Happy V-Day: Tantra 101 for Couples

 

Thought I'd post an excellent "how-to" from the Yoga Journal. I like that these suggestions don't require a lot of energy or dressing up in some crazy French Maid costume. Just old-fashioned connection, not too woo-woo ... check it out.

SSRI Associated with Increased Breast Cancer

Yesterday's British Medical Journal published a scary article that demonstrates a long-held concern that SSRIs interfere with the breast cancer prevention of tamoxifen. "Paroxetine (Paxil) use during tamoxifen treatment is associated with an increased risk of death from breast cancer, supporting the hypothesis that paroxetine can reduce or abolish the benefit of tamoxifen in women with breast cancer." The body of evidence associated with the adverse effects of SSRIs is increasing to the point where I only recommend them if you have SEVERE depression.

Here's the whole abstract:

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and breast cancer mortality in women receiving tamoxifen: a population based cohort study

Catherine M Kelly, medical oncology fellow 1,5, David N Juurlink, division head, clinical pharmacology1,2,3,4,5,7, Tara Gomes, epidemiologist7, Minh Duong-Hua, analyst6, Kathleen I Pritchard, professor1,2,3,5, Peter C Austin, senior statistician5,7, Lawrence F Paszat, senior scientist1,2,3,5,7

1 Department of Medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Canada, 2 Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto,, 3 Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, 4 Department of Pediatrics, University of Toronto, 5 Department of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation, University of Toronto, 6 Canadian Institute for Health Information, Toronto, 7 The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Ontario, Canada

Correspondence to: D Juurlink, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4N 3M5 dnj@ices.on.ca

Objective To characterise whether some selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants reduce tamoxifen’s effectiveness by inhibiting its bioactivation by cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6).
Design Population based cohort study.


Participants Women living in Ontario aged 66 years or older treated with tamoxifen for breast cancer between 1993 and 2005 who had overlapping treatment with a single SSRI.

Main outcome measures Risk of death from breast cancer after completion of tamoxifen treatment, as a function of the proportion of time on tamoxifen during which each SSRI had been co-prescribed.

Results Of 2430 women treated with tamoxifen and a single SSRI, 374 (15.4%) died of breast cancer during follow-up (mean follow-up 2.38 years, SD 2.59). After adjustment for age, duration of tamoxifen treatment, and other potential confounders, absolute increases of 25%, 50%, and 75% in the proportion of time on tamoxifen with overlapping use of paroxetine (an irreversible inhibitor of CYP2D6) were associated with 24%, 54%, and 91% increases in the risk of death from breast cancer, respectively (P<0.05 for each comparison). By contrast, no such risk was seen with other antidepressants. We estimate that use of paroxetine for 41% of tamoxifen treatment (the median overlap in our sample) would result in one additional breast cancer death within five years of cessation of tamoxifen for every 19.7 (95% confidence interval 12.5 to 46.3) patients so treated; the risk with more extensive overlap would be greater.

Conclusion Paroxetine use during tamoxifen treatment is associated with an increased risk of death from breast cancer, supporting the hypothesis that paroxetine can reduce or abolish the benefit of tamoxifen in women with breast cancer.

Open to Grace

When I first became a student of yoga over 20 years ago, I struggled first with my mind. I considered yoga to be the best method I had encountered for retraining the mind. My untrained mind is best summed up by local writer Annie Lamott: “My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”

More recently, I’m learning a new way to hold the mind, a more loving way, based on the ancient wisdom of Tantra, which to me is based on our intrinsic goodness or inner divinity. Tantric scholars propose that ego, desire, and even mind are vehicles—rather than obstacles—to one's highest Self.

Last month I had the supreme pleasure of taking my first workshop with a gifted Tantric scholar and yoga teacher, Sianna Sherman. She is superb professor of Anusara Yoga, which was founded by John Friend in 1997 and is the fastest growing segment of yoga. Sianna is one of his first disciples. Anusara is based on the heart-opening ideas of Tantra. In our workshop, she described the First Principle of Anusara: Opening to Grace.

While in Sianna’s workshop, I of course was so deeply in the now that I can’t recall exactly what she said, but I found a recent interview with Sianna by Ginger Coy.

Here is an excerpt:

The First Principle of Anusara is, according to Sianna, about “allowing ourselves to be become more sensitive, more spacious, more with attunement, more listening, more present with however something is in the moment, and allowing ourselves to feel compassion and love in ways that we’re connected to ourselves and more than just ourselves in the moment, connected to the bigger picture we like to say in Anusara.”

“When I would be inside a situation in my life that was challenging for me, I would actually ask myself, what does Open to Grace look like right now in this moment in this situation, when I’m off my yoga mat, and here I am feeling all these challenges or intensities, or something that is pulling me off-center in a big way, and I started really asking the question, what does Opening to Grace look like right now in this moment and what would happen was an immediate bonding with a greater sense of love and self-love inside myself.”

John Friend adds: “When we get out of alignment with Spirit and we try to make or expect life to be something different than it really is, suffering happens. We all experience pain and suffering, but it is not the quintessential nature of life. Just because the earth turns away from the sun and night occurs doesn't mean that the sun isn't always shining. It might be hard to see sometimes, but goodness and divine beauty can always be found if you adjust your vision just right.”

Wishing you attunement, connection to your intrinsic divinity and “just right” vision this Valentine’s Day. Open your heart, open to grace, just like Sianna (below) for Valentine's Day.

Trudie Styler: First Celebrity Cover of YJ

 

Is Trudie the Real Deal?

Rest, Wisdom, Delight

Today I take my inspiration from Thomas Merton, a 20th century American poet, activist, Trappist monk and Catholic writer.

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.”

This is my resilience message for today.

10x10: Dr Northrup's Top 10 Women's Health Findings: 2000-2010

 

Dr. Christiane Northrup MD is a mentor of mine. She is a pioneering gynecologist who attunes to women's wisdom underlying the issues we face. She caught my attention on PBS when I was in college with her focus on empowering women during surgery to get regional anesthesia, so they could be awake during a hysterectomy and participate in the decision-making, rather than anesthestetized objects on a table.

Here is a link to Dr. Christiane Northrup's top 10 findings in Women's Health over the past decade, complete with details. A summary:

1. End of One-Size Fits-All Hormone Therapy
2. Fetal Monitoring Doesn’t Improve Pregnancy Outcomes
3. Early Detection of Breast Cancer is an Imperfect Solution
4. Fish Oil Proven Protective Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt 
5. Optimal Vitamin D Level is Critical for Robust Health
6. Stem Cells Discovered in Menstrual Blood
7. Natural Progesterone Holds Great Promise for Heart Health
8. Iodine Reduces Breast Pain
9. Breast is Still Best
10. Educating Girls is the Key to Planetary Health

Thrilled 2B Teaching Yoga for Mood Today

I've been preparing for months for our "Yoga for Mood" workshop today at Yoga Kula in Berkeley. Looks like we'll have a full house of women, from beginner yoga practitioners to serious yoginis, and I'm deeply honored by the robust registration. We'll be covering PMS, post-partum depression, seasonal affect disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety and garden-variety mood swings. The focus is on natural solutions and the use of yoga to buffer mood.

There's still room! Register right here online or join us today at 1:30pm. We also have two more workshops coming up at Yoga Kula and another next month at the Claremont Resort in Berkeley. Click here for more details.

As I refining the sequence this morning at 6am by the fire in my home, I was reflecting on the integration of Eastern traditions with the wisdom of our Western experience, and how this integration may positively impact mood. In Yoga, as in most ancient Eastern traditions, we learn about unconditioned awareness. We learn about how to use meditative practice and direct the flow of prana to awaken. We change long-standing and stuck neural pathways, and create new neural networks that support our awakening to True Self.

Our Western tradition regarding psychology and mood is completely different: here we use therapy and other techniques to individuate, to understand more fully our drives, conflicts, interpersonal dynamics and learned habits, from childhood to later life.

Yet these two systems are complementary and even interdependent. One of my teachers, Dr. John Welwood, PhD, describes the interplay of the Eastern and Western systems as similar to the in and out breath. Western is the "in" breath: focus on form, individuation; Eastern is the "out" breath: letting go of form, history, individual characteristics in the service of the greater Self. We start the integration with the slow, directed breath of lengthening the inhale and exhale.

Namaste.