Men are to blame for menopause

[monovillage]

It seems a recent study by crackerjack Canadian researchers shows that menopause is actually caused by men. My wife blames me for everything else, so one more thing added to the list isn't a big deal.

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/men-caused-menopause-study-article-1.1372814

Men are to blame for menopause, according to a new study.

Canadian researchers suggest men’s preference for younger women throughout history is what led to the gene mutation that triggered menopause.

“What we’re talking about is a population phenomenon,” said study author Rama S. Singh, a biology professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
“Men don’t pick women with their eyes closed. They’re attracted to beautiful women who are more likely to be younger than older. When that happens, men are busy reproducing with younger women. That means women on the other end, older women, are less likely to reproduce.”

Over time, Singh says this actually altered genetics among women in the 50-plus set — because they weren’t producing, now they couldn’t.

 

[lotus503]

the very word MEN O PAUSE

translates to men you had better fucking pause before you say or do something you'll regret.

 

[boomerang]

Glad the Canadians paid for this study.

 

[waggy]

Well i am glad the study finally figured out the sex of God. God made women. God made women have menopause. so God is male.

 

[nehalem256]

Sounds to me like another study absolving women of responsibility.

Why are men being blamed because older women were unable to compete for mates?

 

[Matt1970]

And women are to blame for men losing their hair.

 

[Jaskalas]

In other news, Canadian researchers smoked crack.

 

[Brainonska511]

Glad the Canadians paid for this study.

Because when I want to know scientifically accurate information, I turn to the newspaper, especially if it is called the Daily News.

Link to the study: (PLOS is a pretty good journal too) http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003092

I don't see a problem with funding this type of research. It's looking at evolutionary biology and why certain genes arose the way they did.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Because when I want to know scientifically accurate information, I turn to the newspaper, especially if it is called the Daily News.

Link to the study: (PLOS is a pretty good journal too) http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003092

I don't see a problem with funding this type of research. It's looking at evolutionary biology and why certain genes arose the way they did.

I didn't read the paper, but it's not hard to see that females over a certain age are less likely to produce sound offspring and therefore it is advantageous as a species for sexes to evolve in a way which promotes the best of the breed. Men who didn't select younger females would over time lose out over time. Likewise, females have their criteria for what constitutes an acceptable mate.

Evolutionary pressure would cause mate selection of particular traits while excluding others.

 

[Oldgamer]

I don't see what the issue is. It's a biology gene mutation study, and they may be onto something. Maybe they can further research that turns those mutated genes back on, then some of our spouses will not lose interest in sex as they age. How can that be a bad thing? LOL

 

[Brainonska511]

I didn't read the paper, but it's not hard to see that females over a certain age are less likely to produce sound offspring and therefore it is advantageous as a species for sexes to evolve in a way which promotes the best of the breed. Men who didn't select younger females would over time lose out over time. Likewise, females have their criteria for what constitutes an acceptable mate.

Evolutionary pressure would cause mate selection of particular traits while excluding others.

I don't know if it was advantageous as you make it sound. It simply sounds like, based off the abstract, that men were simply choosing younger mates, selecting against women that could reproduce in their later years. This then allowed for mutations that caused menopause to build up in the genome. Is there anything inherently good about menopause? If it is neither good or bad for the fitness of an animal, it would be neither selected for nor against. I wonder if this would somehow tie into cancer research, as incidences build with age, mutations that exhibit their effects only after reproductive years cease wouldn't really be selected against.

 

[boomerang]

Life expectancy in 1900.

Males - 46.3 years
Females - 48.3 years

Think about that data in the context of the discussions you're having. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Life expectancy in 1900.

Males - 46.3 years
Females - 48.3 years

Think about that data in the context of the discussions you're having. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

In other words, how could menopause have possibly been selected for, if none/extremely few humans lived long enough for it to occur?

 

[DrPizza]

Brilliant study except for one thing, and I think this one thing completely refutes it:

Men can father children with more than one female. Some men seem to have a preference for older, mom types. (*cough* Alky *cough*) Given that they can father children with dozens of women each month, the idea that it led to older women not having children seems silly.

**** couldn't resist, after all the "your mom" comments.

 

[DrPizza]

Life expectancy in 1900.

Males - 46.3 years
Females - 48.3 years

Think about that data in the context of the discussions you're having. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Not sure if you're aware of this or not, but a lot of kids died before their 5th birthday. Average that in with a bunch of 70 year old people, and you get an average somewhere in the 40's.

edit: best I could find was hunter gatherer data. Back then, if you made it to adulthood (15), your life expectancy was well into the 50's

 

[Sea Ray]

Not sure if you're aware of this or not, but a lot of kids died before their 5th birthday. Average that in with a bunch of 70 year old people, and you get an average somewhere in the 40's.

And to think that in way back times, Adam and Eve lived about 900 years and Eve was having kids for most of those years. Heck, Noah lived over 500 years...

 

[Sea Ray]

Wouldn't you love to see what Sam Kinison would have done with this study?

 

[boomerang]

In other words, how could menopause have possibly been selected for, if none/extremely few humans lived long enough for it to occur?

Bingo :thumbsup:

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I don't know if it was advantageous as you make it sound. It simply sounds like, based off the abstract, that men were simply choosing younger mates, selecting against women that could reproduce in their later years.

That is one explanation, but it ignores why that would happen to begin with, and there are good biological reasons for a cut off.

This then allowed for mutations that caused menopause to build up in the genome.

Mutations are what allow evolution. The organism which has traits which favor the healthy perpetuation of the species out breed those who do not.

Is there anything inherently good about menopause? If it is neither good or bad for the fitness of an animal, it would be neither selected for nor against

There is a distinct advantage to menopause. Not menopause in itself, but that it provides a physical mechanism which the breeding life cycle of the organism in question (people) ends. This has nothing to do with "fitness of the animal". Evolution isn't about individuals, it's a mindless result of the physical rules of the universe. It's more statistical probabilities of survival than purpose. It's just how things are.

Truth is that evolution is as misunderstood as religion by many (I'm not picking on you BTW), giving it a purpose, that it "improves" the species, that it leads to a higher order.

Not a bit. A species can regress to a more simple form if that offers a survival advantage, and that is "fitness". The individual does not count, because a single unit is generally unimportant except in passing along a change which becomes dominant, and even then evolution doesn't "know". It's an insensible concept.

Back to menopause. Let's change perspective a bit. Rather than saying what is menopause good for, let's look at biological facts. Aging apart from having children is a phenomenon of cumulative damage, wear and tear. The leading cause of death is birth. Now add in having offspring and we see that aging causes an increase in birth defects in children. So ask yourself not "why is menopause good" but "how is introducing defective offspring which consumes resources and decreases survival odds of the group a benefit"?

The species as a whole benefits from fewer defective individuals and again this isn't a matter of thought or purpose, it is that those individuals who have behaviors which go against that are selected out.

Another question would be why should men choose younger women if the older are as fit to breed? Because younger women are more attractive? Why? There's a reason, and that is survival of the species determines that to be the case.

So men pick younger women and that leads to menopause in women. A fire burns down the house. The ultimate understanding of both is deeper than these statements. Why do we pick who we do, why did the fire start?

More than meets the eye.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

In other words, how could menopause have possibly been selected for, if none/extremely few humans lived long enough for it to occur?

That is also a potential issue. We wear out, and there may not be more than that. What is the advantage to having cancer? There isn't one, it's fallout from living.

 

[boomerang]

Not sure if you're aware of this or not, but a lot of kids died before their 5th birthday. Average that in with a bunch of 70 year old people, and you get an average somewhere in the 40's.

edit: best I could find was hunter gatherer data. Back then, if you made it to adulthood (15), your life expectancy was well into the 50's

No, I understand that. The premise that picking younger mates resulted in genetic mutation that brought on menopause so predominately that it became a dominant tendency frankly, sounds like quackery.

 

[Oldgamer]

Are any of you scientists, or biologists, or experts in this field of study? It would be interesting to read their actual scientific data or reports, well, that is if one understood scientific speak...chuckle

 

[Brainonska511]

That is one explanation, but it ignores why that would happen to begin with, and there are good biological reasons for a cut off.



Mutations are what allow evolution. The organism which has traits which favor the healthy perpetuation of the species out breed those who do not.

There is a distinct advantage to menopause. Not menopause in itself, but that it provides a physical mechanism which the breeding life cycle of the organism in question (people) ends. This has nothing to do with "fitness of the animal". Evolution isn't about individuals, it's a mindless result of the physical rules of the universe. It's more statistical probabilities of survival than purpose. It's just how things are.

Truth is that evolution is as misunderstood as religion by many (I'm not picking on you BTW), giving it a purpose, that it "improves" the species, that it leads to a higher order.

Not a bit. A species can regress to a more simple form if that offers a survival advantage, and that is "fitness". The individual does not count, because a single unit is generally unimportant except in passing along a change which becomes dominant, and even then evolution doesn't "know". It's an insensible concept.

Back to menopause. Let's change perspective a bit. Rather than saying what is menopause good for, let's look at biological facts. Aging apart from having children is a phenomenon of cumulative damage, wear and tear. The leading cause of death is birth. Now add in having offspring and we see that aging causes an increase in birth defects in children. So ask yourself not "why is menopause good" but "how is introducing defective offspring which consumes resources and decreases survival odds of the group a benefit"?

The species as a whole benefits from fewer defective individuals and again this isn't a matter of thought or purpose, it is that those individuals who have behaviors which go against that are selected out.

Another question would be why should men choose younger women if the older are as fit to breed? Because younger women are more attractive? Why? There's a reason, and that is survival of the species determines that to be the case.

So men pick younger women and that leads to menopause in women. A fire burns down the house. The ultimate understanding of both is deeper than these statements. Why do we pick who we do, why did the fire start?

More than meets the eye.

I'm not suggesting that there is a reason for something to happen. Evoluion, for lack of a better term here - uses what works. If something is not detrimental towards creating a new generation, then it has no problem spreading through or remaining in the gene pool.

I'm simply suggesting that the techniques used in this study, could be used to track how other gene mutations that are actually detrimental to older, generally non-breeding individuals, arose and persisted in the population (even if it wasn't driven by mate-choice, as it was in this study). After all, this study is suggesting that because men chose to reproduce with younger mates, there was no selective pressure to select against individuals that would experience menopause, thus allowing mutations to simply build-up in the genetic pool. They are simply trying to explain how menopause arose in the first place.

How those mutations affected the population as a whole, I don't want to speculate.

Are any of you scientists, or biologists, or expertscin this field of study? It would be interesting to read their actual scientific data or reports, well, that is if one understood scientific speak...chuckle

I'm a scientist, but don't work in the area of evolutionary genetics. I posted the link to the study earlier. It's in PLOS, which is an open-access journal. It should be freely available for anyone to read.

I'm only providing my input because some people seemed to suggest that this type of research is a waste of money. That view is simply myopic, as we don't know what types of developments can arise from studies like this, either in this field or in another field. Many scientists also tend to publish results piecemeal, so this might be only a small portion of a larger project this group is running.

 

[Brainonska511]

No, I understand that. The premise that picking younger mates resulted in genetic mutation that brought on menopause so predominately that it became a dominant tendency frankly, sounds like quackery.

That's not the premise at all. The premise is that the choice of younger mates allowed gene mutations to arise and persist in the population. They are not saying that the mate choice caused the mutation.

 

[Atreus21]

Reminds me of that joke.

Why do women have periods?

Because they deserve it.