Article about stress swaying girl

[begonia]

Had a convo re: stress and whether it swayed boy/girl in another thread today, and found this tonight via my friend Google:
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/parenting/stress-linked-to-sex-of-babies-2907895.html

[rainbowflower]

nice find, so more of the chronically stressed women have girls....

[zanacal]

My sister told me about this study this week but I forgot to look it up and post it - thanks Begonia!

[melissalynay]

Shoot if this was right I would have three girls....I am normally a very stressed person.

[begonia]

Shoot if this was right I would have three girls....I am normally a very stressed person.

LOL. There are PLENTY of studies I read that leave me wondering how on earth we don't have any sons, so I get your perspective on this one!

[CapricornAquarius]

Mmm interesting, dont know if i can believe it though, cause in World War1 the number of boys born out numbered the amount of girls been born, now can u imagine the stress going on around that time.
Dd1 :ballerina: Dd2 :giggle:

[spidy]

Hi, I'm new here but I thought stress raises testosterone which sways boy

[rainbowflower]

Hi, I'm new here but I thought stress raises testosterone which sways boy

Perhaps stress doesn't raise testosterone by a significant enough amount to sway

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk

[zanacal]

Check out paragraph 3 of this article:

http://cortisolconnection.com/ch5_2.php

'During periods of high cortisol production (stress, dieting, and sleep loss), our natural production of testosterone falls. Considering that women produce only about one-tenth the amount of testosterone found in men, any stress-induced drop in testosterone would be expected to affect women as much as or more than most men.'

Quite an interesting article in general actually.

[Hobbermittens]

Damn. That sucks. This swaying crap is stressing me out already, and that article is stressing me out more! Ugh. I can't remember if I was stressed when I conceived my son or not, but I know I was when DD2 was conceived, because DH had just been laid off of his job and $$ was super tight.

I had heard that more girls were conceived during bad economic times, so that all adds up. I wonder what the gender ratio was during the depression?

[zanacal]

I wonder if the other things we're doing to increase or decrease testosterone (diet especially) would counteract the stress factor anyway?

[atomic sagebrush]

Had a convo re: stress and whether it swayed boy/girl in another thread today, and found this tonight via my friend Google:
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/parenting/stress-linked-to-sex-of-babies-2907895.html

This is difficult to discuss without offending people but I am going to try, because as I've said before, I feel that this is the number one reason why sways fail.

When reading something like this, you have to keep in mind that it is a) the kind and duration of stress b) your physical/mental responses to that stress and c) the other things going on in your body and environment that do the swaying.
It's not that your body has a little checklist and it goes "Stress...check...better pop out a girl," it's that stress may cause a complex chain of chemical reactions that trigger whatever mechanism it is that actually physically sways. So if that reaction is NOT triggered or if your body can overcome that mechanism because of other factors (diet, lifestyle, etc.) the stress is irrelevant because it didn't trigger the response. And if your body is having that reaction anyway, the stress is still irrelevant because it's happening regardless.

My experience with working with hundreds if not a thousand swayers at this point is that women who tend to be very highly wound and high strung about things have way more boys, and I think it's because they are just mentally and perhaps physically more set to see the universe as something that they must control at every second and whenever you feel like you are in control of anything (or that you NEED to be), that causes your testosterone to go up. Challenges that you take on voluntarily and overcome, raise testosterone and sway blue.

However, if you are chronically under stress all the time and feel that those stressors are out of your control (so either they are stressors that you cannot control or else your disposition is such that you feel ill-equipped to handle them), those things end up swaying pink, because a person has to or chooses to turn over control to others and that can lower testosterone if a person sees that as a defeat or surrender in any way. In nature, a primate that cannot win a fight is much more likely to survive if it has a drop in testosterone that makes it more likely to walk away from confrontations.

This does not mean that girl moms are "losers" as some have interpreted it, far from it. In nature and in life, it is far smarter and wiser to expend energy on battles you can win rather than railing against every challenge you run into and desperately attempting to control every facet of one's existence. And if you have a limited amount of caloric resources at your disposal, this is even more true because being a control freak expends an awful amount of energy so if you're trying to exist and feed your baby on a handful of termites and 2 rotten bananas a day like our primate ancestors did and do, it makes a lot more sense to be more laid back and maybe not take on the alpha female when she gets on your nerves a little. ;)

[Hobbermittens]

However, if you are chronically under stress all the time and feel that those stressors are out of your control (so either they are stressors that you cannot control or else your disposition is such that you feel ill-equipped to handle them), those things end up swaying pink, because a person has to or chooses to turn over control to others and that can lower testosterone if a person sees that as a defeat or surrender in any way. In nature, a primate that cannot win a fight is much more likely to survive if it has a drop in testosterone that makes it more likely to walk away from confrontations.



Super. This is me, the wimp. I get overwhelmed and freak out all the time.

My only thought is, I have ALWAYS been like this, so it obviously didn't stop me from having a boy once before. I just hope I can get past it again to have a boy this time!

[Flava]

Really who know all this for sure?
Im pretty much in control here and stressed most of the time and only got girls! So yeah it just don't work for everyone and that's it. At least this is what I think.

[purplepoet20]

I am confused now... I like to be in control of somethings but I am a follower more then a leader. I have never been asked to decide something or in charge, and I don't know how. My boys are the boss during the day and hubby is at night. My hubby will say what he wants for dinner but I am in control of when dinner is on the table.

I am a perfectionist and if I mess up on something I toss it... a costume I sewed got a little bit burned from the iron and I would put my son in it and I burned dinner a couple of times and made hubby go get something.

I am stressed a lot about my mother show up at my door but other then I try to stay relaxed.

[atomic sagebrush]

flava, I agree, these are just tendencies and do not hold true for everyone. The point I guess I'm going for is that it is what is going on in your body that counts and not the stress itself, because some people are super stressed and their bodies don't respond the same ways that other people's do. it's just that there ~may~ be an overall tendency for this to be true and not for any one person.

[atomic sagebrush]

Super. This is me, the wimp. I get overwhelmed and freak out all the time.

My only thought is, I have ALWAYS been like this, so it obviously didn't stop me from having a boy once before. I just hope I can get past it again to have a boy this time!

I agree totally Hobber and I believe with every fiber of my being that every person on this site even those with 6 and 7 of the same gender already, CAN totally conceive a child of the opposite gender.

[atomic sagebrush]

I am confused now... I like to be in control of somethings but I am a follower more then a leader. I have never been asked to decide something or in charge, and I don't know how. My boys are the boss during the day and hubby is at night. My hubby will say what he wants for dinner but I am in control of when dinner is on the table.

I am a perfectionist and if I mess up on something I toss it... a costume I sewed got a little bit burned from the iron and I would put my son in it and I burned dinner a couple of times and made hubby go get something.

I am stressed a lot about my mother show up at my door but other then I try to stay relaxed.

These are just general tendencies and observations and not anything that can be generalized down to one individual, and for sure not any one situation.

[Flava]

See maybe that's it! This sway thing work for most of the people who do it right , but there are some others and no matter what they do it just wont work for them.
Im thinking I may be in this group...sway don't work for everyone .

And you know i also believe like you said that everyone can conceive both gender , but it matters when! what sad is not after 2-3 kids but what after 7-8? Sadly we can't do that.

[Pangea]

My experience with working with hundreds if not a thousand swayers at this point is that women who tend to be very highly wound and high strung about things have way more boys, and I think it's because they are just mentally and perhaps physically more set to see the universe as something that they must control at every second and whenever you feel like you are in control of anything (or that you NEED to be), that causes your testosterone to go up. Challenges that you take on voluntarily and overcome, raise testosterone and sway blue.


Oh no, this is me! But the problem is that if I do things to sway for a girl, that will help me feel in control of the situation and raise my testosterone!!

[atomic sagebrush]

See maybe that's it! This sway thing work for most of the people who do it right , but there are some others and no matter what they do it just wont work for them.
Im thinking I may be in this group...sway don't work for everyone .

And you know i also believe like you said that everyone can conceive both gender , but it matters when! what sad is not after 2-3 kids but what after 7-8? Sadly we can't do that.

First of all I don't think there are people who swaying won't work for...eventually. The eventually is the kicker. In the here and now, I STRONGLY strongly strongly believe that there are things in the traditional sways both pink and blue, that are swaying the wrong direction and also things that are neutral but including them is undoing some of the good of the things that actually do sway. And until we get rid of those things, swaying is not going to be as reliable as it could be.

I agree about the 7-8 kids and that is why I spend as much time as I do, researching this issue. I think everyone has a right to have kids of both genders if they choose to and the planet cannot sustain us all having 7-8 kids to do that.

[atomic sagebrush]

Oh no, this is me! But the problem is that if I do things to sway for a girl, that will help me feel in control of the situation and raise my testosterone!!

That is ok though Pangea, with 10 months before your sway, you have plenty of time to plan your sway and then relax for a few months beforehand.

One of the most high-strung and obsessed swayers I ever saw did exactly that and ended up conceiving a girl!!

[spidy]

Atomic - have you read this? I'm not sure what to make of it.......I'm understanding it as in times of plenty females are born!!!!!!????


Responsiveness to the environment

What sorts of conditions cause fluctuations in serum testosterone? In the
female, anything that causes chronic stress will tend to raise an individual’s serum
testosterone levels (Gray, 1992). Female medical students, in the months building
up to examinations, had higher testosterone levels than normal (Grant and France,
2001). Chronic hardship or stress, (as in food shortages, war or epidemic) appears
to increase testosterone levels in many females, thus temporarily raising the
number of females suited to conceiving male offspring. (This is in contrast to
acute stress, as in earthquake, flood, or sudden bereavement, which appears to
have the opposite effect, resulting in a lowered sex ratio nine months later, see for
example Hansen et al, 1999.)
The relationship between chronic stress and raised testosterone levels in the
mammalian female could be doubly adaptive. First the individual female
(mother) enduring chronic stress would be slightly toughened to help withstand
the stress; and secondly, there would be fewer females in the next generation, thus
possibly protecting the habitat from excess population growth. Verme (1983)
reviewed all studies on deer sex ratios and concluded that “an increase in the
proportion of male fawns as range conditions deteriorated would serve as a
population self-regulating mechanism”. He came in for severe criticism for this,
because his suggestion implied support for the controversial group selection
theory. But the facts could equally well be explained by postulating the
individual’s reactions to reduced food, which had the effect of raising that
individual’s testosterone levels.

Adaptive manipulation of sex ratios by individuals could result in collateral
benefit to a group, in just the same way as say, lack of water could cause kidney
damage in some individuals, who then died, leaving more water for those that
remained. This too might look like group selection, but it is not; those individuals
with more efficient kidneys survived and the others did not. The problem of
misattribution of group selection charges could be solved by reference to shared
physiological mechanisms adapted in each individual to a greater or lesser extent,
to solve the same problems.
In times of plenty and low stress, individual female serum testosterone levels
would tend to drop allowing for more females to conceive female offspring. This
too may be advantageous in that it would provide the vehicle for population
expansion in times of plenty, and good conditions in which to produce and rear
healthy females who may continue to be successful breeders and enhance their
species, thus taking optimum advantage of the good conditions.
For a female mammal to adjust the sex ratio of her offspring in accordance
with her perception of the environment there would need to be two related
mechanisms in place. First, there would need to be a physiological mechanism by
which a female was able to react sensitively to stress-inducing changes in the
environment. Secondly, there would need to be a relationship between this
mechanism and the mechanism by which the sex of her offspring was determined
(or pre-determined). Both these mechanisms would need to react within the time
scale of her estrus or menstrual cycle.
The maternal dominance hypothesis offers serum testosterone as a primary
candidate. It is known that serum testosterone in males, both animal and human,
can vary dramatically over time, according to the male’s perception of changes in
his social and physical environments (Kemper, 1990). There is also evidence to
show that, unlike the male, female testosterone rises in response to (perceived)
chronic stress. Female testosterone is also related to self-reported dominance (Grant and France,2001).

[spidy]

Here's the link for full article

http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep0196107.pdf

[jude17]

Is this right, acute stress such as earthquakes will result in more females been born? But what if the acute stress goes on for a long time. For example I am living in a city that has been devastated by earthquakes but they haven't stopped and nearly a year and a half later we are still getting quite large quakes. They definitely make you feel stressed and on edge. Would this long term acute stress thus be more likely to increase your testosterone level? Does anyone know if taking anti anxiety supplements like St Johns Wort would help to reduce the level of stress you feel and thus keep testosterone levels down during times of on going stress?

[atomic sagebrush]

spidy, yes, I've read that one but when you read those type of studies, you have to always keep in mind that they are speculating and generalizing. They say a lot of things but then you read the study and there's almost always more to it than that or the conclusion doesn't really explain everything adequately. I think each situation is unique to every individual and I've known plenty of times where acute stress totally raised my T levels and over the last year I had a lot of chronic stress and my T is def. lower than ever before because I feel like I can't control anything. It has so much to do with individual circumstances and personality that we just can't even go there mentally, worrying about whether this or that will ruin our sway.

Jude, please don't stress over your stress! Just focus on what you CAN change and let go of the rest and that will bring your stress levels down.