Oral Contraceptives and Muscle Wasting

I was all for putting my teenage daughter on a contraceptive until I found out that it causes muscle wasting. Many young ladies use oral contraceptives, yet its effect on their body composition and exercise performance has not been thoroughly studied. Research has shown that contraceptive use can make your girl weak and also affect her hormone levels so that she is less healthy.
The study I am talking about is called 'Oral Contraceptive Use Impairs Muscle Gains in Young Women. It was conducted by Chang-Woock Lee and Steven E. Riechman, Department of Health and Kinesiology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX; and Mark A. Newman, Human Energy Research Laboratory, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
In this study examined generally healthy women between the ages of 18-31. The girls were assigned to two groups and both completed a 10-week program of whole-body resistance exercise training . Group One consisted of 34 women who used oral contraceptives (OC). Group Two consisted of 39 women who did not take birth control pills (non-OC). The women were encouraged to consume at least 0.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day (a third more than is called for by the U.S. government nutritional guidelines) to make sure they consumed enough calories and protein to encourage muscle growth.
The participants exercised three times per week for ten weeks under the supervision of exercise physiologists. They exercise to included chest presses, lateral pull downs, leg extensions, triceps extensions, arm curls and sit ups. Body composition was determined using hydrostatic weighing and blood samples were taken.
The researchers found that there were significant differences in lean mass gains, Those OC users had reduced DHEA hormone at the end of the training period. By contrast, the other participants' levels did not change. This could lead to muscle wasting.

In the study the researchers say they were surpised at the magnitude of differences in muscle gains between the two groups. The ones that were not on birth control had a whopping sixty percent more muscle than those who were on the oral contraceptives. That is not a small effect on the human body and something to really be noted if you or a daughter are on this type of birth control.

A lack of muscle mass can cause problems with weight in the future so I am going to encourage my daughters not to stay on oral contraceptives if they can help it and seek an alternative means of birth control. This is because lean muscle burns a lot more fat that just plain tissue. Without lean muscle the body does not burn fat efficiently and you end up being obese!

The Competitive Mom

The thing I can't stand about some of these celebrity moms is how over identified they are with their children. The child is simply not allowed to have its own identity. A good example of this is Surie Cruise. The two are parading around in identical Armani outfits and Katie recently got a haircut to match her daughter's. The problem is that in Katie's case she looks more like she is trying to compete with her child than anything. In fact in some photos it is hard to tell who looks younger, Katie or Surie?

Some moms would probably really disagree with me but I think it is a big mistake to make your kid into your twin. It demons you by making you look younger and it makes the kid wonder who the parents are. You should not try to be narcissistic with your child unless you want to develop a full-blown codependency with him or her. Even real twins are not encouraged to dress alike or wear similar haircuts these days because it is toxic psychologically. A child needs to develop his or her own sense of self.

Another example of a mom that competes with her kid is Lindsay Lohan's mom. This is a mother that dresses like her daughter, goes out to all of the same night clubs as her and basically appropriates her identity wherever possible. She also drinks a lot and is into the celerity lifestyle of all night partying so it is not surprising that Lindsay turned out to be such a lush. This type of mother daughter competition is becoming so severe in celebrity land that even Dr. Phil did a show about it.

A competitive mom usually starts showing their jealousy of their own child quite young by stealing their friends, hobbies and styles of clothing. This often extends into adolescence when flirting with the boyfriend's beco0mes an issue.

According to an episode done on the Today show this t type of syndrome is more common than we think. The one gunmanship continues into adult hood. The mother makes comments that are a stab to her daughter's heart sitting there competing for the attentions of her husband and children.

I guess the moral of this story is that if you do not have a strong personality or emotional center than you probably should not have children. The damage you can do to a daughter by being competitive with her is immense. Jennifer Aniston is also a very famous example of this and so was Anna Nicole Smith. Mothers who competed with them with the result raised both that both were dumped completely from their daughter's lives.

The key is to let your daughter be who she is going to be and not to try and control her by insisting you wear the same clothes or have the same haircut. Remember that your child is not an extension of you. She is much more than that.