CHIMPS DO IT TOO
CHIMPS DO IT TOO
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Welcome to the Hotflash inc free weekend newsletter, where we try and figure out this thing called perimenopause, acknowledge the multiple layers of menopause and take personal responsibility for how we navigate it to reach the other side in the best shape possible. You can upgrade and support my work here:
We got two new studies on menopause in animals this week and the headline about them in Science says it all: Menopause may be widespread among mammals, challenging famed hypothesis.
A lot of attention went to a new study out of Uganda, published in Science and covered in the New York Times, which found chimpanzees go through menopause. Then there was perhaps a more important literature review published in Cell that came about by happenstance, when a pair of researchers in Germany noticed that older mice appeared to go through menopause too. Lo and behold, when they looked at papers on 70 species, they found more than 80 percent lived beyond their last offspring.
As Mitch Leslie writes in Science: “The results are provocative, researchers say, because they don’t jibe with the leading hypotheses for evolution of menopause in humans.”
I’ll say! Looks like everything we ever thought we knew about menopause is… wrong?
This is an incredibly complex topic, but I’m going to approach it here in a common-sense, lay person way: just because it hasn’t been studied yet doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
We already had evidence that elephants and giraffes go through menopause; casual mentions of camels making the transition; experts arguing that dogs go through menopause; some suggestions that lizards do, and a pretty good body of research on the various species of whales that experience it, and what it means.
Yet we are still repeatedly told “only humans and whales go through menopause” even though as I have written about before, this is clearly not true. When Susan P Mattern addresses this subject in her excellent 2019 book Slow Moon Climbs: The Science, History and Meaning of Menopause, she points out all the reasons why people thought this and it’s quite compelling. (After reading that part recently, I thought to myself: McQueen, maybe you should give this animals-go-through-menopause-too thing a rest.) As she explains, it’s really hard to do this research, because you need literally decades to do it (one of the reasons menopause in humans is so hard to study, right?). On top of that, we are really hard on animals in this world, so it’s hard to observe them living the life they were put on this earth to live.
This wasn’t the case with the Ngogo chimps at the center of the new study, NYT columnist Carl Zimmer writes:
The Ngogo chimpanzees enjoy a particularly good life, Dr. Langergraber said. The forest is rich with food, and the leopards that once hunted the apes have largely been eradicated by humans. So it is possible that Ngogo females have a chance to get old that is not usually afforded to chimpanzees.
I’ve got a few points to make here:
In the NYT, Zimmer misses the Cell article about all the other mammals altogether. (It happens; he probably filed his column early, or something). But his article starts out with a strange supposition: “For biologists, menopause is baffling.” Probably not for all of them, Carl. For example, I had a good long chat about this with Lara Briden recently. She’s an evolutionary biologist and a naturopathic doctor, and she’s curious. Big difference.
Much of this “bafflement” might have something to do with the fact that so many people believe that animals don’t go through menopause. As Zimmer goes on to write: “The mystery has only deepened as scientists have looked for menopause in mammals in the wild and found clear evidence of it only in a few species of whales. (Carl, how can you write this? Do you have Google, on the Internet machine?) Next line: “‘It is very, very rare,’ said Kevin Langergraber, a primatologist at Arizona State University”. (Is it really now, Kevin?)
This is the danger perpetuated by the “if I don’t know about it, it’s not science it’s not happening I don’t want to hear about it I don’t believe you” crowd.
No one has been connecting the dots that are there for all to see on this in the scientific world (or in the media, for that matter). Ivana Winkler and Angela Goncalves over in Cell really seem to be the first, which is mind-boggling.
All of this is important because there’s a pretty nefarious ‘menopause maybe shouldn’t be happening’ narrative going on. You know, the ‘it started 100 years ago and we all used to die at 50’ nonsense. It’s the same crowd that likes to correlate menopause with disease, deficiency, pathology and syndrome. So, if animals go through it, it’s okay for them and not for us?
Bottom line: we can’t ask chimps or any of these other animals if they had hot flashes or itchy faces, or what their menopause was like, but we can take comfort in knowing that not only aren’t we alone, it appears that we were born to go through this, even if we don’t yet really know why.
Check out my first very crude video on the subject (they’ll get better, it’s the FFT):
Science stuff
BRAIN: Speaking of things that are hard to study, does hormone therapy prevent dementia? We are a ways off from the answer to that question, but there is hope in the form of a new meta-analysis of six clinical trials and 45 observational studies involving more than six million women published this week in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. The study comparing hormone therapy in mid versus later life suggested that the answer is yes – somewhat, probably, maybe, but future study is needed. Estrogen-only therapy taken at mid-life – in women without a uterus – was associated with a 32 percent reduction in dementia rates; estrogen plus progesterone or progestogens at mid-life (because as we know, science doesn’t really separate them out) was associated with a 23 percent reduction. Dr Lisa Mosconi, director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Program and of the Women’s Brain Initiative and an associate professor in the department of neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine, was an author on the study and has embarked on a clinical trial of estrogen therapy in mid-life women that should test some of these findings. However, since any woman with a uterus needs also to take progesterone or a progestogen to offset the estrogen, that research will be limited.
peri power tool
I’ve been to two 9D Breathwork sessions in Dubai now and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same. I mean this in the best way possible. The sessions are about two hours total, with everyone in their own little world wearing headphones and eye shades, laying on mats, wearing socks and covered in blankets. The facilitator, Dubai-based human optimization expert Arsalan Al Hashimi, thoroughly explained the process before we got started. This is an immersive aural experience which uses a range of elements including hypnotherapy, somatic healing, coaching, sound healing, breath work and binaural beats. Although it might seem “woo woo”, most of those elements are deeply rooted in science. I felt like I was on a journey but also maybe at a very intense party, surrounded by a group of people using words and sounds and emotion and connection to tell me it’s all good, it’s always been good, and it always will be good, because I’m good. There was crying, contorting and full-on screaming too. There is also an element of therapeutic touch, because Arsalan and his assistant are on hand when they see someone struggling to lay a soothing hand on a shoulder, or the top of a head, in a way that made me feel like I was being touched by an angel who could see straight into my heart. As a health and wellness journalist, I’ve tried a lot of healing modalities over the years, but nothing like this. This is the real deal, and I have felt a profound shift in myself ever since that I’m not really able to put into words. Something broke (or maybe mended?) inside me, in the best way possible. I have emerged with less fear, anxiety and unease, a significant amount of new trust, and a feeling of exponential growth. If you are on a healing journey, this is worth a try.
On the Hotflash inc podcast
Episode 98! So good: Dr Karyn Eilber is board certified in urology and female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery, as well as an associate professor teaching, training and working in administration at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She’s a mom of three, co-founder of the clean, luxury intimacy company Glissant, founding medical partner at Doctorpedia and co-author on the awesomely title book A Woman’s Guide to Her Pelvic Floor: What the F#*@ is Going On Down There?” Over her years of practice, she’s also become open to alternative approaches to medicine and all the new – and old – things that can help. “No pun intended,” she says. “You gotta think outside the box.”
Editor’s note
Forgive typos. No links. I’m super gassed today.
It’s so heavy this week.
Let’s just keep going, k?
It seems entirely reasonable to me to expect mammals to go through menopause. But human menopause is unreasonably understudied so...