To think the menopause makes no sense evolutionarily speaking

[CurdinHenry]

Sure maybe it makes sense that women evolve into a new phase of wisdom and a role that's different from child having and of that. But how come we all seem to run out of the basic chemicals needed to keep our pelvic floor from collapsing? How can we be evolved to be almost certain to get very unwell across time (in our longer years on this planet) if we don't take supplements that have only existed for less than 100 years????

Feel a bit stressed about it.

All mammals, apart from humans and four whale species die shortly after losing the ability to reproduce. We evolved to live for decades after, because our young as so vulnerable and high needs that they (up until very recently) needed multiple related women as caregivers in order to have strong survival rates.

It makes perfect evolutionary sense. If we can still have babies, we won't dedicate ourselves to our children's babies. We evolved to do exactly what it takes to secure our species survival and success, not to have personal satisfaction.

Theres a theory that its because of the knowledge.
Grandma knows where the best feeding spots are and remembers how to get there 🥰

If a heritable mutation arose, that meant a woman didn’t have the hormonal shutdown and kept ovulating for 80 years, would her offspring out-compete other people and take over the world during the following 200,000 years?

I love narwals! I can only ever think of them fondly after that silly song on YouTube about them (can't remember who it is by) with the line "Swimming through the ocean, Causing a commotion!" 😆

this is incorrect. As an MA student of archaeology - if you make it through your first 5 years, you are likely, as a woman, certainly in older hunter gatherer/ early farming to live a fairly long life with a decent chunk after menopause. Like whales, the matriarch used to be the head of the clan, usually arranged around the female line. The males went off to other tribes and then often returned after doing a bit of fathering. The older women knew where the best hunting and gathering sites were, and were able to pass down oral tradition.
The average age is affected mathematically by all these baby and infant deaths. We were generally fit and healthy. Osteoarchaeological records suggest there was not so much difference between men and women at this point, and a female during the paleolithic had 30% greater upper body strength compared to an elite female rower today. The change in our physiology mainly seems to have come about with the rise of patriarchy and female 'ownership' from around 5000BC onwards - we have effectively been bred to be smaller and weaker than our prehistoric counterparts.

Don’t be so literal !!!!

aging /
deterioration accelerates at menopause!!

Fascinating @nettletea!

I studied archaeology of the Celts at university. We looked at grave stats and peak age of death for women was 16 - 22 (ish). Presumably most died in childbirth. In those days you were v lucky to even make it to 40. Menopause wouldn’t have been a thing.

You’re clearly a more superior human being then. We’ve all done it wrong.

Well done you 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 have a medal 🏅

she’s not superhuman

shes a women who received the correct information at the right time and acted upon it

and get off your arrogant high horse because that’s part of the problem that the UK faces - a complete disrespect for knowledge and authority that means people have to find out for themselves when it’s too late

i went to all my post natal exercise classes and listened to what was said and I was probably only one of the 12 who did.

Unless OP is very young for menopause those classes and that advice was out there for her too- I am suspecting much has now been cut ?

promoting the message that it’s inevitable will mean that young women today are misinformed and will therefore not bother protect themselves

yes some people will always be unlucky but the huge numbers of UK women with such problems is a systematic failure , not nature

Very few animals have menopause. Killer whales are one. They are matriarchal and the grandmother's pass on knowledge.

That was average life expectancy - hugely dragged down by infant mortality and death in childbirth. Plenty of women did survive well beyond menopause age.

Our appendix does indeed serve a function - it's a little storehouse for our gut biome, and if that is wiped out due to a gastric infection, it's repopulated from the appendix.

The menopause was a perfect way to make sure sure grandmothers were around to take care of children in hunter gatherer societies. It's absolutely an evolutionary advantage.

😂

Evolution is natures way of accelerating the second law of thermodynamics

Oh for heavens sake, the lack of numeracy is ridiculous.

No, they didn't. They died in huge numbers in infancy, but after that the life expectancy was 60s and 70s.

The exception to that was the risk of women dying in childbirth.

In the past people weren't all dropping dead at 40. It's just an average when you include high infant mortality.

IMO there's far too strong a narrative at the moment that menopause is a total disaster, that you basically fall apart after menopause etc etc. My mum, her mother and her four sisters all thrived after menopause - even though they were all fertile and had babies easily they all had reproductive issues (heavy periods, fibroids, endo) and menopause was an absolute gift to all of them. I was joking with her recently that they all aged backwards - if you look at pictures of them in their 40s and again in their 60s it's bizarre, they look so much better at the older age. To be clear not a single one has used botox or had any treatments or surgeries, it's just that the post-menopausal hormone mix suits them far better. My 68 year old aunt swims every day and is fitter than anyone I know. No one has continence problems - in fact, my 70 year old mum makes fun of how often I go to the toilet! The one thing they struggle with is bone density but they're all on it and they've all managed to get it under control. I'm in early peri at the moment and I'm really hoping the same is true for me, but who knows.

Menopause can and does create a lot of problems for women but it isn't always an unmitigated disaster. Many women feel better in menopause than they ever have.

Ye it’s exactly this isn’t it, in evolutionary terms once you lose your ability to procreate you’ve no biological use so whether you are alive or dead doesn’t matter to anyone! We are all very unimportant in the scheme of things.

From an evolutionary point of view, most women wouldn't live long enough to see menopause. If they did, it would have been a terrible idea for them to have a baby as they'd already be decrepit by caveman standards and probably with multiple untreated health conditions and very unlikely to live long enough to raise a child - so I guess menopause is a kind of failsafe to keep those women who live long enough from having more children. The affect that the change in those hormones has on our bodies is just a side effect that doesn't matter from an evolutionary perspective, I guess.

in evolutionary terms once you lose your ability to procreate you’ve no biological use

I think it's more nuanced than that. Evolution is about trying to propagate genes. Procreation may not be the only factor in that dynamic. Even if you take the fact that a mother has to survive to at least feed a baby until weaning.

Without menopausal women, child rearing and doing the "gathering" in hunter-gathering, humans would look very different as a species.

It can if that general good health means their grandchildren get better care and hence survive at a higher rate and go on to reproduce. But I guess it's not the strongest of effects.

I’m 50 - post natal exercise classes definitely not a thing when I had my children (either NHS or private)

Happy to be corrected and thank you for your input. I’m off to do a bit more reading of the thread, the bits I have read are fascinating!

I’m more interested in why some women have a horrific time with menopause and others sail through it, and what younger women (like me) can do, if anything, to maximise our chances of being in the latter group.