Women living in Fiji have it easy, in any case when it comes to menopause.
We were in Fiji to study bra wearing and breast cancer, but took benefit of
the chance of being with these non-western people to ask about the way
local female experienced menopause. Margaret Mead, the famous cultural
anthropologist, acknowledged that the discomforts young western female frequently associate with the “coming of age” were mostly absent for Samoan female.
As medical anthropologists, we wondered if the coming “out of age” was any
different for Fijian female than for those in the west who complain of various
symptoms, such as hot flashes and profuse sweating.
So we asked some post-menopausal female how they experienced their menopause. The response was pretty similar from each.
“What’s that?” they asked, perplexed.
We soon acknowledged that there is no equivalent word in Fijian for “menopause”.
In Fiji, when a female lives long sufficient to stop menstruating, she simply goes to the doctor to make sure she is not pregnant. Once she is assured this is not the case, she is happy and carefree. The lack of negative physiological and psychological effects, so troublesome for some western female, has resulted in the absence of a term to describe this time in a Fijian woman’s life.
The hot flashes and profuse sweating of menopause is therefore not universal
among all cultures. And in western cultures, it is not even universal among all female. While the medical literature has harped on lack of estrogen and extreme gonadotropic hormones as the most likely causes of this “pathology”, the fact that most female who pass through menopause have little or no predicament at all suggests that the mechanism for the reported predicaments must be something other
than altered endocrinology post-menopause.
In other words, since all female have reduced estrogen and elevated gonadotropins as they enter menopause, why do some female have troubling hot flashes and sweats, while others do not? Could there be another mechanism that has been overlooked?
Maybe the solution lies in the way we are conceptualizing menopausal
“symptoms”. We already comprehend that many so-called “symptoms” of disease are actually the body’s way to defend itself. Hence, a fever, frequently regarded as a symptom of disease, is actually part of the process of immune response.
Coughing, vomiting, diarrhea, and nausea can as well be regarded as defense
mechanisms. Could hot flashes and sweats be a defense mechanism, as well?
It was this line of thinking that led us to start the Menopause aid Project,
which included a preliminary study of menopausal female with hot flashes and sweats that no treatment would treatment. Here is the theory behind the study.
One of the most critical functions of the human body is to get rid of waste. We
do this through several basic pathways: the lungs; the intestines; the skin;
and the kidneys. One other mechanism is usually overlooked, and is only
offered to female. That is, elimination via menstruation and the sloughing off
of the endometrium.
The purpose of the endometrium, of course, is to provide nutritional support for a fertilized ovum until the placenta develops and takes over. The endometrium lining of the uterus is rebuilt following the previous menstrual flow under the affect of estrogen and progesterone. The thickness of the endometrium increases as blood vessels and tissue proliferate, while the endometrium soaks in nutrients like a sponge.
Some nutrients are secreted, while others are stored for later use.
In fact, a highly vascular, secretory organ like the endometrium can as well
absorb and secrete (excrete) toxins, as well.
Meanwhile, another effect of estrogen makes toxins especially offered for
absorption by the endometrium. One physiological effect of estrogen is to cause salt and fluid retention, making the entire body slightly swell just prior to the commencement of the period.
This actually flushes the tissues, as the fluid cleanses the interstitial spaces. This helps remove toxins from the tissues, as the fluid travels back into the bloodstream via the lymphatic channels for toxin elimination. It is at this time that some female experience PMS, or pre-menstrual syndrome. Leg, breast and abdominal swelling are demonstrateations of estrogen mediated fluid retention.
Depression, irritability, confusion, and fatigue, as well PMS symptoms, may be related to the increase in circulating toxins released from the tissues.
As these toxins circulate in the bloodstream, some are get rid ofd by the
kidneys, some are processed by the liver and excreted with the bile into the
intestines, some are exhaled by the lungs, and some are sweated out. Many female report increased body odor and bad breath during this toxic time. Meanwhile, some toxins are absorbed by the receptive and “hungry” endometrium.
If pregnancy is not achieved, the endometrium is sloughed off, eliminating the toxins with the unneeded uterine lining.
Menstruation, then, is a time of cleansing for female of childbearing age. What
occurs when this mechanism stops at menopause?
Cltimely, if there is a reduction of one mode of elimination, the other modes
must take the burden. This means that it would be essential for menopausal female to move their bowels regularly, drink abundance of fluids and urinate when needed, breathe deeply, and perspire freely.
And here is where western female have trouble. Many western female, as well as men, hold in their urge to urinate or defecate. This usually has to do with the reality of contemporary, urban life, with few offered public toilets, and with those that are offered frequently unadmitable for use.
Deep breathing is complex for female with a tight bra strapped to
their chests.
As for sweating, our culture is extremely sweat-phobic. Besides the smell of
sweaty armpits, there is the armpit stain on shirts and blouses to worry about.
While this is not an issue for female in Fiji, who perspire freely, most western
female use antiperspirants to deal with this. This may make their armpits more culturally admitable, but it does so at the price of eliminatory efficiency.
So here we have female who are holding in their waste and impairing their ability to sweat. On top of this, they stop menstruating. The outcome is an accumulation of toxins in the body. Over time, these toxins cause irritability and moodiness.
Eventually, the toxins build up to the hazard point, compelling the body to take matters in its own hands, so to speak. To get rid of the toxins, the body makes itself sweat.
This, we believe, is the reason for the hot flashes. These are the body’s way of
jump starting a sweat. Hot flashes can happen any time, and sometimes stop for months to only start again. Could it be that the hot flashes, and the sweat
response this generates, are the means to eliminating toxins that have
collected as a result of menopause, along with a hampered toxin disposal
system?
If this were the functional “purpose” of menopausal hot flashes and sweats, it
follows that female could avoid the spontaneous sweats by deliberately sweating each day to get rid of the toxins. After all, the predicament with hot flashes is that they happen at inconvenient times, out of the control of the woman. If she can choose the time when she wishes to get rid of toxins, it would make spontaneous sweating unnecessary, ending the hot flashes.
To test this theory, we found 10 volunteers who were menopausal, experiencing very painful hot flashes and sweats. We asked the local YWCA to provide free passes for these female to use the sauna and steam room, and asked the volunteers to take 20 minute sweats daily, for 8 weeks. We relied on their subjective responses for the results.
By the end of the first week, 4 of the female had dropped out. They reported that they personally disliked sweating and found this form of prevention unappealing.
All of these female continued to have hot flashes and spontaneous sweats.
Of the remaining 6, one could not sweat effectively, and merely overheated in
the sauna. She as well dropped out.
Of the remaining 5, all experienced aid by 2 weeks of daily sweats. They
reported that they no longer had night sweats or hot flashes, aside from a minor blush.
We later discussed our study with an AIDS researcher who was exploring
hyperthermia treatments. He said that a side effect of the hyperthermia, which caused sweating, was that it stopped AIDS patients from having night sweats.
We would like to see further research done on this, and encourage physicians to try this out with their patients. Most female can withstand the rigors of a sweat bath, but some conditions may contraindicate hyperthermia treatment, such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, etc. The female should as well be told to replace fluids as needed, with electrolytes as well as water.
This relationship between the need to sweat and the development of hot flashes may help make clear a mechanism by which estrogen replacement reduces hot flashes.
Estrogen replacement regimens call for three weeks on and one week off the
hormone. This causes the body to retain fluid when the estrogen is high, and
then release the fluid from the tissues as the estrogen falls, effectively
functioning as a tissue cleanse.
However, the potential cost of using estrogens is high. It can include cancer of the breast, cervix, vagina, endometrium, and
liver, as well as gallbladder disease, stroke and pulmonary embolism, and
exacerbated migraines, asthma, epilepsy, heart disease, and kidney disease.
Maybe it’s better to listen to the body and simply sweat to relieve and
prevent menopausal discomfort. It is as well easier on the millions of pregnant horses that are immobilized and catheterized to collect their urine for the treatment Premarin (Previously Mare Urine).
Timely, female with menopausal predicaments need to examine their food, along with the health and function of all their eliminatory organs. However, when we comprehend that menopause is not a disease, and that the body knows how to deal with disturbances to its equilibrium with mechanisms such as perspiring, comprehending the cause of menopausal discomfort is actually no sweat!
Sydney Ross Singer is a medical anthropologist and director of the Institute for the Study of Culturogenic disease, located in Hawaii. His unique form of applied medical anthropology searches for the cultural/lifestyle causes of disease. His working assumption is that our bodies were made to be healthy, but our culture and the attitudes and behaviors it instills in us can get in the way of health.
By eliminating these causes, the body is accepted to heal. Since most ailment of our time are caused by our culture/lifestyle, this approach has resulted in many original discoveries into the cause, and treatment, of many ordinary ailment. It as well makes prevention probable by eliminating adverse lifestyle practices. Sydney works with his co-researcher and wife, Soma Grismaijer, and is the author of several groundbreaking health books.
http://www.SelfStudyCenter.org
