SOCIO-CULTURAL ASPECTS OF MENOPAUSE

Prior to the 19th century, there is no documentation of women expressing symptoms when their periods stopped. There are several theories about this. Women may have expressed symptoms but they were not considered important enough to document. Women may have experienced symptoms but considered them universal and hence normal and nothing to be discussed. Women may not have had symptoms due to a different sociocultural milieu, including a lived life with hormone levels at variance to modern day hormone levels.

In particular, women who were pregnant or breastfeeding for most of their fertility years have had very different hormonal exposures over those decades compared to women with no or few pregnancies and relatively short periods of breastfeeding. Historically, many women had quite few periods over their lifetime due to pregnancies compared to many women now.

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There is considerable research showing great variability across cultures in the menopausal experience. This holds true both across time and geography. Research into this area falls into two broad camps. The first presumes that the biology of menopause is universal and that the reported symptoms vary due to cultural differences or discomfort with the interviewer.  The second group assumes that biological factors interact with the sociocultural factors possible producing different biology in menopause.

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Some of the factors that affect both the process and the experience of menopause include diet, exercise, history of smoking, cultural expectations for menopause, cultural beliefs around the roles of women and the value of fertility, the meanings assigned to menopause.

Some women are happy with the end of fertility as it provides time and opportunity for other interests and activities in life. Other women are sad at the end of this stage of life. Some women enter menopause with good overall health while other women have significant underlying health problems and their overall state of health can greatly affect the process of menopause as well. 

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Cultural evolution is proceeding too quickly for biologic (genetic) accommodation creating a dissonance between our lives and our bodies. We are often asking more of our bodies than can be given.

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