Sunday March 8, 2009

Chemical journey of life

By LEE TSE LING

Today is International Women’s Day. It has been observed since the early 1900s to celebrate the economic, political and social achievements of women worldwide. Yet, are we, especially the hapless men, any closer to truly understanding that mysterious space called a woman’s brain?

A WOMAN’S DNA is more than 99% similar to that of a man. It’s a tiny fraction that makes a big difference in every aspect of her development as a living, thinking, feeling, and reproductive being. That’s because that less-than-1% difference codes for a completely different hormonal reality in the female brain and, consequently, body.

But surely there is just one reality – that rational day-to-day existence all six billion plus of us find ourselves in? Not quite so, as anyone who has experienced the full Force 10 gale of a teenage crush or Force 12 fever pitch of maternal rage (e.g. mother bear protecting her cubs) can tell you.

Such observable differences between the behaviour of men and women in relationships are so vast, so worlds apart, that family therapist John Gray (author of the 1992 bestseller Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) had to place us on completely different planets to illustrate it.

Dr Louann Brizendine, author of the 2006 bestseller The Female Brain, takes a more clinical view: men and women inhabit the same planet, but our brains can inhabit different realities at different points in time.

Cloud shift vs continental shift

Both men and women react impulsively, through electrical flashes that snap and crackle up and down our nerve fibres from sensorial receptors to our brains and from our brains to our muscles and glands, eliciting quick responses.

Both men and women also react hormonally, through chemical messengers that drift in our bloodstreams to target cells and organs, eliciting physical and psychological changes both drastic and lasting.

Compared to a man, a woman can be, to paraphrase English rock band The Verve, a million different people from one day to the next. That’s because her hormonal state changes every day of the month from the onset of puberty to the end of menopause.

His, on the other hand, stays relatively stable from puberty to andropause, the male menopause equivalent. Brizendine likens a woman’s hormonal changes to daily weather changes and a man’s to the movement of tectonic-plates.

Chitra Karthigeyan, a Sunway University College psychology lecturer who focuses on neuroscience and cognition, provides an example:

“There are studies on women’s menstrual cycles that show their perceptions change at different times. During ovulation, they find a more masculine-looking face attractive because when you want to get impregnated you want a more macho mate.”

But that changes when women become pregnant. Then, women have been shown to find less masculine-looking, or more feminine-looking men attractive, because, for survival, you wouldn’t want an aggressive male around your young baby, but one who might help you with nurturing it.

The hormone responsible for creating the hunk-seeking impulses in ovulating women is none other than our familiar friend testosterone – the aggression hormone – or what Brizendine calls the rocket fuel of sex and love.

Testosterone rises during the second week of a woman’s menstrual cycle just prior to ovulation. With it rise her sexual urges, confidence and competitiveness in snagging the most macho or alpha male for her coming egg. Hence the preference for macho faces.

When she becomes pregnant, different hormones – her own and her baby’s – flood her brain, literally restructuring it. Oxytocin triggers baby lust and deep maternal feelings, progesterone induces a state of deep calm and oestrogen induces a feeling of glowing well-being.

At the same time, her foetus and placenta produce “fight-or-flight” chemicals like cortisol to prime her to remain vigilant about her safety, nutrition and surroundings. Hence the mistrust of macho males and preference for less-aggressive faces.

Don’t shoot the messengers

“If something goes wrong for a woman and you don’t know it is, blame her hormones.”

That’s a joke that gets tossed around consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Datuk Dr Nor Ashikin Mokthar’s practice every now and then. And like most jokes that persist, it contains a kernel of truth within a stereotyped shell.

Evidence of how hormonal ebbs and flows colour and dictate a woman’s perception of reality and priorities is everywhere, from the mundane to the extreme.

In France, Severe Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS) is a legally recognised cause of temporary insanity. In Britain, the courts have accepted it as a mitigating factor in cases of manslaughter, assault and arson (even Dr Nor Ashikin has had menopausal patients who come in to her practice saying: “If you don’t give me something, I am going to go home tonight and kill my husband.”)

But none of that makes a woman’s hormones some kind of shackle of biological destiny or an excuse for perennially unpredictable or psychotic behaviour.

“The fact that we are hormonal beings doesn’t mean we are lesser creatures compared to men. Nor is it something that should hold a woman back in terms of her responsibilities. It’s not like ‘I have my period now, I can’t come to work.’ It doesn’t work like that,” says Dr Nor Ashikin.

And the more we understand about our hormonal shifts, the better we can navigate through them, says Brizendine: “Understanding our innate biology empowers us to better plan our future. Understanding what is happening in our brains at each phase is an important step to controlling our destiny.”