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Study Says Men Are Cause Of Menopause

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Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/06/14/new-study-says-men-are-cause-of-menopause/

New Study Says Men Are Cause Of Menopause
June 14, 2013

“The ovaries basically shut down,” explains West Penn Hospital OBGYN Dr. Emily Lebovitz. “Why exactly that occurs we don’t know.”

Around age 50, women end their reproductive years — an event called menopause. Hormones change, menstrual cycles stop, and natural childbearing is no longer a possibility.

....

But a Canadian researcher says it’s because of men, and because of competition.

Using computer modeling, he found competition among men of any age for younger mates left older females with less chance of reproducing.

He says the result is that genes favoring menopause got passed down through the generations, so that now it’s a normal part of the female genetic blueprint.
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I disagree with the study. It does not make sense to me. I'm pretty sure evolution does not work like that.

If men were favoring yonger women, I doubt it would effect menopause spreading. We would have to pick women with those gene over ones that don't, which there is no way for us to determine.

I think women get menopause for the same reason people get gray hair. People get older and our bodies change.
 
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Uggh, men. Amarite, ladies?
 
When I read an article about that (not sure if it is the one linked) they said that humans are the only animals that have menopause. Is this true? Do other female animals keep breeding up until death?
 
teacake said:
When I read an article about that (not sure if it is the one linked) they said that humans are the only animals that have menopause. Is this true? Do other female animals keep breeding up until death?
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There are other female mammals which undergo an end of fertility, such as non-human primates, rodents, whales, dogs, rabbits, elephants, and domestic livestock, but that occurs much closer to the end of their average lifespan than it does in humans.

The only animals that we know of with a long term menopause (as in around half the average lifespan or more) are humans, pilot whales, and killer whales, the latter of which undergo menopause in their 30s or 40s yet can live well into their 90s.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/n...13/why-do-killer-whales-go-through-menopause/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9572138
 
So the article is wrong :D

Thanks for that, guess it makes some sense. Animals need to keep breeding because other animals need to keep eating them. You can't have animals running around doing all the eating and not making more animals for the food chain. So what do the pilot whales do with their mauve years?
 
Natural law probably expects Human females to be dead from illness, accident or eaten-by-predators after about the age of 50.

On behalf of Humanity, I say "Screw the natural law".
 
Indeed. People used to be old in their 50s and 60s-- it's the higher standard of living and medical science that gives us our current life expectancy. No idea how pilot whales do it. In any case, males and females of any species look for the most attractive mates, which generally means the youngest. Males competing for young females wouldn't select against menopause, but it wouldn't select for it.
 
Locutus of Bored said:
The only animals that we know of with a long term menopause (as in around half the average lifespan or more) are humans, pilot whales, and killer whales, the latter of which undergo menopause in their 30s or 40s yet can live well into their 90s.
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It's that damn whale medicare, I tell ya!
 
The next study will illustrate that women cause shorter lifespans for men. Constant nagging will be discovered to be the reason for this. :devil:
 
^No that just causes grey hair and/or hair loss. :p

It's all down to our genes and tens of thousands of years of evolution. Who knows in maybe another 10 000 years the menopuase might come 5-10 years later than it does now.
 
The human life span is essentially unchanged. It's the average life span that has increased as infant mortality has decreased. People don't really live longer, it's just that more of them live out a normal life span. The fifty and sixty year olds were not old per se, they were older, since so many of their coevals died before five. There is a partial exception, in that exposure to sunlight and loss of teeth had aging effects. Even then, upper class men and women kept their looks much longer, in addition to the benefits of good childhood nutrition on appearance.

As to the cause of menopause, the popular evolutionary psychology "explanation" for menopause is that grandmothers' care for their grand children to perpetuate their genes. The role of menopause is generally supposed to be extending the lifespan of grandmother's by limiting the number of pregnancies, which tend to shorten female lives. Every childbed is a battle. Many battles, more chances to die.

However there is not a scrap of evidence to show that menopause is any more effective than wrinkles in saving older women from the vicissitudes of childbirth. Nor is there any evidence showing that grandmothers are more effective at child care than the ugly aunt (or for that matter, the lesbian aunt or the gay uncle.) There isn't even any evidence that crabby old women are any better at child care than same generation female friends who just cooperate. It has not even been ruled out that menopause is not a side effect of the switch from open ovulation (females in heat) to concealed ovulation. And any hypotheses about menopause's primary effect being the limitation of reproduction are ruled out tout court.

The story is just more EP agitprop. It's being test marketed for popularity, i.e., superficial plausibility as an "explanation." EP theories are handicapped by lack of evidence, so there's inevitably a lot of desperate handwaving like this.

Evolutionary psychology is the new scientific racism. Its perpetrators keep making up stories about how genes mean women really are fundamentally different from men in ways that just so happen to coincide with the backward notions about women they inherited from their childhoods. Instead of wondering whether women as a group aren't subjected to fantastic indoctrination and social pressures that prevent sexual fulfillment, they conclude that women really are naturally less interested in sex because their genes say so. (And you can usually substitute "God" for "genes" without changing the flavor!) Etc. ad nauseam.

I have no doubt that some day, when the time is ripe, EP will sadly conclude that homosexuality really is a developmental disorder instead of a normal variation. They already have the occasional enthusiast rediscovering the validity of racial differences. I also have no doubt this will be a fertile field of research as more suitable circumlocutions are found. I don't think it's much of a science in which progress is based on plausible deniability.
 
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