May makes me giddy. On Memorial Day we did a long walk, me with my nose up in the air all the while, sniffing. My idea is (no scientific proof – it’s just my private hunch) that if we are smelling flowers all spring and summer and fall, we prime our brains to get through winter without depression.
That statement exaggerates, but it contains a kernel of truth. I put my nose into any flower I encounter (careful not to be stung by wasps and bees because I had some unfortunate wasp encounters a few seasons ago, one of which landed me in the emergency room).
Roses are already blooming for a while, earlier than usual. My David Austin rose “Mary Rose” is the sweetest thing; the old attar of roses must have smelled thus. The peonies’ fragrance lies heavily over the yard; whites have a stronger fragrance than pink and red ones. Linden trees bloom in the summer they soil cars parked underneath with sticky sap but give off an addictive sweet odor: I can’t wait for it. Snowball viburnums fill May evenings with their perfumes sometimes so cloying, it reminds me of a bordello (even if I have only a vague idea about a real brothel). Bearded iris and rhododendron mostly have to make up in showiness what they lack in scent. The little carnations look modest when you look down on them, but their peppery aroma is bold and assertive.
One plant pong stands out though - the unmistaken whiff of human semen. Wow! It comes from Viburnum dilatatum. The viburnums are mostly known for the perfumy, showy snowballs, some faintly tinged with an aurora pink. Viburnum dilatatum however means business: This sturdy bush with white feathery corymbs gives off the plain smell of sex. Isn’t that what the flowers and the bees are all about? Impregnation, reproduction.
But – why would a plant use the human odor?
I don’t know the answer, and I also don’t know which chemicals produce this familiar scent – do you know? I used to think that it was the DNA (the helical molecule that transmits our genetic heritage). But a scientist who works with it, says DNA has no odor to speak of - and he should know. Wikipedia claims some amines like putrescine, spermine, spermidine and cadaverine are responsible for semen’s unmistakable odor. Spermine and spermidine sound just like it - but putrescine and cadaverine? Don’t they sound more like emanating from dead bodies than from the fluid that carries life-giving sperm?
Whatever chemicals are involved, I remember the same smell from rhubarb in bloom (which will happen in June in my garden), and from edible chestnut in the South. In California, people complain about the fragrance of a notorious tree, called Bradford pear (Pyrus calleryana) – but I have not sniffed it personally.
Why plants are doing this, namely using OUR fragrance? Dunno. All I can say that the fragrance talks to me – meeting me at a point I understand from experience. Ultimately, of course, it means that Nature uses the same molecules in plants, animals and humans. We are not extra or outside from Nature – we are part of her. Once a scent worked for her during evolution, she recycles it. In prehistoric times, spring was also for humans the time of be fertile and to become pregnant. Having a child born in late winter made sure that the mother got still some rest in the winter camp, but then could carry her small child around (in a papoose, for instance) when she went on her next spring duty: gathering fresh shoots from emerging plants, digging roots and grubs, gathering wood for cooking.
A baby born in February could learn walking during the next winter camp, and was ready to toddle behind with the next spring move. Does Nature with her scents conspire to make us want to have intercourse at a time expedient to give a child the best possible start? Nowadays, with sheltering housing and ample food all year round, these small advantages mean nothing anymore; during those years of hunger and strive, they might have made the difference between perishing and survival.
Nowadays, most babies are born in September, which has nothing to do anymore with survival advantage – only with what we did during last Christmas holidays. I have to say that I like the idea that Nature tries to nudge me into bed with someone – right now. Preferably my husband. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
The Role of Your Neck in Urge Incontinence
February 21, 2011
As a physician I sometimes make observations that strike me as plausible – but I don’t have the wherewithal or time to scientifically check on them. Writing a blog might be one method to test an idea, and find out if others made similar observations.
So, here is my first one, pertaining to urge incontinence.
Wikipedia defines urge incontinence as “involuntary loss of urine occurring for no apparent reason while suddenly feeling the need or urge to urinate.” What really happens is the patient makes it to the stall but then goes before she has a chance to pull down her pants. Or she hears water tinkling, and tinkles herself.
The two other forms of urinary incontinence are stress incontinence and overflow incontinence. Stress incontinence comes from weak pelvic floor muscles – when you sneeze or run or laugh, you suddenly can’t hold your urine. Overflow incontinence is a constant dribbling of urine – as if the faucet can’t be shut off. All three forms are common in people of a certain age – therefore the hilarious TV ads for adult diapers. But according to my patients, incontinence is no laughing matter. People thus afflicted (women are in the majority here, probably because of what childbirth can do to one’s organs) are on the constant lookout for the nearest restroom.
The interesting part of Wikipedia’s definition of urge incontinence is “for no apparent reason.” Urge incontinence has been linked to stroke, Alzheimer’s, spina bifida, multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s – they all can lead to urge incontinence. All are neurogenic causes (stemming from the brain and the nerves) – we lump them in one group, but still they are poorly understood. And then there is “idiopathic” urge incontinence. Idiopathic means: Doctors have no clue at all. But they think it has to do with local inflammation around the bladder.
Years ago a patient with urge incontinence told me that she could make the urge disappear (at least long enough to make it to the bathroom), if she stretched her neck. For a while I was not sure if any sudden distraction – like clapping your hands or hopping up and down – would do the same. But lately I returned to my first hypothesis, namely that the stretching of the neck works best. Because I have observed that the condition occurs more often in people with less than stellar posture, especially the ones whose head is slightly bent most of the time. Standing tall and erect, at least for a moment, seems to release the urge.
As for the mechanism – are certain spinal nerve fibers pinched when the head is bent? We need more research on that.
Poor posture is more common in people with gluten intolerance and food allergies – it seems as if they don’t have the muscular strength to keep their heads straight on their shoulders – perhaps on the basis of poorly functioning mitochondria (this is all speculation on my part; I would be happily disproved).
If urge incontinence is your problem, try this out – nod a bit, stretch your neck - and write me if it works for you! Perhaps one day a peer-reviewed study will be done. Read More
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The Egg and I - Revisited
February 9, 2011
In Vermont, at our friends house, I stumbled upon an old book that had been big in the fifties – I saw my mother read it: “The Egg and I.” My mother usually was not a reader (she also was unhappy that she had given birth to this little bookish, red-haired girl that could neither dance nor sing). Our friends generously send the book home with me as a present. And what I found is that her books have aged gracefully; I am still laughing out loud.
“The Egg and I” tells how Betty MacDonald as a child bride follows her taciturn husband to the Waof no running water, neighbors miles away, cooking, baking, cleaning, washing without modern amenities – and the dreadful chore of feeding and watering the chicks every three hours around the clock, all the while bears and cougars lurking behind in the woods. The book was a huge success. Because he describes her utter loneliness with a wonderful humor. No self-pity there (or let’s call it: hilariously disguised self-pity).
By the next book “Anybody Can Do Anything,” Betty has left her chicken-farmer husband, predictably, and returns to her fun-loving but poor family: a doting mother, three sisters and a brother. This happens during the Great Depression, and they make do. They sing and scrimp and suffer, Betty as a working girl in an office – and all those pains make another sidesplitting novel.
Presently, I am reading “The Plague and I,” her third novel, about the time she is diagnosed with tuberculosis – she calls it t.b. - and spends a year in a sanatorium. Hardship and scrimping have made her sick – don’t forget, this was the time before antibiotics, and many people were coughing and hacking and spreading deadly tubercle bacilli. Only in the fifties, the first tuberculocidal (meaning: able to kill tubercle bacilli) drug arrived: INH or isoniazid. Before, they had streptomycin which could not kill the bacilli, but at least helped to wall off the disease. I remember getting twice daily a HUGE syringe full of that stuff in one of my buttocks, until I could not lie on my sides any longer. Many children and adults still died, especially in Europe after World War II, when food was scarce. Out of this gruesome material Betty MacDonald shapes another highly amusing novel. Nowadays, tuberculosis is rare> But at that time, it was a big threat.
The year I spent in a tuberculosis sanatorium as a young girl, and my experiences of the disease, went into the Nora character in “Sebastian Kneipp, Water Doctor.” In the nineteenth century, when Kneipp lived (1821 to 1897), they called the disease consumption. The list of writers, artists, composers who died of consumption seems endless: Laurence Sterne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, Paul Gauguin, Amedeo Modigliani, Frederic Chopin, Igor Stravinsky were among them.
Betty MacDonalds last novel “Onions in the Stew” shows her finally having reached some normalcy: a husband, a house, and not any longer the constant struggle for survival. Perhaps for that reason I don’t find it all that interesting – but she milks the rainy weather of the northern West Coast for all the laughs she can get out of them.
Critics have argued with her description of Native Americans in the book – and I cringed some, too. She seemed unrepentant and said: ”Drunk and dirty is drunk and dirty.” Yet in “The Plague and I” she describes lovingly Oriental and black characters – a making-good of sorts, it seems to me.
Wikipedia shows Betty MacDonald on its long list of tuberculosis victims, but most sources report that this mirthful writer died of cancer – at age 49. Nobody got as much fun out of hardship as she did. And did you know that she is also the author of the "Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle" children's series? Read More