Does A Natural Process Need HRT?
"Menopause happened and it was no big deal."
Reasearch: Acute sleep deprivation disrupts emotion, cognition, inflammation, and cortisol in young healthy adults
We found that an acute sleep deprivation, limited to a 24 h period, increases negative emotion states such as anxiety, fatigue, confusion, and depression. In conjunction, sleep deprivation results in increased inflammation and decreased cortisol levels in the morning, that are accompanied by deficits in vigilance and impulsivity. Combined, these results suggest that individuals who undergo 24 h sleep deprivation will induce systemic alterations to inflammation and endocrine functioning, while concomitantly increasing negative emotions.
Back To School Lunch Ideas
There are a few people I receive e-mail from that genuinely make me excited to see what they’ve sent. Nutrition With Judy is one of those emails. She doesn’t send a ton of them, she’s a carnivore nutritionist, and articles like packing nutrient dense lunches. They’re not just for kids though.
Does Perimenopause / Menopause Require Hormone Replacement Therapy?
It seems the world has a chemical for every problem a human can face. Your garden won’t grow? We have chemicals for that! Does your region need more rain? Thanks to weather engineering we can spray chemicals in the air to make that happen! You have a problem with your health? We have an assortment of chemicals for those!
At what point do we stop and consider that maybe every problem doesn’t need a chemical?
During Keto-Con 2023 I went to see a panel of carnivore women. They all agreed that, “menopause happened and it was no big deal.” One of the doctors even went on to say that she doesn’t test hormones. Instead she looks at adrenal and liver function.
Turning 50 this year I’m beginning to agree with these carnivore ladies. Is perimenopause / menopause (the change) something that needs a pharmaceutical intervention? Or perhaps, we need a lifestyle intervention?
While the modern world has its perks it also has us surrounded by fake food, poor sleep, disrupted digestion, toxic skincare products, too much time inside, too much blue light, not enough sunlight, and broken communities.
It’s not just women going through the change that experience less than ideal symptoms. These things I just mentioned collectively to contribute to the skyrocketing chronic disease rates.
How Did HRT Become The Standard Treatment?
Did you know the term menopause has only been around for roughly 150 years?? If it’s been a problem for women throughout human history why was it named such a short time ago? In the middle ages they simply called it amenorrhea and it was not connected to a change of life.
Back then the treatment for menopausal symptoms was blood letting. As we approach the 1900’s the medical world saw that a woman’s reproductive system was the source of “female” diseases so removing the female organs was a common treatment. Back then 1 in 5 women survived such surgeries.
With dismal survival rates first wave feminists began to question these procedures that were performed on women. They tried to explain menopause wasn’t an illness. Instead they believed it was a time when a woman could focus on herself now that her children were grown.
If you went back roughly a hundred years the first female physicians noted that very few women experienced menopausal symptoms. Women who experienced symptoms like hot flashes were counseled on lifestyle changes, healthy food, and intermittent fasting.
The idea that menopause needed a treatment came after the discovery of sex hormones.
Believe it or not Emminem (I wonder if Eminem knows this?) is the name of the first injectable hormonal treatment for women. It was derived from the urine of pregnant women who were in the late stages of pregnancy. Then the pharmaceutical company Ayerst opted to create Premarin from the urine of mares.
British biochemist Edward Dodds invented a non-steroidal estrogen, DES (diethylstilbestrol). It cost about $2 to make a gram compared to the $300 per gram for horse urine derived estrogen. Dodds said he didn’t intend this product for healthy women. Rather it was for women who had their ovaries removed.
In 1939 an article was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association against estrogen therapy. The authors expressed that synthetic and conjugated estrogens shouldn’t be used for possible menopausal symptoms in middle aged women.
However, drug companies defined menopause as a loss. Ergo if there’s a “deficiency” it’s easier to put together a marketing pitch.
Is There More To The Story?
Back then they associated menstruation with beautiful skin, thicker hair, passionate sex, and curing infertility. Estrogen is viewed as the hormone of youth and while the world has gotten a bit better it still doesn’t value the old woman in the same way it values the 20 something.
Walk into any Sephora and you’ll find an endless supply of products to help women look better. Erase the wrinkles, do something with your hair, and cover up those imperfections with some make-up.
The Family Benefits
Humans, orcas, and pilot wales all experience menopause. The anthropological thinking is that being infertile gives women an opportunity to care for their grandchildren. Grandmothers who could look after their grandchildren helped insure their survival. Looking at it this way it’s a badge of honor.
Living as a hunter gatherer grandmothers were expert foragers who could collect more than younger members of the tribe. Familiar with living off the land grandmothers taught the younger generations how to survive.
The Math Isn’t Mathing
If you think about the math. Modern women spend most of their life in a non reproductive state.
Say menstruation begins at 15 and a woman lives to the age of 90, and the average age of menopause is 50… That’s 55 years out of a reproductive phase and roughly 25 years in a fertile window (40-15). I went with 40 for that last calculation due to the risks and complications associated with birth over 40. Yes, there are outliers to these numbers. These are all generalizations and approximations I pulled out of the air.
But given the current level of technology and food security it’s perfectly reasonable for a woman to live 90 and beyond.
So, if we spend most of our lives in a non-reproductive state why has menopause become such a medical emergency? I’m asking you. Does it make sense?
Menopause needs no treatment. - Mayo Clinic
Next week’s newsletter: The difference between estrogen and estradiol
