A preliminary muse on menopause

The first of a few I feel

I want to just have some consideration today about a subject that just came onto my desk at home but really is an interesting subject in its own right because I'm a woman, I am 45 and and according to life events I am preparing to enter my crone years.

The menopause, which is defined as the end of a woman’s fertility due to loss of ovarian follicular activity, is for some women a decrease in their late 30s with most women having a complete loss in their early 50s.

Its a bit of a hot topic, with increasing concerns due to an increase in life expectancy as well as not having a ‘good menopause’. I was doing a deep dive into empirical papers to see what the journals were saying. To find out the popular scientific views on how menopause is basically managed, viewed and researched.

It is really interesting, and for me, concerning.

There is a huge disparity between quality of research papers and also some of the anguage that is used is not exactly pro-women, pro-positive aging, and it's difficult to do a meta-analysis to draw together any kind of conclusions as to what a good menopause looks like, feels like, sounds like or is experienced.

I think this is indicative of a woman’s ecperience in that there is a scientific bias towards men and the vast majority of medical biology papers have healthy, male participants as the ‘general population’.

This is because of misinformation about fluctuations in hormones, within a woman’s cycle, and the unproven impact that this made them hard to study.

This is not suprising as there is so much conjecture and misinformation along with active disempowerment of women.

If you just take a look at any of mainstream media outlets you can get a guage of how women are seen in society.

There are articles about periods in sport - apparently a new ‘superpower’.

There are many articles about how women are treated when during pregnancy - badly.

There are articles about how women are treated in business - the glass ceiling is now an invisible force field.

There are articles about childcare and how it restricts a woman (not men) on their career pathway.

It is really interesting that when I comment on these and other such articles about how these pieces are not helping women, it's almost like there is a justification by other women that reinforce them happening.

A type of stockholm syndrome.

The menopause conversation is not much different to the ones detailed above. Women are seeking some hero that can rescue them, and give them a magic pill instead of sitting down and talking to them about what really could make a difference to their lives. Or maybe the article about the woman who defies age. and look at her age-defying looks, isnt she amazing? or maybe the constant comparisons between women instead of acknowledging that we are all to a large degree individuals who actually are dealing with different environments and and different life experiences and this can have a very individual impact on our hormonal world.

But maybe that is the elephant in the room.

When I was ask about my opinion on menopause and and how we can do it ‘better’ or make things better for women. It feels to me that was still stuck in this circuitry about and how women can manage better at work, how women can manage their menopause symptoms and are still productive, still feel valued, still ‘matter’.

The real problem is that women are influenced to only feel valued if they are actually economically active.

I don't know whether this is an inconvenient truth for anybody but the capitalist system that we are living in is only working well for a few, it's not actually supporting the majority.

Everybody is on the hamster wheel of exhaustion.

For what?

So that we have a few figures at the top of the pyramid who are doing really well.

The economy is one of the biggest Ponzi schemes I can think of.

Who are actually benefiting from the toils of the many? We really have to examine the whole value system that we live within; because if women can only talk about the menopause in respect to being economically active then I is a woman don't want to be part of that conversation.

It actually makes me feel so angry that that in itself is going to upset my hormonal system and enable a ‘bad’ menopause.

So think about the women that are in your life, think about women who you know that are maybe in their 40s and are approaching (or actually in) perimenopause.

Think about what they do every single day.

What is their physical workload?

What is their mental workload?

How is that enabling them to have less allostatic load?

Allostais is different to homeostasis because allostasis is the ability to adapt to be able to deal with stresses in life.

Another problem that most women have is that there are not that many adaptations they can make to lessen the load though surprise surprise you may already know this leads to a chronic stress situation within the body and they are already approaching if not burnt out by the time that they're getting to the menopause.

An important brain health nugget to remember is that and more women actually test positive for Alzheimer's than men and there is increasing amount of scientific evidence that shows that oestrogen has a massive impact on brain health. So if women are already having hormonal imbalances in their 30s and 40s then they are not going to have a healthy menopause. Plus this will actually lay foundations for heightened risks of neurodegenerative disease later on in life.

We may be living longer, but we are not living longer well, and this is a real issue.

Do you want to have managed to crawl your way to the finish line of being 68 years old or so, and then what happens is that you are fundamentaly unwell.

Things are going wrong with your well-being, all sorts of conditions are developing and you have to look back over time to see what kind of stresses you were under. What kind of environment were you living in and exposed to? How valued did you feel? How much did you matter? How supported were you?

At what part of a woman’s existence does she say and mean, ‘this is not really working for me’ and is listened to and things made easier, more simple, less impactful on her life.

Let me also ask all the women who read this, how much do you know and understand about your hypothalamus? How much do you know and understand about your positive feedback loop systems that are sensitive to environmental conditions? How do you expect to manage your menopause well if you do not have an understanding as to how your brain is coping with external stressors?

I do not want to get angry in this writing but I am.

For me this whole thing, this whole conversation on menopause is not really a conversation on menopause.

It really needs to start with a conversation on what are we willing to put up with in the quest to make other people richer.

What am I prepared to sacrifice for ourselves to make other people more successful?

And.

When you get to being in your 70s or 80s, whilst taking god knows how many tablets (again you are making people rich from having to be on them) because you are unwell. when you are sat there wondering, especially if you have financial pressures how am I going to eat? how am I going to heat? You may be lonely and loneliness is one of the biggest killers that we that we know of in terms of a brain structure changes. Are you going to sit there and ponder what could you have done to live well in older age?

All of these things are what I want to talk about with regard to the menopause.

I want to talk about educating women as when we educate women everybody does well, when we educate men sadly everybody doesn't do well - historically there is so much evidence to support that.

Education should not be about dogma or brain washing.

Education comes from educere… leading… let us lead women where they can discover for themselves how they work and what they need to do to embrace their uniqueness!

So when you are reading what feels to me to be tokenistic examples of how misogyny is alive and well, in the countless articles about women and their inability to cope with life as is (and women are actually enabling misogyny) why don’t you consider the women in your lives who may be approaching the menopause?

Why don't you just think about what you can do to make their life environment better and kinder?

If you can have protective factors for these women they will repay you over and over again with their wisdom with their life experience, with their ability to nurture, with their ability to problem solve ,with their ability to care for others, it will repay you over and over again.

Let us get supportive of women, not pandering to a system that is geared up to make us all unwell.

Start the ripple effect of supporting. Not victimisation. Not shaming. Not comparison.

Just ask the women in your life how you can make their world better.

They do not need to be called superheroes.

They just need to be treated well.

You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation