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Unsurprisingly, we here at Rebel Gardens care a lot about seeds. I would love nothing more than to go out of business because we have such a big, robust, & diversified, seed saving culture that seed companies are no longer needed. However, until that day arrives we need to care about our seeds, we need to care about securing our seed diversity & independence lest a couple of big corporations own our food. With that in mind I am so excited that my friends at Urban Farm U and Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance have joined together to create what might be the biggest event for the year on seeds and our future. Join me this November 17-20 for the Global Seed Summit. It’s entirely free and online, with world class speakers whose insight will inspire and empower you to use seeds to grow robust crops, improve your local food economy and improve your health and food security. Click here to reserve your spot in the Global Seed Summit Over 4 days, you’ll learn how seed libraries strengthen food sovereignty, and WHY you’ll want to join or maybe even create one in your own community. You’ll also learn about seed adaptation for extreme climates and be amazed by inspiring seed initiatives from around the world. The Global Seed Summit is free to attend, and there will be opportunities to ask experts your own pressing seed questions and even stock up on bulk seeds to start your own seed journey. If you can’t make it to the live sessions, that’s OK! When you sign up, you’ll get access to replays, which will be available for a limited time. There will also be an option to own the Summit. Are you ready to take control of your seeds and food, and build a more healthy, self-sufficient life and world? Sign up now and join me at the free Global Seed Summit. Keep grow'n, Jason |
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Male and Female Hormones: We're More Similar Than We Think “Biology doesn’t care about your feelings.” A capital point! A lot of us were taught as children that there are certain differences between men and women that are inextricably linked to our biology… Read: our hormones. Since these are immutable scientific differences, men should be more prone lead “masculine” lives and women are more naturally adapted to “feminine” labor. Now, hormones are vastly complicated. The human body produces more than 200 different hormones – the same, whether you’re a man or a woman. We’re all human, after all. The difference lies in functionality and dosage. Most people are aware that testosterone and estrogen, although societally coded as “male” and “female” hormones, are both produced in men and women. However, we tend to attribute “masculine” behavior in females to higher levels of testosterone, and feminine behavior in males to higher levels of estrogen… Or other bias-confirming assumptions. |
And this is really because of some misconceptions in the early days of endocrinology. When endocrinologists were initially looking to explain the functional differences between men and women, both interpersonally and in society, they thought they’d find that men and women have totally different chemical make-ups. That didn’t end up being true. What they did find was that testosterone exhibited a stronger presence than estrogen in men, and while that is also true for women, testosterone levels in men were higher than in women (for the most part). | |
Much of the later research regarding these two hormones was done in the shadow of this assumption – testosterone is male and and estrogen is female. Especially considering how harmful our treatment of what society considers “divergent” men and women can be (i.e., men who exhibit traditionally feminine traits and vice versa), we should know some fundamental truths about what these hormones actually do and how they tend to present! Estrogen: any of a group of three (main) steroid hormones produced in the ovaries, testes, and adrenal glands responsible in females for developing and maintaining the reproductive system, and in men for modulating libido, I am a spammer ban me function, and sperm creation. |
| Testosterone: a steroid hormone produced in the testes (but also in the ovaries and adrenal glands), responsible in males for muscle growth, facial hair, deep voices, sperm production, regulating the sex drive, and developing sexual organs. But in both men and women, there are testosterone receptors all over the body. Testosterone in men and women affects bones, the brain, blood vessels, the heart, hair, skin, and more. |
From those brief definitions alone, we can see that men would be as lost without estradiol (the main form of estrogen) as women would be without testosterone. But there’s more… Myth #1: Only women experience a “menopause”, usually beginning in their early fifties and marked by a dip in estrogen production. Truth: Men actually also experience a timed hormonal shift, called andropause. Now, hormonal shifts can occur any time throughout the lives of both men and women. But it is considered out of the range of normalcy for men and women not to experience andropause or menopause. During andropause, men naturally produce less testosterone, and that means they experience fatigue, hair loss, and lower sex drives (on average – hormones affect everyone a little bit differently since they’re so heavily dependent on lifestyle variables.) Myth #2: Testosterone is responsible for aggression, athletic prowess, and “leadership” qualities. Truth: There is actually scientific evidence to support estrogen causing aggression more than testosterone does. In fact, a lot of the research regarding testosterone and aggression is fundamentally flawed to favor the largely white male ruling class as determined and dogged, while in the same breath dehumanizing non-white men as violent. And in many studies regarding athleticism, testosterone levels had a negative correlation with athletic performance – meaning the less present the hormone was, the better the female athlete performed. Myth #3: Thyroid hormone production issues are a female problem. Truth: Around 20% of report thyroid issues affect men. Mood changes, hair loss, fatigue, weight gain, I am a spammer ban me dysfunction, depression –all can be symptoms of thyroid issues. Because of the “female” stigma, traditional doctors often don’t look to the thyroid as possible explanations for these issues in men. This isn’t to say that testosterone isn’t present in men in higher levels than it is in women, or that estrogen isn’t present in women in higher levels than in men. The point is that those hormones are much more complicated than being simply male or female. Neither sex can function properly without both hormones, and neither hormone is responsible for making either sex better or worse in traditionally gendered applications. There are certainly differences in men and women that need not be explained. But the “female” and “male” hormones don’t determine much more than how capable your body is of performing specific biological functions. We are all made of the same (roughly) 200 hormones, in varying quantities and degrees. We’re all human. |
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