healthy fats on a daily basis (30 grams of fat is a good target), up your fat intake during the 2ww, and if you’re breastfeeding, you should definitely eat a reasonable amount of fat every day (minimum 70 grams). The vast majority of fats you consume should be of plant origin rather than animal. And you can indulge in occasional sweets, as long as they have little protein (no Snickers bars).

If you do choose to eat dairy or vegetable based proteins, you should try to eat them alone whenever you can, without a side dish of carbs to elevate your blood sugar. Your blood sugar will stay higher longer after you eat proteins, but it will not elevate as high as if you ate carbs and protein together.

The drawbacks to this diet are many. First of all, it’s unhealthy to eat like this for very long. Your body needs a certain amount of protein (white carbs have very little protein), good fats, and fiber. Having a lot of insulin floating around your system is not good for you. The lack of protein and excess insulin may even reduce your fertility. It is also tough to stick to, because once your blood sugar crashes, you will get very hungry, suffer from cravings, and possibly have headaches and jitters. It is also very easy to go over 2000 calories a day if you are not very careful.

If you are anything less than 100% committed, it is really tough to follow this diet. Also, if you are insulin resistant, if you have had gestational diabetes, or have a family history of diabetes, following this diet is a terrible idea…aside from the health aspects, if your body is not sensitive to insulin, your blood sugar will stay high and keep you in the higher-glucose boy zone.

That having been said, I do think that this diet coupled with weight loss, is the best way to sway pink, especially if you are very fertile, don’t have a lot of weight to lose, and trying for a short term sway of only a couple of months. It will totally acidify you, it is lacking in nutrients, and the lack of protein will lower your testosterone. Even though your blood sugar will be on the high side after you eat, it will drop quickly and the majority of the hours out of the day, your blood sugar levels will be low. And it will do all these things without your having to lose a lot of weight to do so - if you only have 5-10 extra pounds to spare, it is better to get as acid as possible as quickly as possible for TTC a girl.

If you have a lot of weight to lose, it might be advisable to lose 90% of your weight on a healthier diet, and then switch to this diet in the month or two before you begin ttc. That way, you’re still losing weight but your body will not be suffering as much.

Diet 2 - “The Slow Burn TTC Girl Diet” If you have are breastfeeding, have health issues such as insulin resistance, suffer from diminished fertility, if you know you don’t respond well to being hungry between meals, or if you have a significant amount of weight to lose before you TTC, then slow and steady is the better way to go. You are still aiming for a vegetarian, low protein, low fat diet of 2000 calories or less per day. Skipping breakfast is at your discretion, if you really find that you can’t function without eating, it won’t ruin your sway totally to eat a little something, but if you can go without it, I think skipping breakfast is best for pink.

In this version of the diet, you are still focusing on carbs and vegetables, but you should seek out whole grains and vegetables that are lower on the glycemic index. Your meals should be somewhat more balanced and if you would like, you can eat reasonable amounts of dairy and plant-based sources of protein with your carbs - you want your blood sugar to stay very even. It will never drop as low as it would if you ate just the refined carbs, but at the same time, it will never rise as high, either.

You should stay far away from any kinds of sugar and sweets, even fruits should be avoided. Since you will not be releasing as much insulin, if your blood sugar rises, it will stay moderately high for longer periods of time.

This is actually a pretty healthy diet and because of this, it has the potential to sway for blue. But for anyone who has a lot of weight to lose, you just can’t be on the Crash and Burn diet for as long as it will take you to lose the weight, because it’s not healthy. Luckily, it seems likely that losing a larger amount of weight will acidify you and lower your testosterone so much that it will make up for the difference. It actually might help improve fertility for some people, especially if you eat full fat dairy 3 times a day. And for anyone who is living with chronic health conditions or is breastfeeding, this diet is a much better choice for you.

For both diets - On both versions of the diet, you should try to eat less protein than you usually do. Americans eat too much protein as it is. Nuts and eggs especially are to be avoided like the plague, they are so good at raising testosterone levels that bodybuilders eat them. I do believe that eating dairy is a good idea, for the fertility benefits and because that is what the traditional TTC girl diet encourages, and there could very well be something to that. Beans have both carbs and protein, so eat them sparingly.

The jury is still out on the safety of eating large amounts of soy during pregnancy. Personally, I do eat soy occasionally because I like it, but I don’t think anyone should be eating it three meals a day or taking soy isoflavones, especially when they’re ttc a baby of either gender. Even though soy can lower testosterone levels, it just isn’t worth the risk at this point, until more research has been done.

A great thing to take from the traditional TTC girl diet is avoiding salt. The Oxford study found that avoiding salt did tend to sway pink, and since we don’t know what mechanisms exactly are affecting our sway, it seems wise to avoid salt. We’re pushing our bodies enough as it is, and salt is unhealthy, so best to avoid it as much as we can.

In terms of supplements, I truly think that since your body will very likely become quite acid from the diet alone, that taking Vitamin C and cranberry is not necessary. You will be adding additional nutrients to your system, and remember, fewer nutrients = more girls. And it is possible to be too acid to conceive.

Crystal Light may be a welcome addition to either diet when you’re losing weight, but then again, it also might acidify you too much. I think the best bet is to keep a close eye on your pH, and if it seems to fall very low just from dieting alone, then there’s no reason to drink the Crystal Light…personally, I don’t think it’s the greatest idea in the world to drink a bunch of fake sugar when you’re trying to conceive.

I think it’s probably wise to do the cal-mag tablets since the mineral balancing might have some effect, and of course you should continue to take your prenatal vitamin and I would advise taking a bit extra folic acid and Vitamin D as well, since your diet will be on the unbalanced side. I also am a fan of the Enfamil Lipil DHA vitamins…your unborn baby will need DHA for brain development, and if you are breastfeeding, you should definitely be taking in plenty of DHA. The DHA comes from a plant source, so even though it‘s an added nutrient, it may not affect your sway. You may also want to take the acidophilus, because this diet is very yeast friendly…though yeast can sway pink in some people, it tends to wreak havoc with your pH, so it’s probably best to give your body some friendly microbes. I have also heard good things about the herb vitex for ttc a girl.

Caffeine intake is at your discretion. I know tons of women with all girls who are total caffeine junkies, and the Oxford study found no correlation between caffeine and babies of either gender. In fact, drinking caffeine on an empty stomach actually causes your blood sugar to spike and then drop, so it might be helpful especially in the Crash and Burn diet. I start my day with tea.

If you choose to exercise, stick with straight cardio. Exercising a lot (1-2 hours a day) coupled with weight loss is great, but it can affect your fertility, so don’t overdo it to the point where your menstrual cycle is affected. Unless you are able to exercise and lose weight at the same time, it may be better not to exercise at all, especially if you are big into exercise. A woman who is in very good shape to begin with will really have to exercise to extremes to sway pink; it very likely would be better for her to shock her body into lowering testosterone by giving up exercise suddenly while losing weight. (Doing the opposite of what you’ve been doing may lead to a different outcome.) You want to lower that testosterone by shrinking muscle mass, whether it’s through losing weight + exercise, or by losing weight + not exercising at all.

As for timing and douches, for the best possible sway, if you are very fertile and your husband is cooperative, keep the timing with a 1-2 day cutoff, but lose the douches. The douches are one thing that seems to freak out many of our husbands. Even Shettles dropped the douches from his regimen and continued to get good results. And since we are acidifying our bodies and CM from the inside out, it seems like the douching is just plain overkill…we will be washing away our nice CM that will help us conceive. However, if you know you are less fertile or begin having trouble conceiving, it makes sense to BD through O, when we will have more alkaline and plentiful CM. Since our CM will likely be more acidic due to our diets, and less in quantity as our testosterone levels drop, then we may actually need to BD through O, because not even the x sperm may be able to survive in a very acid, low CM environment.

Personally, I choose not spend my day filling out endless paperwork and obsessively taking my temperature…if you are doing this anyway as part of FAM, that’s great, and of course you should use every bit of information at your disposal. But IMHO for most people, the paperwork aspect of the timing is too complicated and stressful, and it may even raise testosterone levels to have the pressure of dealing with it on a day to day basis. Not only that, but it seems to rob our sex lives of any kind of pleasure and romance, and annoys our husbands to no end when they are made to feel like stud dogs - especially if they do not share the same gender dream as we do.

The same holds true for positioning, jump and dump, and no female orgasm…give them all a try, but if you find you are not getting pregnant, then you may be too acid and actually need your CM to be a bit more alkaline to conceive at all, so you will need that little boost of alkaline CM that your body produces when you have an orgasm. And you may need to assist the sperm just a bit by a deeper position and lying still after BD, after all they have to get through much more hostile conditions. From the psychological aspect, anything that can take the stress out of the equation and make the entire experience enjoyable for us and our DH, will help lower our testosterone levels.

Unfortunately, there is no one size, fits all when it comes to swaying. Each person’s body is slightly different, and you have to know your own body, do a little guesswork and experimentation, and see what seems to work best for you.

TTC BOY

A caveat - I have never checked my pH when I was following a boy-style diet. But I was definitely eating these types of foods when I conceived all three of my sons, and according to my research, this type of diet will raise testosterone, raise pH, and increase female sex drive and CM. However, you should definitely monitor your pH to see if it begins to become more alkaline while on this diet, and use timing and female orgasm to guarantee that your CM will be at its most alkaline when you ttc your son.

The TTC boy diets are much less complicated than the girl diet, even though there are three of them. You may want to read the TTC girl section just so you know what not to do and why.

The “Bulk Up for a Boy” diet - This is the best diet choice if you are naturally on the slim side and you want a son. Eat a lot, of everything - we‘re talking above 2200 calories a day and the more, the better. High carb, high protein, high fat. Whole grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, meats, and as wide an array of nutrients as you can. Keep your blood sugar consistently elevated by eating three meals a day plus snacks, including protein at every meal.

Eggs and/or meat should be eaten every day, make sure they are well seasoned with salt. Not only is high salt intake part of the traditional ttc boy sway, but the Oxford study found a correlation between high salt and boy births. Remember that old wives tale about eating sweets for girls that I mentioned earlier? Well, the second part of the tale is, “Eat sours for boys.” And what are sours, exactly? Pickles - which, back in the days before Heinz pickling vinegar, were made by fermenting vegetables in salty brine.

Another fascinating old wives tale is, “More boys are born in the year after a good nut harvest.” Nuts are known to raise testosterone and also have a great balance of protein, fat, and carbohydrate that will keep your blood sugar nice and perfect for a long time after you eat them. Have an afternoon snack of nuts every day. Fish twice a week without fail. I know this is not part of the traditional sway, but I believe you should eat full fat dairy and lots of it - enjoy whole milk, cheese on everything, and yogurt with berries for snacks. (I eat tons of dairy and I have three sons, and remember the Oxford study found that higher calcium intake = more boys. )

If you are very thin, I would not do cardio at all. Focus on lifting weights instead. (see below)

The “Slim Down for a Boy” diet - If you are a bit on the heavy side to start with and you don’t want to gain weight but would still like to have a son, it makes sense to try a modified Atkins diet approach. Try to eat as many calories as you can without gaining weight - at least 2200 calories a day. Eat 3 meals a day, with lots and lots of fruits, vegetables, and lean animal proteins, (well-salted, of course) and fill in the gaps with small amounts of whole grains, nuts, and full fat dairy. Do not try and lose weight, because this will acidify you - if you really have a lot to lose, it would be best to lose the weight, take a break, and then regain a few pounds. I would stay on the Atkins-ish diet for at least a month to give your blood sugar levels time to normalize before ttc. (While you are in the 2ww, you should be sure to keep your blood sugar level in the boy zone by eating frequent meals, and be sure to have carbs at every meal to keep your glucose levels high and ensure the development of your male blastocyst.)

Also, exercise is extremely important for you - more so than in the other two ttc boy diet groups. Cardio will really help you to burn off some of the extra calories you will be consuming in the boy diet, so even though your weight will stay the same, you are getting those additional nutrients. And do not forgo the weight training - if you are building muscle, even if your weight stays exactly the same, you will be reducing your body fat. And muscle will also help burn more calories than fat does, even when you’re not exercising. (see below)

The “I’m a Vegetarian but I Want a Boy” diet - Continue your vegetarian diet, with an emphasis on dairy, eggs, beans, and nuts. Eat as wide an array of fruits and vegetables as possible. Limit your soy intake to no more than twice a week (more about soy below). Aim for 2500 calories a day (yes, this is more than the other two diets). In the 2ww be sure to eat frequently and keep your blood sugar on the higher side. And don’t forget the salt!!

Again, if you are thin as many vegetarians are, do not do cardio. Be extra diligent about your weight training, however. (see below)

For all three TTC boy diets - The quality protein contained in nuts, eggs, dairy products, and meat should be eaten as often as you can. Fish is great but of course when we are ttc we should only eat it twice a week due to the mercury. Aim for 9 servings of fruits and vegetables daily, in a rainbow of different colors - one way to help you remember how many servings you’ve had is to buy 9 cheap rubber bracelets at the dollar store, put them on your left arm when you wake up, and then every time you eat a serving, move a bracelet to your right arm. By bedtime, you should have all your bracelets on your right arm. Bananas are cheap and an excellent source of potassium, and I would definitely eat them every day if I was ttc a boy. I am also a big fan of V8 juice and I drank tons of it before I conceived DS 2 and 3, you can buy it in big packs at Costco and drink at least one a day.

You should be gaining at least a little weight as you conceive - but you don’t have to gain tons of weight. I suspect that 3-5 pounds of muscle mass will make all the difference - however, vegetarians should gain more like 5-7 lbs of muscle before ttc, because they tend to have a bit less muscle mass to begin with. I don’t think you need to begin the weight gain until right before you ttc, but you should begin eating more quality protein and fruits and vegetables in the months before you begin to ttc.

In terms of supplements, take a prenatal vitamin, preferably one that includes minerals in the formulation, and of course your folic acid. I would also take extra Vitamin C, E, D, and calcium (though I know that many people may choose not to take the calcium). There are also pills out there that include micronutrients like lutein, beta carotene, lycopene, etc. Although it is far, far better to get these micronutrients through your food, if you can’t eat 9 servings of fruits and vegetables, these types of supplements might be worth looking into. If you are a vegetarian, you should take extra Vitamin B12.

I have heard good things about the herb red clover for ttc a boy. I would take the Enfamil Lipil DHA supplements, Evening Primrose oil, and fish oil supplements. But be very careful, because red clover and these essential fatty acids can cause your blood to thin. If you are taking baby aspirin or are at all prone to bleeding or heavy periods, I would skip the red clover and the EPO and take a smaller dose of fish oil.

About soy - many people are taking soy to increase their CM. I think this is a questionable practice. Not only does high intake of soy reduce testosterone levels (swaying pink), but it may even cause birth defects in the genitals of baby boys. I think taking soy is so risky that I won’t even take soy to ttc pink. Soy is powerful stuff - I know we all think that they eat tons of it in Asia so it’s safe, but actually they don’t eat it every day (aside from soy sauce which has undergone a chemical change during fermentation and no one eats much of that anyway). Soy is just one of many things included in the Asian diet, maybe with the frequency that we might eat hot dogs or tacos.

The sound of baking soda water is completely disgusting to me and possibly dangerous, since it is very salty and you‘re already taking in extra sodium…personally this is something I would never do. On the other hand, club soda actually has baking soda in it, and seems like a much more appetizing alternative. Club soda mixed with fruit juice sounds like a very nice way to get one of your fruit servings for the day.

For exercise, I would do cardio for 30-45 minutes a day 3 times a week, and start lifting weights on the other 4 days a week, even if you’ve never done it before. It’s actually very fun and you will not bulk up - the women who get very big are generally taking supplements to help them get like that. There are some excellent exercise videos out there (the ones I have used are by the Firm) that incorporate lighter weights and cardio together for a really good workout that you could do every day, or you could do straight cardio 3 days a week, work your arms with heavier weights 2 days a week and then your legs 2 days a week.

However it works best for you, but don’t over do - don’t lift heavy weights in the same body part every day (though it‘s ok to do toning with light weights every day), and never exercise for more than an hour. Remember, overdoing sways pink. You want moderate exercise, and since you are eating more protein and calories, with moderation you will begin to add muscle, exactly right for raising your testosterone levels. I think that you should exercise this way for at least 6 weeks before you begin to ttc.

For timing and douches, again, I see no reason for the douches. Why risk washing away our own natural CM, when we‘ve worked so hard to get it so plentiful and alkaline? I would go ahead and BD on O, with a female orgasm. This coupled with the change in alkalinity and additional glucose that will be present in our CM, should produce a very nice environment for the y sperm to thrive in. And rather than filling out endless paperwork, I would simply listen to my own body - chances are, when your sex drive goes up, you’re getting ready to ovulate. Take advantage of your increased sex drive and increased CM, rather than feeling tons of pressure to DTD on a specific day at a specific time - nothing takes the romance out of lovemaking than a deadline and an ultimatum. Less romance + more pressure = less enjoyment, less CM, less likely to orgasm. So worrying too much about timing and position may actually hurt our chances of conceiving our son!!

Again, there is no one perfect sway and there are no guarantees. But I truly feel that by knowing your own body and your own life history, and tapping into that using the knowledge of how our bodies might be working to select the gender of child we conceive, we have our best chances.

The Nutshell version - That was a ton of information there, so I will just sum up real quick.

For TTC a girl, you need to trick your body into thinking that times are tough. You should be in worse physical condition, losing weight, losing muscle, and eating the kinds of foods that people tend to eat when they are living in poverty or in famine. Carbs like breads, rice, and pasta, are cheap and so they tend to be eaten by people living in bad situations. People living in hard times also often have to work very, very hard for many hours a day, further eating away at their bodies, so intense exercise helps. Your body should ’think’ that since resources are limited, a daughter should be born, because she will be more likely to grow to maturity and pass down her genes than a boy would be.

For TTC a boy, you need to trick your body into thinking that you are living high on the hog. You should be improving your physical condition by adding a few pounds and by eating a wide variety of healthy and high quality foods like meats, nuts, and fruits and vegetables. You can still eat carbs too, deny yourself nothing (except for soy!!). You will help build up your muscle mass with moderate exercise, further convincing your body that you are a successful and well-off person who can support the greater caloric and nutritional needs that a son will require, if he is to compete for mates against other males.

Whew, that was totally exhausting! As always, I wish everyone the best of luck with swaying!!

Personality Factors and Swaying

atomic sagebrush — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:53:00 GMT

Hi again - yes, I’m still here!!! My weight is a delightful 126.5 lbs and although I have spent the last few weeks fluctuating between 129 and 126, my pH has stayed consistent at 4.5. I was trying to take a break at 126, but it seems like whenever I’m not actively losing weight, my body wants to gain it!!

This has been a bit of a discouraging month for me on the weight loss front. Though I’m happy with the amount I’ve lost, I am facing a dilemma - I have recently read that losing weight while breastfeeding means that it will take even longer for your menstrual cycle to get back to normal, and that certainly seems to be the case for me! That’s why I gave up losing weight at 126 even though I feel capable of losing at least 6 more pounds and I think it would make my sway more of a sure thing if I did. But of course the best sway in the world will be all for nothing if I am unable to get pregnant. I have been very tentatively eating a bit more protein than I had been, and I am seriously considering making a doctor’s appointment this coming week to see if there’s any way to medically kick start the process. I swear I can feel my fertility plummeting with every day that passes!!

I also do not like the fact that my weight loss probably won’t peak at the time I get pregnant - it is obvious to me that I’m going to have lost all the weight I possibly can lose long before AF even comes back. I don’t know how my body will respond to this - will it slowly begin to return to its normal pH and testosterone levels? I don’t know, but it seems likely. Thank goodness that I will be happy with a child of either gender, but I am annoyed that the test of the Trivers-Willard hypothesis won’t be as good as I had hoped. More than ever, I hope that my success or failure will not put anyone off the idea of using the theories surrounding the T-W hypothesis to sway.

Moving on!!! First off, I must apologize for not updating my blog. I am really not very motivated at all, I feel sort of lazy and exhausted and not at all like myself. So much so, in fact, that I have come to the conclusion that this sudden change in personality means that the sway is working, my testosterone levels are dropping. I find myself losing interest in swaying altogether and just feeling much less passionate about having a daughter, to the point where I have even felt at times like I don’t want a daughter, and why am I doing all this anyway, blah, blah blah?? However, I do realize that this is likely an effect of the lack of testosterone in my system, and while unpleasant, it is probably a good sign.

I have also noticed some physical changes indicative of lower testosterone - aside from the lack of energy and motivation, I have less body hair, low sex drive, and (sorry for TMI) a certain part of my anatomy is smaller than it was before. All in all, it’s encouraging, but at the same time, the change in personality makes it hard to take much pleasure in the progress I’m making - I just want to curl up somewhere with a roast and gnaw on it for awhile!!!

So in light of this, I thought this might be a good time to examine how personality factors and testosterone can influence each other.

Testosterone is described as being in a feedback relationship with external stimuli; that is, external stresses of both a physical and an intellectual nature can cause it to rise, while at the same time, the higher testosterone actually drives a person to seek out new challenges to take on, in a kind of a feedback loop. What’s more, this holds true even of stresses that you would have preferred not to live through - just the very act of enduring stress and successfully surviving it, is seen by your body as a triumph to be celebrated with a big surge of testosterone. So one thing we must do in order to sway pink is to eliminate as many sources of stress from our lives as possible.

Researchers were studying dominance in female monkeys, and they took several dominant female monkeys and put them into cages and pampered them much more than they would have been in their natural environment - they didn’t have to work for their food, they didn’t have to worry about predators or competing against each other for resources. And these female monkeys ended up having way more daughters, surprising the researchers, who weren‘t even studying gender ratio!! Just the removal of the stress in their lives was enough to alter their body chemistry to pink.

An interesting thing about primates of all varieties is that they tend to establish and maintain social dominance through a series of competitions - never fighting to the point of injury, but just until the less dominant party submits to the more dominant one. It doesn’t seem farfetched to assume that humans might operate in much the same fashion.

Testosterone has been studied extensively, and researchers have found that when people gear up for a competition, their testosterone levels rise. Even if you’re just a spectator, your t levels still go up accordingly, sometimes even as high as the competitors do. After the competition is over, testosterone levels drop in the losing team - even the spectators rooting for the losing team suffer a sharp drop in t levels. But for the winners and their fans, the levels of testosterone rise even higher still. And believe it or not, this effect is as dramatic for people participating in a chess match as in a sporting event! It is the very act of competition that matters, whether it is a physical or mental competition.

It seems perfectly reasonable to conclude that facing challenges and overcoming competitors in everyday life could have far more of an effect on your testosterone as watching a chess match. So the pastimes you enjoy, the struggles you face on a daily basis, the more passionate about them you are and the more often you succeed, the more these things might sway for a boy.

Possibly even the very act of swaying itself might cause testosterone to rise as the challenge is faced, and the more thorough you are, the better sway you think you’re doing, the more successful you feel you are, the more you feel like you are ‘winning’, the higher your testosterone levels are rising!!! (Not trying to discourage anyone here at all, but it is great news for those swaying blue and a comfort for those of us who haven’t been able to be completely thorough about our pink sways due to non-cooperative hubbies.) This may even help to explain why so many InGender ’surprises’ have turned out to be girl babies, even in moms with 5-6 sons - maybe sometimes only when we’ve given up on the idea of a daughter and are feeling defeated do we manage to conceive a girl.

This effect has also been observed by sociologists and historians…it has been one of history’s great questions why the rate of male births seems to rise during wars and other periods of social upheaval. But if we take stress and testosterone into effect, women who are struggling to survive and succeeding, very likely have a rise in their testosterone levels. And a study done on the early Mormon settlers found that many more sons were born to the wives of the higher ranking settlers - as the ladies rose in social stature, they had more sons. Remember the Maternal Dominance Hypothesis - more sons are born to women who are influential and high in stature. (Note - I have seen this Mormon settler study quoted in several places, but I can’t find the original myself. If you know where I can find it, I would really like to read it.)

So what does that mean - if we have high testosterone levels and chronic stress, should we just give up on the idea of a daughter all together? The answer to that is no, of course not. Because I am coming to the conclusion that there is more than one factor at play involved in gender ratio. It isn’t just diet, it isn’t just testosterone, it’s the combination of the two plus whatever our husbands bring to the table, along with an element of luck and possibly timing thrown in.

Tamara recently sent me a study involving mothers with eating disorders (thank you Tamara!!). I can’t get the full text of the article, but according to the abstract, the researchers found that mothers with anorexia had 10% fewer sons, bulimics had 8% fewer sons, and binge eaters had 4% more sons than would be expected in the general population. Another group called EdNOS-P, which is a kind of eating disorder where you are anorexic/bulimic but your weight stays in normal range, had 28% more sons!!!

Wait a minute - that’s totally confusing isn’t it? How can some anorexics have dramatically fewer sons, and some have dramatically more? That’s where I believe the effect of testosterone comes in. Can you imagine the level of drive and commitment that a person would have to have to maintain an eating disorder? From what I have read, anorexics/bulimics tend to be very driven and high achieving personalities (high testosterone levels) who do extraordinarily well at any endeavor they undertake.

Women who suffer from anorexia/bulimia very well might have higher average testosterone levels than the general population to begin with. However, in the most severe cases, their restricted diets alters their body chemistry so dramatically that they ended up having far more daughters, even though women who also had anorexia/bulimia who were of normal weight had far, far more sons. Women who should have had sons, had daughters on a restricted diet - up to 38% more daughters. This is proof positive that we can use diet to sway.

This sounds kind of shocking to analyze the statistics this way, and please understand, I am not advising anyone to develop any kind of eating disorder to sway. I have total sympathy for those struggling with eating disorders and I am not trying to offend anyone or make light of a serious and life-threatening condition. But the information is there and we would be foolish not to utilize it.

Summing up - can personality and lifestyle factors affect testosterone levels? Yes! But this doesn’t mean that those of us with naturally high testosterone levels are screwed and can never conceive a daughter, or that women who want a son will never have one. Moms who want daughters can alter our lifestyles to reduce stress, lose some weight, and change our diets, we can lower our testosterone levels. And moms who want sons can take on new challenges, gain weight (preferably muscle), and eat more and higher quality foods, can raise their testosterone levels.

As always, best of luck to all swayers out there!!

testosterone and swaying

atomic sagebrush — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:53:00 GMT

Hi again! If this is your first visit, I really hope you’ll take a few minutes and read the previous posts - this blog has been a work in progress and I’ve learned so much as I’ve gone along. Some of the things I thought were true at the beginning have been at least somewhat confirmed, and others seem less important now than I first thought they were.

Personal update - weight, 133, and pH of 4.5! I’ve gotten readings from 4.5-5 several times now, way too often to be just a fluke. It’s amazing to me that my pH has dropped so quickly considering I’ve taken no cranberry or Crystal Light at all and have not even followed the TTC girl diet very strictly. Very encouraging. My milk has stabilized with my diet the way it is now, even though I’ve lost more weight.

Since we talked about blood glucose in depth, I think we should give testosterone the same treatment. Remember, testosterone is the linchpin of the Maternal Dominance Hypothesis (MDH) - the idea that females who are more dominant have higher testosterone levels, and tend to have more sons. And any appearance that physical condition is determining gender ratios, is just coincidental to the fact that dominant females are able to outcompete submissive females to food resources.

How can some hormone, that women have a miniscule amount of, really affect the gender of our children? Scientists don’t really know yet, but the idea that testosterone can effect gender ratio is probably a certain thing. Scientists have studied female rodents, and they found that if the female rodent was in between two male rodents while in the womb, surrounded by testosterone on both sides, that female rodent was far more likely to have sons herself than a female rodent who matured between two sisters.

Of course, what’s true for rodents isn’t necessarily true for humans, but let’s just accept for the sake of argument that testosterone levels do affect gender ratio in some ways. Since I suspect that we’re tapping into the effects of the Trivers-Willard hypothesis in a traditional sway, and since the MDH is an explanation of one way that Trivers-Willard might work, it stands to reason that the MDH is somehow being affected by a traditional sway. So let’s inspect the MDH in that light.

TIMING - One of the first and most important aspects of a traditional sway has been the issue of timing BD. Interestingly, testosterone levels rise just before a woman ovulates. So if testosterone really is sending some kind of signal to our bodies about what gender child would be preferable, timing may very well matter. Perhaps if we BD several days before O, our testosterone levels have not yet risen, increasing the odds of a girl pregnancy and supporting Shettles. And perhaps our testosterone levels drop off after we O, increasing the odds of a girl pregnancy and supporting O+12. Whereas if we BD around ovulation, our testosterone levels are higher than normal and we are more likely to conceive a boy.

The connection between MDH and timing goes even further than that, however. Most of us have experienced an increase in sexuality around the time we ovulate. Testosterone levels are directly related to that increase in desire. Ovulation = more testosterone = higher sex drive = more likely to have an orgasm. Orgasm boosts testosterone levels, in fact, the more often you orgasm, the higher your testosterone level tends to be. Ovulation = more testosterone = higher sex drive = more likely to have an orgasm = more testosterone = higher sex drive = and so on.

Orgasm is usually frowned upon in a ttc girl attempt because it increases cervical mucus, which helps the y sperm to swim to the egg more easily; cervical mucus also tends to be alkaline. Bearing this in mind, the chain of events might happen somewhat like this: Ovulation = more testosterone = higher sex drive = more likely to have an orgasm = increased cervical mucus = alkaline vaginal pH = more y sperm survive = more boy babies conceived. Interesting, no?

DIET - The next important aspect of a traditional sway is diet. Testosterone levels can be directly affected by diet. When weightlifters are building muscle, they want to increase their testosterone levels, so they eat eggs, nuts, fish, and meat - as much protein as they can take in. They also eat plenty of good fats and carbohydrates to keep their bodies from cannibalizing their muscle tissue, and they take in 3-4000 calories in the course of a day. This isn’t too different from the TTC boy diet, and in fact that is one thing many girl moms really have to focus on, eating much more meat than they do normally.

On the traditional TTC girl diet, we focus more on grains and dairy foods, and many women find they lose weight while on the diet. Although chicken, fish, and eggs are allowed, since we are trying to take in so much dairy and reduce our sodium levels, many of us have found that we eat much less of these things than we had previously. Weight loss, less protein, and less meat lower testosterone levels.

Anecdotally, I have heard that vegans and vegetarians have far more daughters, supporting the notion that less animal protein might lead to more daughters. I have tried to find hard stats on this and I couldn’t, but when I was searching for information about this topic, I read hit after hit about vegetarians talking about their daughters, and none talking about their sons.

Interestingly, being very heavy also lowers testosterone levels. This would support the observations that some have made that being very thin and very heavy both tend to sway for girls.

EXERCISE - Exercise isn’t a part of a traditional sway, but let’s examine it anyway. Weight training and gaining muscle mass raise testosterone levels, while weight loss, especially drastic weight loss, lowers testosterone levels. In a traditional sway, when a woman begins to take in a lot more meat than she typically does, her body is likely to take the opportunity to use that meat to build up muscle mass. So not only does the increased protein in her diet itself increase testosterone levels, the muscle that the body then builds using that protein also increases testosterone. A win-win for having a boy.

On the other hand, many women follow an exercise regimen of long, sustained cardio exercise, and often eschew weightlifting because they don’t want to bulk up. We have already discussed how intense anaerobic exercise can acidify the body, but it also lowers testosterone levels at the same time. Mix intense overexercise with a low calorie, low protein diet and you will burn up the majority of your muscle mass. Your body becomes both very acidic and very low in testosterone, girl zone!

LIFESTYLE ISSUES - Again, not part of a traditional sway, but still interesting. Smoking causes first a sharp and sudden rise in blood sugar, and then the corresponding crash as too much insulin is released. Smoking also lowers testosterone. Drinking does the same, and in fact that‘s why people often get the munchies when they‘ve been drinking, because their blood sugar drops and makes them crave sweets. It is no wonder that smoking and drinking tend to sway for girls.

Being well rested raises testosterone levels, and a lack of sleep lowers them. Sleep is also a big factor in blood sugar issues - people who don‘t sleep enough at night tend to have low blood sugar, and end up snacking a lot. Not sleeping well = low blood sugar and low testosterone.

BREASTFEEDING - To me, breastfeeding is the most interesting of all, because it really affects every aspect of swaying. Not only does breastfeeding reduce testosterone levels by itself, but as those of us who have breastfed know, our sex drives all but disappear when we’re nursing. So we’re less interested in sex, less likely to orgasm, and we have less, and drier cervical mucus.

Breastfeeding also affects our blood sugar, to the extent that many diabetic moms find their blood sugar levels remain so low just from nursing that they are able to dramatically cut back on their insulin until after they wean their baby. A nursing mother is also more likely to be losing weight than a woman who isn’t nursing, just because her body is burning so many calories just to make milk. She may be using up so many calories to make milk that her body is actually robbing her muscles for protein, further reducing her testosterone levels and acidifying her body.

I’ve never had a lot of luck exercising while I’m nursing, and I would certainly never lift weights around a small baby - I would love to hear of other people’s experiences.

I have found that during the time I’m nursing, I tend to get less sleep because I wake up several times a night to attend to my baby. Since less sleep = less testosterone, just the fact of having a small baby might tend to sway for a girl.

AGE - A factor we have no control over, but all people, men and women alike, have less testosterone as they age. Also, women tend to lose muscle mass as they get older, so they have even less testosterone available. That may very well be why older women tend to have more daughters.

Anyway, that’s a lot of information to take in all in one sitting, thanks to all who’ve stuck it out till the end! As always, wishing everyone the best of luck in their TTC journey!