Not only can they stand and walk, they can even run!

If I believed in God, I'd feel like the apple of her eye right now. It's because of the timing.

Just as I'm succumbing to a little old-fashioned thinking and deciding maybe now, at 34 weeks pregnant, I'll stop running and stick to the bike, a friend (an angel?) sends me this article in the USA Today about a woman who's also 34 weeks pregnant:

"Pregnant runner finishes 800 meters at U.S. nationals"

Alysia Montano just doing her thing, which happens to also show the world what pregnancy can be. (source)

She's still running like a cheetah.

And guess what? Cheetahs get pregnant too! Always have!

And you know what? Gazelles get pregnant too! Always have!

So whether you see hominins as the predators or the prey at any given time in human evolution, the pregnant ones, at least in our direct lineage, were obviously doing all right. (Flashback to similar thinking, here.)

There's footage of Montano on the move, and an interview about it all at ESPN. Those questions reflect some old-fashioned thinking that I wish the interviewer had explicitly distanced herself from. That's because we're in the future now. Women aren't asked to stop being active, strong humans just because they're growing a kid. In fact, those of us who are active and who have good healthcare and routine pregnancy check-ups are encouraged by our midwives and doctors to stay active, to stay fit throughout pregnancy.

Society expects non-pregnant women to do the same. Society also expects kids growing outside the womb to do the same. Is any of that any different? Do people actually think that all their female ancestors sat on ass while pregnant?

I guess some people don't think. Or maybe they haven't had a rich enough education in both history and natural history to give them the context for thinking about this. Maybe they take a doctor's (god's?) or a scientist's (god's) Word at any given moment, no matter how many decades ago it was uttered, as scripture, forever and ever amen. Especially when it comes to babies, those little miracles.

There are so many of us who've spent our entire lives being active, and as a result are pretty strong human beings. This goes for women who have no choice and must labor physically during their lives to stay alive and well and to keep their families alive and well. But this also goes for women in places like the U.S. where many women have had the opportunity to be athletes as little girls and throughout their lives.

Many of us products of Title IX are reproducing and we sure as hell aren't going to have healthy pregnancies being inactive, being someone else for nine months.

I hope every woman watches Montano and takes inspiration from her if she'd like to. And that might include getting a new and informed, dare I say futuristic, doctor if her current one's holding her back.

I also hope people see Montano running strongly (and disgustingly fast) so that they'll maybe think twice before admonishing a pregnant stranger for lifting that bag of dog food. Or for tsking at her for hiking on any inclines because she should know better and should stick to the flat paths congested with strollers and flip-floppers instead. 

Me, 32 weeks pregnant. On top of Mt. Sargent, Acadia National Park.

To the women and men of our society who have culturally limited expectations of the female body: Watch this video of Montano and then think, react, and act accordingly--with that much broader picture of "woman"--to the rest of us, pregnant or not.

We're everywhere, us active pregnant ladies, but it's something else to see such a prominent one put herself out there like Alysia Montano did. I hope that her two swift laps around that track will go a long way toward expanding minds about expanding uteruses.  

Runner's high: a healthy dose of skepticism

Ultramarathoner

Everyone knows what causes "runner's high", right?  It's endorphins.  We know that because someone reported increased levels of endorphins in a runner's blood after a long run sometime in the 80's.  Case closed.

Or not.  A post by Gretchen Reynolds at the Well blog in the NYTimes points out that endorphins don't cross the blood brain barrier, so can't be responsible for the euphoria of a good run.  Instead, neuroscientists are talking now about the 'endocannabinoid system', a neurochemical pathway in the brain, with receptors elsewhere in the body, that is involved in the reduction of pain and anxiety.

An experiment in 2003 found increased levels of endocannabinoid molecules in the blood of student subjects after doing hard exercise. 

The endocannabinoid system was first mapped some years before that, when scientists set out to determine just how cannabis, a k a marijuana, acts upon the body. They found that a widespread group of receptors, clustered in the brain but also found elsewhere in the body, allow the active ingredient in marijuana to bind to the nervous system and set off reactions that reduce pain and anxiety and produce a floaty, free-form sense of well-being. Even more intriguing, the researchers found that with the right stimuli, the body creates its own cannabinoids (the endocannabinoids). These cannabinoids are composed of molecules known as lipids, which are small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier, so cannabinoids found in the blood after exercise could be affecting the brain.

And new research is showing that, for example, mice love to exercise, and choose to do so -- until their endocannabinoid system is knocked out.  So indications are good that this is in fact the system that gets people addicted to running.  

We were interested in the report of all this in the Times, though, because it was written in a way that hit many of the buttons we try to hit here on MT. 

Whether this accumulating new science establishes, or ever can establish, definitively, that endocannabinoids are behind runner’s high, is uncertain. As Francis Chaouloff, a researcher at the University of Bordeaux in France and lead author of the genetically modified mouse study, pointed out in an e-mail, rodents, although fine models for studying endocannabinoid action, “do not fill questionnaires to express their feelings related to running,” and runners’ high is a subjective human experience.

First, a canonical belief was challenged -- endorphins cause runner's high.  And, a new explanation was offered based on what seems to be solid experimental evidence that makes sense -- it's endocannabinoids.  But, Reynolds cautions that we still don't know for certain that endocannabinoids cause runner's high, we may never know for certain, and we certainly can't know for certain from studying mice. But it's an intriguing possibility.

We love a healthy dose of skepticism -- or reality -- mixed in with some promising research.