“la ménopause” a word invented by male French doctors over two hundred years ago.
So what is yet another male doing talking about women’s experiences? Some of you may be fed up with male MDs telling you how you feel. Many MDs project an arrogant, self important attitude. After all, they endured a long and expensive education to give them the right to tell you their opinions (while charging you excessively for their time). My medical education only cost me about $50,000 so perhaps I’m not as arrogant as an MD often is.
Most of my healthcare clients are female. Why? Well, blame it on the stereotype that “men don’t ask for directions”. Women are more open to seeking opinions and help from other people.
A friend sent me a link to a podcast with the rather click baity:
"Menopause is a scam.
It doesn’t even exist in other cultures.
They don’t even have a word for it."
So I consulted with a friend from an Eastern European heritage (thanks Visceral Adventure) and she replied “Bulgarians certainly have a word for it. And so do Serbs and Poles and Russians.” which confirmed my “click bait” expectations of the podcast claims.
I’ve been helping clients with menopause issues for fifteen years now. Certainly it’s clear to me that with the passing of years we encounter health issues. Men do too!
Being an exceptionally curious person, I did a bit of research and found a paper published in 2019 by Alison Moore in the Journal of Evolution and Health. She starts with the statement and question “The concept of menopause appears only to be found in the modern world. Is menopause then purely a cultural invention?”
Alison discusses a lot of thoughts on this subject and points out that “la ménopause” was originally intended to insist that menopause was a normal phenomenon of aging, but industrial medicine of course latched onto it and hyped the negative aspects which of course must be treated!
Alison did a fair amount of research which points to the real problems being our modern lifestyles (which started long ago for nobles and royalty) which include low physical activity and high carbohydrate diets. Also sleep dysregulation as “night life” activities became popular – no not sex, I’m referring to partying at night and other activities which a peasant wouldn’t engage in but would instead be resting and sleeping.
Alison also points out the psychological effect that expectations have on influencing us. To give a male example, lower libido and mild erectile dysfunction occurs in about 15% of men who take Finasteride without any possible side effect warnings. But when you warn men of these possible side effects, those experiencing these effects raises to 44%. Power of suggestion!
Put down that bag of chips, take off that corset, go do something physical and most of all, have a positive attitude!
Being well educated and intelligent does not protect you from these influences. I’m an exceptionally healthy “old guy”, but I’m constantly wondering if all these horrible afflictions, we hear about and see in others, will they impact me? Or commonly “when will I have those problems”? My father recently passed away. Cognitive decline had a big impact on his life over the past five years (more and more I’m inclined to think the mRNA experimental shots accelerated this dramatically), so I’m very aware of this issue and since “intelligence” is one of my own self defining traits, it worries me that some day my mind will let me down. One of the ironic things, about health, is that to protect mental health, staying physically healthy is extremely important. Excuse me while I go hit my weight machine for a workout...
Currently there but since I’ve been dealing with cancer and taking super good care of my health, the normal symptoms seem to be non existent for me. Who said cancer doesn’t have some nice side benefits!
It may also be that women who don't have a concept for menopause or expectation of it, go through it nonetheless, but they attribute it to something else. I laugh whenever I think of it, but I moved to a new locale with a somewhat different climate just before starting to have hot flashes. I didn't expect to be having them, so I kept saying to people, "It sure gets hot at night here." Only when I was well beyond the hot flash stage did I realize what it had been. People probably thought I was strange for going on about how the weather was different.
I didn't have a lot of other symptoms and not too long a period of hot flashes. So, it may be that the people in the study you cited would not have noticed something that was there because they didn't conceptualize it in that way, but something was there. I hypothesize that just as people have various forms of intelligence/high functioning, e.g., athletic, musical, cognitive, etc. some people are more sensitive to internal states. We may incorrectly call these people hypochondriacs, when it is just a normal variation of human functioning. I'm not saying there is no hypochondriasis, but there is also someone who tunes into something different that most others. I know something of this from encountering a couple of young people who complained about the horrible sound from the fluorescent lights, when I was not aware of it. I had no hearing loss, just didn't hear those frequencies.
I've often heard that those shots exacerbated/accelerated what was already there, a weakness in a person's constitution. Very sad to hear that you lost your dad.