I have noticed for some time now, that each month, or there about, I suffer from what seems like a mild case of depression. I feel low, lethargic, irritable and often blow things out of proportion similar to when people often over react when they are tired. In fact all I want to do when I get home is lie down and sleep. I have a massive sense of ‘whats the point!’ This is very unlike me or how I feel at most other times.

This lasts for a few days for me. When it starts I have no warning or sense that its coming. Im just in it and being reactive to its effects. It stops slightly differently because I can almost feel the shift and I become more alert, energetic and am back on track, as though I had lost reception for a while, before getting a full signal back again days later.

I had thought this was just me and never really mentioned it, but this week it happened and lasted about four days this time and then in the afternoon shifted and I was back and focused. I mentioned it to my house mate and she said that men have emotional cycles and this is what was going on.

Well on further research it appears that there is evidence to prove this theory and the symptoms fit the bill.

I will take note of the date and see if the same thing happens in a four to six week cycle as suggested.

Below is some more information regarding this if its something that you have experienced or are interested in knowing more about.

 by Paul Aitken:

The idea that men experience a monthly cycle is not new. As early as the 17th century, the Italian physician Santorio Sanctorius, after carefully measuring the weight of his body, along with it’s various excretions (Santorio was nothing if not thorough), discovered a monthly cycle in body weight of approximately two pounds. He noted that the peak of the cycle was accompanied by feelings of heaviness and lassitude.In later centuries there were various attempts to establish the existence of a male cycle. The late decades of the 19th century were a particularly fruitful period for some reason, with a number of authors (Gall, Stephenson and Campbell, if you must know) finding evidence for monthly fluctuations in mood, energy and sex drive. Later in 1929, a study found that men have emotional cycles of about one-month to six-weeks in length (as my friend had suggested). During the low period of the cycle, men were reported to feel apathetic and indifferent. During the high period they reported more energy, a greater sense of well-being, and lower body weight.

There is a male period, but of course it’s nothing like that of the female menstrual cycle in the sense that they don’t have the physical attributes of a female period, but males experience hormonal shifts and imbalances during the month. A rise of testosterone which can lead to moodiness, increased sexual arousal, depression, etc. This is what we call the Irritable Male Syndrome (IMS). IMS is more similar to Menopause, but still proof that men have cycles. According to psychotherapist Jed Diamond in an article on MediniceNet.com IMS can be defined as:

a state of hypersensitivity, frustration, anxiety, and anger that occurs in males and is associated with biochemical changes, hormonal fluctuations, stress, and loss of male identity.

Diamond furthers that men are as hormonal as women:

… In fact, men have a number of hormonal cycles:

1) Men’s testosterone, for instance, varies and goes up and down four or five times an hour.
2) There are daily cycles with testosterone being higher in the morning and lower at night.
3) Men have a monthly hormonal cycle that is unique to each man, but men can actually track their moods and recognize they are related to hormonal changes through the month.
4) We know that there are seasonal cycles with testosterone higher in November and lower in April.
5) We know about hormonal cycles with males during adolescence, but also the years between 40 and 55 have what we call male menopause or Andropause.
6) Finally, we know there are hormonal changes in men going through IMS, related to stress in a man’s life.

ORANGE AND ALMOND CAKE FOR THE PALEO (Gabriel diet)

Serves:8

Prep time:20 minutes

 Cooking time:1 hour 15 minutes

 Ingredients:

2 small oranges (360g)

1 ½ cups (240g) almonds

½ cup xylitol

6 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method:

Grease 20cm square cake tin, lining base with baking paper.

Place entire oranges in saucepan. Cover them with water and bring to the boil. Once boiling, reduce

heat to allow to simmer for approximately 30 minutes or until skin has softened. Remove from water and allow to cool.

Pre-heat oven to 150°C (302°F).

Blend almonds in food processor until coarsely chopped. Remove from food processor and set aside.

In food processor, place quartered oranges. Blend until smooth. With motor running at low speed add

eggs one at a time. Add almonds, xylitol and vanilla essence and continue to mix until combined.

Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake in oven for approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes or until cooked through.

This is a concept I will talk about again from my own experience, but for now I just wanted to give food for thought.

This is about the Buddhist notion of interdependent arising. Thich Nat Hanh has a well-known teaching about this he calls “interbeing”:

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.

“If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.” (From Peace is in Every Step.)

If all phenomena arise together in a mutually interdependent web of cause and effect, then we are not Super Source after all. You may be, as Werner said, “God in your universe,” and so am I. But who’s creating my reality when I share it with countless sentient beings who are likewise God in our shared universe?

From this standpoint, reality is seen as a co-creation of everyone, everything, everywhere, since beginningless time, interdependently co-creating the Great Mystery in which we all find ourselves.

If I don’t manage to fly, someone else will.

The spirit wants only that there be flying.

As for who happens to do it, in that

it has only a passing interest.

Rainer Maria Rilke

My father ran a successful aquatic shop several years ago but has since retired but is still in demand for his installations of fish tanks at many establishments. I have mentioned before that I get my inspiration or insights from many different sources and this is an example of finding inspiration from unusual sources. This is an extract taken from one of my fathers aquatic books.

In the book the author, Takashi Amano, who is a world authority in Aquarium design tells of a story not dissimilar to so many successful people regarding their many failures in there field of expertise, which has led them to become world experts.

Its one of those paradoxes that we have to fail in order to succeed.

Please enjoy.

 “My mother died at age 62 of a blood clot to her brain.

Her life was one of constant work and little play, but she truly loved the work of raising produce on the family farm.

She was proud of her eggplants and tomatoes, and even as a child I could tell hers where better than most. Like most farmers in those days she didn’t go to school, but she observed the crops everyday and recorded her observations in a college notebook.

In those days, if there was a dry spell or heavy rains, there would always be losses from diseased or stunted growth but ours would we never failed to reap a decent harvest at our farm.

The neighbors would come around asking for my mothers “secret”, but they always went home disappointed. Oh, she tried to teach them, but she couldn’t explain in an afternoon what it took years of patience to understand.

 Success only needs the awareness of things that other people take for granted.

 My mother realized this.

 In time I did my own research on aquatic plants, and learned some secrets myself.

I think that it is nearly impossible for me to explain them all. I could explain 90% with scientific theory, but the remaining 10% is based on many years of experience and is a kind of intuition that I rely on to help me make decisions under ever changing conditions.

 In Japanese there is a word I often use, Kandokoro, which means the crucial point that calls for intuition. My intuition is my guide at those key points when answers are not clear.

Everyone has intuition, some more than others, usually depending on the amount of experience they have. I’ve spent many years trying to create the perfect plant aquarium and im still failing.

Of course, the plants don’t die anymore, but I cannot count the number of times I mistook the amount of water to add, or put to much CO2 and awoke the next morning to find all the fishes floating at the surface. But my intuition grew.

When a customer compliments my work, I tell them that while it is true that I raise beautiful aquatic plants now, no one has created more failures again and again more than I have.

 Most people do not repeat the same failures, but not me.

 But I can be glad for one thing, and that is that I always keep notes.

When I screw up the same thing a number of different ways, then they are at least all good experiences and I gain a lot of practical knowledge from them.

Thinking back now, so many plants have died by my hands that it is tragic, but something of them survives in me, in my intuition.

 And in my notebooks, in the same way, a part of my mother lives on.”