Did you know that humans and killer whales are the only mammals that have a menopause?

Isn’t that interesting? If these are the only two mammals to have a Menopause, it could suggest that from an evolutionary perspective, there is really no need for a menopause. If the role of a species is to reproduce to continue its evolution, once that job is done, well thanks very much but your time is up.

And this makes you question the argument about The Menopause being a ‘natural’ state. Don’t get me wrong, everything that happens to our bodies over this time does so as a natural part of our life cycle. But when you look at things back in the day, when our life expectancy wasn’t so great, we’d pop out a load of kids, enter menopause for a couple of years and then, yep, die.

But then, advances in modern medicine began, and continued and all of a sudden we’re in a place where the average life expectancy of a woman in Northern Ireland is 82. AMAZING! But that means that we’ll spend a good third to half of our lives (from our early to mid-40s on average) in The Menopause. And perhaps, evolutionarily, that was never meant to happen!

A third of our lives is a very long time. And it’s as a result of this extended life expectancy and time spent in The Menopause, that the longer-term health implications of such a lack of estrogen are significant. I’m not talking about uncomfortable symptoms here, but diseases: cardiovascular disease, osteoperosis and diabetes. And it’s because of the health implications of low estrogen over this period of time that I’m not shy to say that my approach will not be all-natural but will in large be HRT led. Because no matter how much I look after my lifestyle through a combination of nutrition and exercise, they will not replace the estrogen I’m losing. I’m lucky that my health enables me to make that choice and I appreciate not everybody is in a similar position. But the context around how we have changed from an evolutionary perspective needs to be considered as we begin to navigate this part of our lives.

If you’re interested, this is a nice article about the role of post-menopausal killer whales in their pod. A lesson for us humans.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/after-menopause-killer-whale-moms-become-pod-leaders-180954480/