Reproductive health in a digital era
when you want to know your body and nature—not an app
by Katie Singer
Thousands of years ago, women created the first calendars by marking the moon’s phases and the days in each menstrual cycle with tallies etched into objects like bison horns. In The Lunar Calendar, publisher Nancy Passmore writes, “The origins of a wholistic view of the world lie in these early observations: we are part of nature, and nature is part of us.”
My dedication to observing nature began when I learned that rocks, glaciers, plants and menstrual cycles all evolve from cycles of heating and cooling and drying and moistening. A woman of childbearing age can chart her waking temperature and cervical fluid (signs of heating and cooling and drying and moistening) and know, every cycle, when she is fertile and infertile, whether she is ovulating, if she may have a thyroid problem and more. Fertility charts provide a way to prevent pregnancy—and, when a couple wants to conceive, to know the best days for trying.
Every woman knows plenty about her own body. With Fertility Awareness (FA—also called Natural Family Planning), knowledge of the menstrual cycle’s sequence of events expands. A woman does not need pharmaceuticals to prevent pregnancy. When problems arise, she can give doctors an introductory gauge of her health and ask informed questions.
When I taught Fertility Awareness, I met people who talked with their parents and grandparents about how they had prevented pregnancy. I heard discussions about what makes welcoming a baby easier—and more difficult. I often wondered, when a woman takes pharmaceuticals to ease menstrual cramps, prevent pregnancy, or increase chances of conceiving, what is a healthy menstrual cycle?
Indeed, I saw problems with any woman’s cycles as messengers from nature signaling a need to adjust diet, rest more, exercise differently or investigate unconscious thoughts. One third of the women in my classes did not have ovulatory cycles. After coming off of the Pill or Depo Provera, women researched ways to return to healthy cycles. Charting inspired them to eat eggs, butter and greens for breakfast; to eat less sugar and drink less alcohol—and to delight when they ovulated.
I fell in love with the menstrual cycle. I fell in love with women conducting research.
Capitalizing on reproductive health
Around 2004, when I published The Garden of Fertility, my first book about Fertility Awareness, a pharmaceutical corporation began selling a contraceptive that offered women the “convenience” of bleeding only once per season. Tech companies began selling ovulation-tracking software. Women could buy a program for their desktop computer and give it their daily temperature and cervical fluid readings. (Smartphones did not show up until 2007.) The program told users when their chances of conceiving were enhanced. A few told women when to postpone intercourse if they wanted to prevent pregnancy. (I heard about more than one unintended pregnancy after “the program told me I was not fertile.”)
The scope of any program depends on the depth and breadth of its programmer’s knowledge. Users are thereby limited to the programmer’s knowledge of the menstrual cycle.
These apps often come with a monthly fee. Users risk having their reproductive health data hacked. They do not learn about their menstrual cycles. They do not learn to question relationships between reproductive health and diets, pharmaceutical history or night lighting. They learn to read the app.
Advocating for healthy menstrual cycles
Given our diets’ decreasing nutrient-density, increasing use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and GMOs, several generations of women taking the Pill and other hormonal contraceptives (which suppress events like buildup of the uterine lining, buildup of cervical fluid, and ovulation), in utero exposure to electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from a mother’s cell phone, teenagers and adults keeping EMR-emitting cell phones near their genitals, etcetera, healthy menstrual cycles may be hard to find. What’s an advocate of healthy menstrual cycles to do?
I can plead:
Learn what happens in a healthy cycle.
Chart your cycles on paper.1 List your questions and discuss them with a Fertility Awareness teacher and others who have used their charts to prevent pregnancy. Do not use FA to prevent pregnancy until you can discern fertility from infertility even in atypical charts—and all of your questions have been answered.
Beware: if you chart your cycles on an app, hackers can access that data. If the app tells you that you’re pregnant—and then you search for information about getting an abortion, in some U.S. states, you could be subject to a criminal investigation. Acquire the skills necessary to guard your privacy.2
Whether or not you’ve got reproductive health problems, reduce EMR exposure as much as possible.3 Do not keep a cell phone in your bra, your shirt pocket (near your heart and breast) or your pants pocket (near your genitals). Use it only in speaker mode. Unless you’re using it, keep your mobile phone in airplane mode. (These guidelines apply to men, too, since studies have shown a relationship between keeping a cell phone in your jeans pocket and reduced sperm quality as well as erectile dysfunction.)
Do not sleep with a charger, phone, or computer near your bed. If you’ve got electronics on the wall behind your bed, move your furniture. Keep Wi-Fi off while you sleep. If you can (they are not always available now), get a landline, a corded telephone and wired Internet access.
Do not look at a screen while feeding a baby. Look at your baby’s eyes. Do not use chipped diapers that will message a smartphone when your baby’s diaper needs changing.
Reproductive health depends on a web of clean water and air, nutrient-dense soil and food, conflict resolution skills, competent health care providers, and economic and regulatory systems that respect nature’s limits and public health. I know of no community that has all of these things. What does that mean for reproductive health?
We can still learn nature’s way. Imagine a world wherein every woman knows how to read her fertility signals to gauge her gynecological health. She knows how to strengthen her menstrual cycles with diet, herbal remedies, daily movement (like walking) and questioning her own thinking.
This exchange with a reader seems worth posting:
Thank you, Katie. For younger women, fertility management is a huge issue. I had never heard about the impact of butter, eggs and greens for breakfast? Please tell more?
You did not mention day/night cycles and the impact of artificial lighting and shift work (including getting up multiple times per night to tend to the needs of very small children). I told my daughters to be wary of the night/lighting factor that can make ovulation unpredictable.
Travel across different time zones is also disruptive.
The cycles of other women can also have an impact. In one majority-female workplace, the women discovered that they all began their periods on the same days. A new coworker was concerned when her period arrived two weeks earlier than usual. In conversation she discovered that she appeared to have physically synchronized with her coworkers within her first two weeks of work in their company. If she and her mate had been relying on charting cycles for contraception, she would have been uncomfortably surprised.
Katie Singer responds:
Thanks for writing.
Like any part of nature, fertility cannot be managed or controlled. We can have awareness of our fertility. With awareness, we can respond to the signs that our bodies freely provide—including anovulation, low temperatures and long pre-ovulatory phases.
My article introduces a few ideas about menstrual cycles and the impacts of digitalization. My books (The Garden of Fertility and Honoring Our Cycles) each discuss night-lighting and food more comprehensively.
Given that 60-75% of women of childbearing age take hormonal birth control, I’m not sure how other women’s cycles influence co-workers. Women who take the Pill do not have menstrual cycles. A healthy cycle’s sequence of events (shedding of the uterine lining, buildup of a new lining, buildup of cervical fluid, ovulation, etc.) is suppressed. A hormonally-induced “withdrawal bleed” (common with birth control pills) is NOT a period. Further, if the menstrual cycle of a woman who does not take the Pill is influenced by a co-worker or roommate who also does not take the Pill…if she charts her cycle (and knows how to read her charts), she will not have the uncomfortable surprise you suggest. Fertility Awareness charts are based on current cycles. A charting woman is not infertile until and unless her chart proves that she is not fertile. This holds true Every cycle—regardless her previous cycles and her current exposure to night-light, co-workers, changing time zones, dietary changes, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, radiation, etc.
References
- https://www.gardenoffertility.com/fertilitycharts.shtml
- Barnett, Daly, “Security and Privacy Tips for People Seeking an Abortion,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, June 23, 2022. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/security-and-privacy-tips-people-seeking-abortion
- For resources about EMR-exposure and reproductive health:
www.bioinitiative.org
Divan, H. et. al., “Prenatal and postnatal exposure to cell phone use and behavioral problems in children,” Epidemiology, vol. 19, no. 4 (2008).
www.electronicsilentspring.com/hot-list-2/
https://ehtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Breast-Cancer-and-Cell-Phones-A-Review-of-the-Evidence.pdf
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/02/does-cell-phone-radiation-affect-mens-fertility?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=202207JulyNews&utm_medium=email&utm_content=default&emci=c45c6672-40fd-ec11-b47a-281878b83d8a&emdi=a79ebb78-40fd-ec11-b47a-281878b83d8a&ceid=1380885
Herbert, Dr. Martha and Cindy Sage, “Autism and EMF? Plausibility of a pathophysiological link- Part 1 and Part 2, “Pathophysiology, 2013.
https://microwavenews.com/news-center/de-kun-li-miscarriages;
https://c4st.org/the-joint-statement-on-pregnancy-and-wireless-radiation/
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412014001354 (About mobile phone exposure and reduced sperm motility and viability.)
Singer, Katie, An Electronic Silent Spring, Steiner Books, 2004.
Uche, Uloma, PhD., How exposure to cell phones and other technology affects reproductive health,” EWG, June 27, 2022. https://www.ewg.org/research/how-exposure-cell-phones-and-other-technology-affects-reproductive-health
Katie Singer writes about the energy, extractions, toxic waste and greenhouse gases involved in manufacturing computers, telecom infrastructure, electric vehicles and other electronic technologies. She believes that if she’s not aware that she’s part of the problem, then she can’t be part of the solution. She dreams that every smartphone user learns about the supply chain of one substance (of 1000+) in a smartphone. Her most recent book is An Electronic Silent Spring. She currently writes about nature, democracy and technology for Meer.com. Visit www.OurWeb.tech and www.ElectronicSilentSpring.com.
This article was originally published by Meer.com.