For our season 6 finale, we’re spending some time with menopause. How many nicknames can you think of for menstruation? Quite a few, I’m sure. “That time of the month”, “Aunt Flo”, “the red wave”, “period”, the list goes on. But what about euphemisms for menopause? We’ve got “the change” or “change of life”, “climacteric”, and… that’s it? There may be more out there, but the comparison is revealing. Despite the fact that roughly half of the global population has or will one day experience menopause, the lack of nicknames demonstrates the silence, often tinged with shame, still enveloping it. In this episode, we explore the roots of this silence and the many historical misconceptions about menopause that frame our current perspective. We also examine the effect that this silence has on our understanding of the physiological processes underlying this transition. Why do some people experience symptoms and others do not? Why do humans experience menopause? What is the grandmother effect? What’s the latest on hormone replacement therapy? These are only a sampling of the many questions we delve into in this info-packed, frustration-laden, and eye-opening episode.
| History | Biology |
| Foxcroft, Louise. Hot flushes, cold science: A history of the modern menopause. Granta Books, 2011. | Monteleone, P., Mascagni, G., Giannini, A., Genazzani, A.R. and Simoncini, T., 2018. Symptoms of menopause—global prevalence, physiology and implications. Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 14(4), pp.199-215. |
| Mattern, Susan. The slow moon climbs: The science, history, and meaning of menopause. Princeton University Press, 2019. | Davis, S.R., Lambrinoudaki, I., Lumsden, M., Mishra, G.D., Pal, L., Rees, M., Santoro, N. and Simoncini, T., 2015. Menopause (Primer). Nature Reviews: Disease Primers, 1(1). |
| Gunter, Jennifer. The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism. Hachette UK, 2021. | Harlow, S.D., Gass, M., Hall, J.E., Lobo, R., Maki, P., Rebar, R.W., Sherman, S., Sluss, P.M., De Villiers, T.J. and STRAW+ 10 Collaborative Group, 2012. Executive summary of the Stages of Reproductive Aging Workshop+ 10: addressing the unfinished agenda of staging reproductive aging. Climacteric, 15(2), pp.105-114. |
| Ellis, Samuel, et al. “Postreproductive lifespans are rare in mammals.” Ecology and evolution 8.5 (2018): 2482-2494. | Melby, M.K., Lock, M. and Kaufert, P., 2005. Culture and symptom reporting at menopause. Human reproduction update, 11(5), pp.495-512. |
| Huber, Susanne, and Martin Fieder. “Evidence for a maximum “shelf-life” of oocytes in mammals suggests that human menopause may be an implication of meiotic arrest.” Scientific reports 8.1 (2018): 14099. | El Khoudary, S.R., Greendale, G., Crawford, S.L., Avis, N.E., Brooks, M.M., Thurston, R.C., Karvonen-Gutierrez, C., Waetjen, L.E. and Matthews, K., 2019. The menopause transition and women’s health at midlife: a progress report from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN). Menopause (New York, NY), 26(10), p.1213. |
| Jack, Gavin, Kathleen Riach, and Emily Bariola. “Temporality and gendered agency: Menopausal subjectivities in women’s work.” Human Relations 72.1 (2019): 122-143. | Tanbo, T.G. and Fedorcsak, P.Z., 2021. Can time to menopause be predicted?. Acta obstetricia et gynecologica Scandinavica, 100(11), pp.1961-1968. |
| Krajewski, Sabine. “Killer Whales and Killer Women: Exploring Menopause as a ‘Satellite Taboo’that Orbits Madness and Old Age.” Sexuality & Culture 23.2 (2019): 605-620. | Schuh-Huerta, S.M., Johnson, N.A., Rosen, M.P., Sternfeld, B., Cedars, M.I. and Reijo Pera, R.A., 2012. Genetic markers of ovarian follicle number and menopause in women of multiple ethnicities. Human genetics, 131, pp.1709-1724. |
| Monaghan, Pat, and Edward R. Ivimey‐Cook. “No time to die: Evolution of a post‐reproductive life stage.” Journal of Zoology 321.1 (2023): 1-21. | Brotherston, J., 2015. Contraception meets HRT: seeking optimal management of the perimenopause. British Journal of General Practice, 65(638), pp.e630-e632. |
| Wood, Brian M., et al. “Demographic and hormonal evidence for menopause in wild chimpanzees.” Science 382.6669 (2023): eadd5473. | Zhu, D., Chung, H.F., Dobson, A.J., Pandeya, N., Brunner, E.J., Kuh, D., Greenwood, D.C., Hardy, R., Cade, J.E., Giles, G.G. and Bruinsma, F., 2020. Type of menopause, age of menopause and variations in the risk of incident cardiovascular disease: pooled analysis of individual data from 10 international studies. Human Reproduction, 35(8), pp.1933-1943. |
| Hansen, K.R., Knowlton, N.S., Thyer, A.C., Charleston, J.S., Soules, M.R. and Klein, N.A., 2008. A new model of reproductive aging: the decline in ovarian non-growing follicle number from birth to menopause. Human reproduction, 23(3), pp.699-708. | |
| Allshouse, A., Pavlovic, J. and Santoro, N., 2018. Menstrual cycle hormone changes associated with reproductive aging and how they may relate to symptoms. Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics, 45(4), pp.613-628. | |
| Reed, B.G. and Carr, B.R., 2015. The normal menstrual cycle and the control of ovulation. | |
| Sowers, M., McConnell, D., Gast, K., Zheng, H., Nan, B., McCarthy, J.D. and Randolph, J.F., 2010. Anti-Müllerian hormone and inhibin B variability during normal menstrual cycles. Fertility and sterility, 94(4), pp.1482-1486. | |
| Manson, J.E., Chlebowski, R.T., Stefanick, M.L., Aragaki, A.K., Rossouw, J.E., Prentice, R.L., Anderson, G., Howard, B.V., Thomson, C.A., LaCroix, A.Z. and Wactawski-Wende, J., 2013. Menopausal hormone therapy and health outcomes during the intervention and extended poststopping phases of the Women’s Health Initiative randomized trials. Jama, 310(13), pp.1353-1368. | |
| Prentice, R.L., Aragaki, A.K., Chlebowski, R.T., Rossouw, J.E., Anderson, G.L., Stefanick, M.L., Wactawski-Wende, J., Kuller, L.H., Wallace, R., Johnson, K.C. and Shadyab, A.H., 2021. Randomized trial evaluation of the benefits and risks of menopausal hormone therapy among women 50–59 years of age. American journal of epidemiology, 190(3), pp.365-375. | |
| Santoro, N., Roeca, C., Peters, B.A. and Neal-Perry, G., 2021. The menopause transition: signs, symptoms, and management options. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 106(1), pp.1-15. | |
| Lee, A., 2023. Fezolinetant: First Approval. Drugs, 83(12), pp.1137-1141. | |
| Vries, E.D., Den Tonkelaar, I., Van Noord, P.A.H., Van der Schouw, Y.T., Te Velde, E.R. and Peeters, P.H.M., 2001. Oral contraceptive use in relation to age at menopause in the DOM cohort. Human Reproduction, 16(8), pp.1657-1662. | |
| Langton, C.R., Whitcomb, B.W., Purdue-Smithe, A.C., Sievert, L.L., Hankinson, S.E., Manson, J.E., Rosner, B.A. and Bertone-Johnson, E.R., 2020. Association of parity and breastfeeding with risk of early natural menopause. JAMA network open, 3(1), pp.e1919615-e1919615. | |
| Ginsberg, J., 1991. What determines the age at the menopause?. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 302(6788), p.1288. | |
| Gold, E.B., 2011. The timing of the age at which natural menopause occurs. Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics, 38(3), pp.425-440. | |
| Koysombat, K., McGown, P., Nyunt, S., Abbara, A. and Dhillo, W.S., 2023. New advances in menopause symptom management. Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, p.101774. |
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