Bridgerton with My 10-Year-Old, Lady Whistledown Might Not Approve
Last week I joyfully watched Donald Trump leave the White House for the last time, Joe Biden promise to rescue our democracy in a moving inaugural address, and our first female VP—a Black and Indian woman—swear in a Latino, a Black man, and a Jewish man to the Senate. I also watched Bridgerton. With my 10-year-old. It was her idea, and she never wants to watch anything with me. I couldn’t say no despite having heard about the many steamy sex scenes. I suppose it wasn’t exactly age appropriate, but it worked. She was far more interested in the identity of Mrs. Whistledown than she was in the romance between Daphne and the Duke, and she tended to run out of the room or look down at her phone when things got hot and heavy. We had a really good time guessing what was coming next, and some pretty interesting conversations about the value of women and why everyone was so obsessed with virginity. She was horrified by the idea that women were controlled by the men in their lives (and could be given to a troll of a man by their brother), that they could not own (or inherit) property, and that anyone would consider a woman ruined because she’d been caught in one passionate kiss. (The duel didn’t seem to faze her, but she’s a big Hamilton fan so she’s familiar with macho gun battles.) I got to explain that virginity isn’t a thing—it’s a concept that is still used to shame some women today. And then we talked fashion and she started searching Amazon for an empire-waisted, glittery, light blue frock, preferably with a small train. She hasn’t found the one yet but has already started doing the chores it will take her to earn it. I don’t know about anyone else, but I consider this all a huge parenting win.
Breath or Spit: New Technologies Promise Easier Ways to Track Fertility
The burden of careful cycle tracking is shared by those who want to pinpoint ovulation because they are trying to get pregnant and those who really don’t want to get pregnant but are relying on carefully timed abstinence rather than condoms or birth control pills. Either way, it takes a lot of effort—you must follow your periods closely, take your basal body temperature before getting out of bed each morning, and check the consistency of your cervical mucus (there it is again). Ovulation kits can do some of the work for those trying to get pregnant, but they require peeing on a stick every morning or at least every morning near the middle of your cycle. Two new technologies are designed to make tracking easier and more precise.
Eli is a small device (about the size of a portable speaker) that measures a person’s hormone levels from a saliva sample. Users just spit in a cartridge and insert it into the device each day. Eli is connected to an app that tracks hormone variations and tells users their precise fertile days. Though the manufacturer does not specify which hormones the device tracks, most ovulation tests look for luteinizing hormone (LH) which surges before ovulation. Eli has not yet launched but it is being marketed to both those who want to get pregnant and those who want to avoid it.
While we might expect an ovulation tracker to rely on hormones, another new entry to the market uses entirely different technology—a breathalyzer. Breathe ilo, which is only available in the United Kingdom and European Union as of now, is a Bluetooth-enabled device that measures CO2 levels in a person’s breath. Though it sounds bizarre, research has shown that women release different amounts of CO2 at different stages of their cycles. Exact levels vary from person to person but consistently drop about 4-5 day before ovulation. If users breathe into the device every day, the app can establish their personal baseline and notify them when it drops indicating they are about to ovulate. According to the manufacturer, Carbomed Medical Solutions, the app becomes more accurate as it collects data over numerous cycles. Carbomed says on its website that on average Breathe ilo users became pregnant after 3 months (though it doesn’t note whether this is actually faster than people using other methods of ovulation tracking).
A spokesperson for the company did note that more research is needed before the device can be used by women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and other reproductive health issues.
I remember when I was trying to get pregnant the first time. I tried a standard pee-on-a-stick ovulation kit, but the package only came with seven sticks and instructions to use them for the week before you expected to ovulate. In a typical 28-day cycle, ovulation tends to happen around day 14, but my cycles at the time were anywhere from 32 to 50 days long, so I couldn’t even figure out what day to start peeing. This was long before smart phones or Bluetooth-anything, but I would have loved an easier, more reliable method.
STI Rates Among MSM Did Not Change Before and After PrEP
There is a fear that people taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention will be at increased risk of other STIs because they will engage in more condomless sex. A new study that followed a group of men who have sex with men (MSM) before and after they started PrEP shows that this was not the case, though the men did continue to have high rates of other STIs.
Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia conducted a before-and-after analysis of data on HIV-negative men who started PrEP between 2015 and 2018 at clinics across the country. To be included in the analysis, men must have been tested for STIs at least twice in the year before they started PrEP and again while on PrEP. Ultimately, the study looked at just over 2,400 men.
The analysis found that 50% of the men had tested positive for an STI other than HIV—chlamydia, gonorrhea, or syphilis—in the year prior to starting PrEP and 52% of the men tested positive for one of these STIs in the year after starting PrEP. This 2% difference was not statistically significant and could be explained by an overall increase in STI rates in Australia during that time. The study also found no change in the proportion of men reporting condomless sex after they started PrEP.
These findings suggest that the widespread roll out of PrEP in Australia is not responsible for rising STI rates in the country. On the one hand, this is excellent news. PrEP is an important prevention tool—it has been found to reduce the risk of HIV by 99% if taken as prescribed—and it is good to know that it does not raise rates of condomless sex or other STIs in MSM. That said, these men had very high rates of STIs both before and after starting PrEP and other interventions are clearly needed to bring these rates down.
Is Masturbation the Key to Weight Loss? A Playboy Model Says It’s Her Secret
It’s still January which means my social media feeds are littered with ads for exercise apps and diet plans along with complaints from friends struggling with the last weeks of Whole 30. I’ve already abandoned the fantasy of getting on my new rowing machine every day this year (though I’m proud of my 10-day streak). Exercising regularly is tough stuff, unless Playboy Model, Nathali Pereira, is right and the key to the perennial new year/new you quest is as simple as masturbating. A lot.
Pereira posted some pictures of herself along with claims that she burns 2,000 calories a week masturbating. She acknowledged that one does have to work for this kind of calorie-burning effect: “We managed to lose weight because we raised our heart rate for an extended period of time, so it’s not enough to have just 3 minutes of masturbation, but much more.”
How much more is actually an age-old question. Many scientists and owners of fitness trackers have tried to figure out just how many calories masturbation burns—possibly because the lab time is enjoyable—but there’s still no definitive answer. The best guess is that during rigorous sex, women burn about three calories a minute, but masturbation is often less physically demanding so it may burn fewer calories.
Even if we assume high-intensity wanking and use the three-calorie estimate, it would take over 11 hours of masturbation per week to burn 2,000 calories. (I’ve gotten very good at 5th grade math during this virtual school year and did that word problem myself.) Timing consuming, yes, but not impossible.