Menopause Matters Forum
Menopause Discussion => All things menopause => Topic started by: AndieKC on July 14, 2018, 10:45:06 AM
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Menopause - Nature's Way Of Having A Laugh! >:(
Hi Ladies,
I've spent so much time here pouring my heart out (and thoughts and rants), and you have patiently listened :), shared your experiences, soothed my fears and kept me sane. My battle is nowhere near over yet, so I want to take on my seething resentment, anger and rage >:( (at nothing or no-one in particular) and turn it into something positive, and dare I say it, perhaps to lift your spirits in the process. Here's my attempt to give something back to the forum and all those supportive souls here, to laugh back at this joke that nature plays on us called menopause.
P.S. If at any point it feels like a thinly disguised rant, then please forgive my failure at turning the said negative into something positive.
So here we are, burning the keyboards on the menopause forum. As much as I love the company here, and I am sure you do too, don't you sometimes feel like screaming at the world ‘But I have work to do/life to live/kids to collect/holidays to go on/ cupboards to tidy/ pub to go to to get tipsy in…'? How many things have we put on hold just to deal with this blooming thing called menopause? I didn't sign up for it, did you?
Most women I know are conscientious, put others first, take care of the family (young ones, old ones, the grown up kids including many a husband…), so is it so much to ask for in our forties/fifties/sixties to get some decent sleep? Not to sweat in bed as if we walked into a sauna fully dressed? Then shiver in cold as if plunged to a freezer a few minutes later? Seriously, what kind of a joke is this?
Let's start with evolution. According to Darwin & Co, if a trait in a species serves an evolutionary purpose (that is survival of the species, or procreation), then the trait gets passed on from generation to generation. If a trait has no evolutionary advantage for a species, then it dies out the way dinosaurs/dodo went. So can somebody please explain why half of the world's population needs to carry a microwave oven inside them throughout their middle age and sweat bucketloads in bed? Is this perhaps nature's clumsy attempt to address worldwide water shortages by recruiting women to produce water once we can no longer produce babies?
Take global warming… If it is such a threat to our planet, then whoever came up with the idea of menopause clearly did not think it through. Never mind the cars or CO2 or cows farting that heat up the planet, it is the women of this planet going through menopause that melt the ice caps, raise global water levels, cause extreme weather conditions from raging hurricanes to devastating mud slides and coastal erosion. Seriously, do women have to get the blame for everything?! (Wait a minute, have I just described how many of us feel?)
What about all that advice on how to stop/prevent/reduce hot flushes? Most of us have tried cutting out smoking, drinking, caffeine, calories, food in general, and did it work? Like hell it did! If it were so easy to fool the hypothalamus when ovaries decide to shut shop and oestrogen goes AWOL, wouldn't we all have tried it already? Hands up how many of you enjoy palpitating at night until you feel on the brink of a heart attack, so tired that all you can think of is sleep, ‘I'm going to die if I don't get some sleep'? Changing bedlinen all the time anyone? (we discarded pyjamas already) Having a shower every hour? Because women have nothing better to do with their lives?
You've done your bit for the survival of the species, sacrificed your uterus, your figure, looks, sleep, hobbies and whatever else, dedicated yourself entirely to small creatures that are the future of our world, and what do you get in return?! Menopause.
And don't even get me started on meditating, breathing exercises, yoga, mindfulness and the lot. I'm sure they have a place and maybe they help some women, but why do so many symptoms start at 3am when we are fast asleep? We are told to stop worrying and manage stress, but when we are asleep, simply minding our own business in a blissful oblivion, we are not worrying or stressing, just sleeping! So why do we have to be roused from this rare bliss with a thud in the brain (hammer in the hypothalamus anyone?), followed by palpitations as if a monster was chasing us? We lie there thinking, but I am not worried about anything, I just want to sleep… yet the heart is racing, and then you brace your self for what's coming next. Microwave goes on and the cooking starts. You keep thinking waterfalls, ice packs, melting ice caps, knowing all too well that you just have to ride it out, so you do, lie there with the blanket kicked off, waiting for the cooking to stop. Then the cold shiver sets in, blanket comes back, and again you ride it out, counting how many hours you have left before the alarm goes off. When you finally stop shivering, so tired you could die, you feel the sleep coming on, and then bang, it all starts again. And again, and again. When you finally give up on the idea of sleep and tell yourself you can survive on a few hours a night (lucky you!), you try said meditation, breathing, counting sheep, only to realise that our bodies are far too clever to be fooled that easily. Just ask those women who wanted to give birth ‘naturally', only to scream for pain relief later.
So my answer to the ‘expert' advice to go and meditate is this: if all the women suffering from menopausal symptoms really took up the ‘expert' advice and dedicated themselves to meditation - say we all enrol in a buddhist retreat somewhere in Nepal - imagine the global fall out. How many men could locate at least one of the following: a) a pair of socks, b) washing machine, c) kids' PE kit, d) kids' school?, in the absence of the fairy called wife/girlfriend?
After yet another sleepless night, you promise yourself to improve your no-fat, no sugar, no fun diet even more. You eat even less of everything (by now you are an expert on thermogenesis effect of various foods), you are practically vegetarian, your windowsill is brimming with sprouted alfalfa, cupboards are full of beans (ha ha), you are pouring flax seeds on everything, chewing sage like it's a chewing gum. Half of your garden is dedicated to growing sage on an industrial scale, a business idea you came up with during those sleepless hours - to set up a menopause fighting sage farm to support you financially once you lose/resign from your job that does not recognise hot flushes, or cooling fans for that matter). Just to be sure, you also swallow every supplement on the market that promises to help with hot flushes and palpitations and sleep. What happens then? If you are human, you collapse at the table, forgetting all of the above.
Please, please ‘experts', stop saying that menopause is a natural stage in a woman's life. Trust me, if you have ever experienced incessant hot flushes or palpitations, you'd know that there is nothing natural about being boiled from the inside or having your heart race like it's on speed (no, I have never taken drugs in my life either).
Apparently we live in times of equality. Well, show me a man with a hot flush and a dry vagina, night sweats and cold shivers, and I will believe we live in a equal world. Over to you…
AndieKC
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Hi ladies,
Phew... I was hoping my attempt to lighten the burden would be positively received, completely agree on the design flaw, someone up there needs to go back to the drawing board. Or even better, can we please put a woman in charge? Haha
Glad it put a smile on your face, we have to laugh, right? Have a lovely weekend xx
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Hi AndieKC
That is absolutely priceless and are you a writer of some sort for a living? If not or anyway you should send that in to be published somewhere - it's brilliant!!!
I haven;t time to write more now as off out but the evolutionary aspect of menopause is fascinating and I expect you've read that there are various theories. The main thing is any genetic variation that occurs post-reproductive age will not be selected for or against directly so other factors come into play. There are various animal studies as well - I think is it Orca whales that are the only mammal sp to have menopause? Other primates also do not. Just off the top of my head but is fascinating. There is the grandmother hypothesis ie menopause permits older females to look after their grandchildren allowing their mothers to go out and be productive thereby ensuring survival of their genes. The main puzzle also is why life-expectancy is such that we have more than one generation of life post-menopause. Sorry that's clumsy way of putting it. Women can live until 90 now and beyond yet menopause average is 50 - so this doesn;t work re grandmum hypothesis - but perhaps evolution has not yet caught up - after all it takes hundredds ands thousands of years. ie menopause should now be at 70 ( God forbid!!!). There is a lot of info out there. V interesting :).
Hurdity x
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Andie!!! :thankyou: :thankyou:
You've made my day!!!
Brilliant!!!!
Hugs,
Milamam xxx
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Well if the menopause is not 'natural' then the opposite must be. I don't think that would be fun either. Having periods and being fertile until we are 90, now that would be funny ???
I think what you mean is the symptoms of the meno are for many almost too much. I agree with that but it's genetics and luck of the draw. The same goes for puberty, pregnancy and childbirth. We all have different stories to tell. They are all natural if not always pleasant.
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Thank you so much for this . I cried laughing... but had to stop cos I wet my self!
Bugger those lax pelvic floor muscles ;D
X
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Thank you for your feedback ladies, glad we all had a bit of a laugh
To Hurdity, yes, I do write a little, I should do more about it, won't live forever... according the research, my telomeres are already shortened so best get my skates on... haha
Enjoy the weekend, hugs to you all xx
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Have to quote this from Daily Mirror, don't know whether to laugh or cry:
Probably newspaper misquoting the good doctor slightly, but the idea of having children in our fifties...really?
Quote:
“Women may ‘overcome' the menopause and routinely have children into their fifties, says genetics expert.
Dr Aarathi Prasad said the menopause dated from a defunct time when resources were scare: “The mood of scientists working on this and looking to the future is we will either technologically or scientifically evolve out of the menopause.â€
Andie xx
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Hello ladies.
Just wanted to pitch in with another view about the evolutionary aspect of the menopause. It is possible that there were no intense evolutionary pressures on females so menopause has remained simply part of the aging process. Family groups that included grandmothers may have fared slightly better than those that didn't but the difference wasn't extreme enough to influence selection. I also wonder if modern living adds to our meno distress, for example in a natural environment we would follow a different sleep cycle, waking at dawn and sleeping when it got dark, no evenings and no alarm clocks to alter our natural rhythms. Our diet would also have been very different.
I would love to know if anyone has asked the women in traditional communities about their menopause experiences because then we would have a better idea of how this whole process was supposed to work!
Wishing everyone well.
K.
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Hello AndieKC,
You are a gifted writer and yes I had a laugh 😂 so I suppose you're also a gifted comedian 😁. Thank you for the laugh and the interesting subject. I suspect this thread will have a long life.
I have to disagree though 😬
It is not fair to blame Nature, actually it is not about fairness and blame at all, and no, she's not a Mother. I have no idea who coined this expression, Mother Nature... I suppose it was an atheist trying to counteract the Almighty God. Both expressions are anthropomorphic, seeing things by human perspective doesn't make them true, it's just a way that humans have found to try to understand who is driving this thing called life... That's not a coincidence that Darwin & Co. have chosen remote places to study nature, places where humans were not a source of distortion (variable). The Theory of Evolution (yes, this is my God) would not exist if Galapagos Islands were not on their way.
There is nothing 'natural' about menopause, the same way that there is nothing 'natural' about anything since humans have become 'civilized', such as C-section, birth control pill, antibiotics, working 9 to 5 (I wish!), fluorescent bulbs, LED bulbs (evolution), processed foods, chlorinated water, bottled water, air pollutants derived from fossil fuel combustion, greenhouse gases (yes, cows are also to blame, this word again, only civilized ones though, not subjected to 'Natural Selection'), just to name a few, you all know that our life on this planet is far from 'natural'.
HRT is not 'natural' by the way, just another one to add to the list.
Our 'natural' counterparts, ie the pre-civilization women, would hardly reach menopause because of obvious reasons, they would become pregnant soon after they had become fertile and would breastfeed until the next cycle and become pregnant again (yes, this is nature's way...), they would not have periods I suppose, unless they were really ugly, in which case they would attract other sort of predators (bleeding) and their fate would be determined by Natural Selection, not to mention infections, poor nutrition and violence (a bit different from nowadays, but yes, another human joy).
So... (I'm not as gifted as you, have to stop this now or this 'unnatural' typing postural position will kill me before menopause) I have to agree with Shadyglade, having periods until 90 is not a better solution and Evolution wouldn't work that way, and with Kathleen, our lifestyle has a huge influence on our menopause status. Kathleen, your observation is very interesting, I have a friend in South America who is finishing her PhD in History and she works with Amazon forest native tribes. I will ask her if she has any information on how menopause is perceived and what actually happens to the women over there.
Conolly X
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Hi ladies
My post's only intention was to lift mood, lift the spirit, make you laugh, lighten the mood... I am a scientist at heart so this was just a little satire, a little rant against how things are (unfair) but then life is not always fair
Perhaps the post should have gone to the ‘menopause humour' Section, which I've only just discovered, perhaps Emma could move it there...
Xx
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Hello AndieKC,
I hope you haven't taken this as criticism, it's just a healthy (no pun intended) discussion. As I have said on my post, you have achieved your goal, I had a good laugh because you have a great writing style and your 'rant' is absolutely fab!
I just thought that the subject is really interesting and deserves further discussion/investigation, after all this is our lives we're talking about.
Conolly X
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What a fantastic post and truely sums uo what we go through at this stage in our life.
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Hi Conolly
No, no offence taken, please don't worry, I just realised that there was a humour section on this forum which I didn't notice before
Am all up for a good discussion, very interesting points have been raised
Xx
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I'm glad you haven't posted it there because I hadn't noticed it! Off to have a good laugh 😁
Conolly X
PS Can someone tell me how to change space between lines? My posts look so long and yet empty 😬
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Just to say Andiekc.
I loved it, didn't read anything else into it,
just read it as it was, brilliant.....
Keep em coming girl....lol
Jd x
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Regarding 'mindfulness', I have found this particularly helpful. Recently bought Ruby Wax's 'How to be Human' which is excellent. Read it in one go or dip in and out plus mindfulness exercises. Very good.
Darwins theory was that survival is not conditional on fitness or intelligence but on the ability to adapt. So calling the meno the change seems apt.
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Hello again ladies.
Talking of nature I realise that lots of women living into very old age and a long way past the menopause is a modern development but great old age, though less common, was also achievable in the past. How many of us remember grannies who had lived long lives without vaccinations, antibiotics, painkillers for childbirth, the list goes on. When my own grandmother died at eighty three she wasn't on any medication at all.
I recall watching a programme about a family in medieval England and because the older woman owned property, which was unusual at the time, her death at sixty one was officially recorded. I wonder how many other women lived as long or longer but without surviving written evidence we will never know. Also on YouTube I found a film made in the late1800s featuring a large group of very elderly men and women who all appeared to be in good health, they were certainly very lively for the camera. It is an American film and one of the first made but when I was watching it I wasn't thinking about the technology but wondering how so many people had survived into their nineties without any intervention from modern science. Obviously not everyone is so lucky and I'm sure many of us owe our lives to anti biotics etc but perhaps our potential life span has always been longer than we believed, we just don't have sufficient evidence to prove it.
Conolly - I think it would be amazing if your friend could discover how the women in the Amazon experience the menopause and it would provide a unique insight into the biology of older women.
Got a bit carried away there ladies, sorry about that but I do find the subject interesting as you can tell lol.
Wishing you all well.
K.
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:rofl: :lol: :great:
Because I wasn't aware of menopause as such when my Grans died, both in their mid-80s, I had no idea how they [WTF!] gooier plots for years, [have no idea what that was about :-\ and can't remember]: they grew fresh fruits, veg. all in season; exercise was essential even into the 1970s. 1 car only so we walked or cycled. One Gran fed us creamed milk from Guernsey cows, I couldn't face it now but growing up I couldn't get enough of it. Everything was fresh, she had a tiled floor in the pantry and a small fridge, everything stood in buckets of cold water on the floor - buckets were changed regularly, how did she have time :o by getting up at 5.00 a.m. every morning that's how. In fact, both Grannies had cold stone floors with buckets ......... tin plates too .......... Also, no eating in-between meals other than an ice-cream treat on a hot day.
I have always subscribed to the thought that humans are their own worst enemies in that we no longer live how we are designed to live: getting up at dawn and going to bed at dusk. Grazing and fasting. Using up energy in small amounts when searching for food. No demands other than survival, i.e. getting enough to eat, keeping safe and finding a cave in which to keep warm. In Castleton is a cave where they made rope, whole families living down there ......... hardly emerging other than for necessities. Kids started helping in the rope making process at an early age. Damp. Cold. No Social Services then!
Also: the female body is a bad design. Who would put all those orifices close together to pass germs around :cuss: ........ and make the nasal passages, eyes etc. joined up so that they get congested ........... and why are my toe nails so far from my hands, how is One supposed to cut them!
I also know as another aside, that since retirement I have slept much better by not having to listen out with half an ear for the alarm clock. Being able to wake and not worry about getting 'enough' sleep ........ going back to sleep and waking when the body is ready which is about 2 hours after our alarm would ring.
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I think you are right CLKD. The more you do the more you can do. Sitting around certainly makes me sluggish.
Use it or loss, as they say.
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I should take my own advice though :-\ ......... in this heat I can hardly move until late at night and DH doesn't want a walk then ::)
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The toenail thing ::). I often pull a muscle trying to cut mine.
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Definitely a design fault in my opinion but the good news is that you can replace oestrogen easily and bypass the symptoms.
A better design would be for oestrogen to drop sufficiently to ensure that women are no longer fertile and free of periods but enough oestrogen is still produced to support the vital bodily functions that depend on it. The problem is that oestrogen drops far too low post menopause.
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My main difficulty was with peri. The fluctuations really did for me. If hormones could reduce slow at a steady rate, that would be much better.
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Me too, Shadyglade. I thought I was going to pop my clogs.
Ha, ha. Now I'm having a laugh. I hope Evolution (what should we call it? Doctor Evolution?) is reading your suggestions, ladies. It would be so great to return to this planet (or any planet, lol) with a better designed body. My father used to say that the mouth could NEVER be placed under the nose and that the eyes should be in our fingertips ;D
Conolly X
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OUCH though - when playing an instrument, that would hurt ::)
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Great post, certainly a good description and made me smile!
I think Mary G has the answer, if our bodies could just produce that 50mg of oestrogen (as in the patch!) everything would be fine!
However, nature does compensate with a fat belly once the ovaries have packed up.....see nature is evil and you just can't win!
We may find in years to come that nature will catch up with longevity and our life styles but it's probably still moving way too quickly for that to happen for another couple of generations?
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Wow, Wombat, thank you. I now have a reason to stop trying to diet my 'fat belly' away. ;D
Phew.
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Hello ladies,
I have posted this link on CLKD's thread Body Natural and I thought I could also post it here, because I find this article the best one so far that explores menopause symptoms in terms of Evolution.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3433273/
I hope you don't mind, AndieKC, I really think the subject that your lighthearted post has raised is a great topic for discussion.
Conolly X
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Darwins theory was that survival is not conditional on fitness or intelligence but on the ability to adapt. So calling the meno the change seems apt.
The theory of evolution is the survival of the fittest - in every sense. Those organisms/individuals survive (to reproduce) that are best suited (best fit - ie genetic fitness - to their environment. An individual may or may not adapt but overall if there are individuals with sufficient genetic variation that thrives better eg in a different environment then these individuals will be more likely to survive an reproduce - hence adaptation.
Yes it's all very interesting - don't get the topic moved AndieKC - lots of us would never have seen it if you'd posted in Humour or elsewhere - I mainly only look at a couple of the "boards" and I think lots of us are the same!
Hurdity x
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Hi ladies
I agree, evolution is fascinating, love reading about it.
Hurdity, no worries, I wouldn't know how to move the post anyway, still getting to grips with how the forum works, especially from my phone.
Connolly, I don't mind at all that you've posted the link, I've never been a member of a forum, this is so brilliant, you are all fascinating women, love reading your ideas. I often think what you're all like in life
Xx
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I have found this post on the right morning! Yep, the dreaded 3 am wake, although I think I made it to 3.30 this morning. Decided to get up (yet again) about 4.45, as no point just lying there any longer. Have devoured OH piece of birthday cake that was his and his alone (he will understand....) and had a lovely cup of tea. Now going to brush my teeth and go back to bed, as at least I know I am resting of sorts. My brain it too addled to think of anything to add to the evolution theory, except, I am coming back as a chap next time.
Thank you for a wonderful, funny post x
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I feel another thread coming on - I will come back as ........... ;)