Dueling Hormones

Men and women; they don't come from different planets, do they? Take a look at the physiognomy of the two sexes; we are all mammals, correct? Bipedal, with reciprocal plugs and plumbing; we even kind of resemble each other, you know, with the two eyes and one mouth; furry here and there. Whatever your religion or philosophy dictates, at some point in history there was a man and a woman, the first ones ever, looking out at the world with new, frightened eyes. The first thing we probably did was to turn to each other, warm, bipedal folks that we were. We each had two arms and ten fingers and probably the first thing we did with one and five of them was to hold another warm hand.

All the stuff about money and carpools and orthodontists and marriage counselors all came later; the first thing we had to do was survive.

While the two first folk are busy learning to survive, here is an interesting fact to ponder. Men's brains are nine percent larger than women's, while women have the higher percent of grey matter (that being central bodies of nerve cells). Men have more of the brain's white matter (that is long thin filaments that connect nerve cells). Between the two hemispheres of the brain is the corpus callosum, made of white matter, is proportionately smaller in men than women. OK, now, science lesson is over, you can wake up now, because all this stuff will attain relevance in just a second.

Until the eighth week of gestation, every human brain looks female, which is until a surge of testosterone makes it a boy. Within a year, girls and boys will usually choose toys, or will play with them in a way that in the girls is nurturing. Boys choose cars, balls and guns, preferring those which can be played with actively or hurled into space. I know, when I read that study I thought the tone was a bit snarky. But then I read something else that gave it a bit of perspective: if you do that same study with baby monkeys, the sexes chose exactly the same. I mean, if this is a genetic imperative with every male mammal, maybe we've been too hard on the boys, and here's a way to help them with their Andropause, which sounds much more distinguished than "male menopause."

Researchers are coming to the conclusion that the same herbs that women find so efficacious also fill the same bill for some men. Many of the holistic practices such as acupuncture and massage work for either sex. And anyway, in the final analysis, isn't this the best way for it to be? You shared love, marriage, carting around all that baby equipment; you shared secrets and jokes and heartaches and you can probably share each other's glasses to read a menu; I'll bet you even share each other's prescription muscle relaxants, if the truth be told.

So take a deep breath, hold hands, and walk through this stage of life like you've walked through most of the others: together!

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