In conjunction with hormones, Especially cortisolhas become the hottest new thing among people with a passing (but crucially shallow) interest in health and wellness (which, to be clear, includes me). I’m struggling to lose weight? You need to balance your hormones. I can’t sleep through the night? Hormones. Stubborn acne?hormone! Poor posture? Indigestion? Feeling irritatedThese are all said to be symptoms of hormonal imbalance, specifically high cortisol levels.
High cortisol is thought to have a variety of side effects, but there are just as many potential treatments. Don’t drink coffee on an empty stomachmeditating, avoiding blue light after sunset, swapping high-intensity workouts for walking or pilates, and drinking this little magnesium glycinate drink mix that you can conveniently purchase from the TikTok shop for $28.77.
Pseudoscience, like conspiracy theories, is very troubling because it contains enough truth to make it seem plausible. Cortisol is real, and chronically high cortisol causes many negative side effectsFrom what I understand, cortisol is known as the “stress hormone” and like throwing lighter fuel on an adrenaline fire, your body releases cortisol to get you out of fight or flight mode.
For the past decade, I’ve dealt with a variety of uterine issues that ranged from inconvenient to debilitating. As I entered my 30s, those issues began to spread to other parts of my body. It feels like I’m always discovering new reasons for feeling unwell. A late-night Google search reveals that my array of symptoms may be related.
Of course, this is nothing that a conversation with an especially attentive doctor can’t fix. The problem is the “attentive” part. I fit squarely into the group of people whose experiences with the American healthcare system amount to gaslighting at best, and neglect at worst. For example, last summer I was in the emergency room for six hours with incredible uterine pain, only to be told to consider taking ibuprofen and acetaminophen. at the same time.
Thus, being a college-educated, generally skeptical DINKy coastal elite, I am an easy target for medical misinformation, which floods my feed. My social algorithms feed me videos about all the ways I can balance hormones, control cortisol levels, and ease my ailments by simply drinking a special mocktail every night made from a powder that supposedly combines magnesium glycinate, vitamin D, L-theanine, and ashwagandha. Because the drink is not regulated by the FDA, we don’t know how much of the listed ingredients it actually contains. Maybe I’m lowering my cortisol levels by taking therapeutic amounts of these substances, or maybe I’m drinking sugar water and experiencing a placebo effect. It tastes like lemonade and seems harmless, so I keep drinking it.
I know what this feels like, but after a decade of overlapping chronic illnesses and little to no help from actual doctors, it’s comforting to see a young woman online describe exactly what I’m experiencing, in the past tense, and share how something so simple helped her get better. Weird tricks doctors don’t want you to know about It becomes tempting. What do you have to lose at this point?
Concerns about hormones in general, and cortisol in particular, have become a top priority in online discussions about women’s health and fitness, even among influencers who don’t primarily post health and fitness content. Talking about the “journey” of hormones, And the rhetoric flows from there. This anxiety is a clear indication of where online women’s culture currently sits politically, caught between a post-body positive internet and the ever-present thin/white supremacist beauty ideals that still dominate mainstream aesthetics. Barbie monologue, But the experience of engaging in sex at an acceptable level is mind-boggling.
The language of hormones is a more acceptable way to talk about the ongoing striving towards traditional beauty ideals (particularly thinness) on an internet steeped in the rhetoric of the body positivity movement. pigeon and Nike What began as a social movement for obesity liberation has been successfully adopted by people around the world, and the term “body positivity” has rapidly become mainstream. Dieting is not coolThe pursuit of weight loss is not like that either, at least not in that sense. Sexy girl walkingWe’re aiming for 10,000, 15,000. Even 20,000 steps We prioritize protein in our day, we’re trying to get lean, we’re eating clean—these are all euphemisms for the same end. Loving your body is the same as hating your body, and tying that pursuit to “balancing your hormones” makes it clear that all of this is gendered.
“Telling someone they may have a hormonal imbalance suggests they are not in harmony with their gender,” Casey Johnston wrote in a column. The scam of hormone balancing workouts“Women with hormonal imbalance feel less feminine, or maybe even worse. Not caring enough “On Femininity.” This quest to “balance your hormones” glosses over the mundane desire to be thin and docile with vaguely scientific language that sounds too real if you don’t look very closely.
The human body contains over 50 hormones that affect everything from mood and sexual function to metabolism and homeostasis. For those with female reproductive systems, hormonal imbalances can lead to conditions like chronic pain, infertility, and endometriosis, a condition that is not exclusive to those who cannot have children, but which has long been known to be “a disease of the female reproductive system.”Career woman diseaseUntil the 1960s, pregnancy Prescribed as a treatmentIt is not a cure, but many people find that their symptoms improve after giving birth. According to the National Cancer Institute:Pregnancy and childbirth also slightly lowers the risk of breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancer.
My generation Postponed childbirth We are living longer than our parents and facing new health risks that come with it. As with most health issues, family history is a useful tool to predict what will happen in the future. Looking at the data, it seems that most people of childbearing age do not have parents who waited as long as they did to have their first baby. At 32, I am the oldest woman in my immediate family who has never been pregnant or given birth. So while I can look to my mother, grandmothers, and aunts for clues about my body’s predisposition to certain symptoms and diseases, the situation is not perfect because they all went through this big physical and hormonal event early in their lives and I did not. This creates blind spots in family history data and leaves people like me to scour the internet for explanations of mysterious symptoms that are ruining my life.
Certainly, misinformation, not just medical, defines our media age, and if the women peddling multilevel marketing essential oils in my Facebook feed are any indication, having children in your twenties is no protection against misinformation. Between a bureaucratic, user-hostile health care system that prioritizes cure over prevention and an information economy that allows quack drug lies to spread largely unchecked, we’re stuck between misinformation and a difficult situation, which is why miracle cures like my little magnesium drink go viral. The social media platforms, the companies that make these products, and the influencers who sell them all profit when we hit the “add to cart” button, but what do we get? A sweet nothing with the power of suggestion. Better than nothing.
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