Page Title

Text Box: Let’s start by talking
about ovarian failure (menopause) and evolution. Many women are counseled to forgo treatment for ovarian failure because they are told that it is normal part of life. One reason they are given is a theory that many use as justification to not treat ovarian failure. The theory is that ovarian failure created an evolutionary advantage by causing infertility. The theory suggests that because women lose the ability to have children they were then able to baby-sit their grandchildren and free their daughters for other tasks.
What this theory fails
to recognize is that a woman has already lost the ability to have children long before her ovaries have failed. By the time a woman is 30 years old her fertility begins to decline and by 44 almost 100% of women are infertile. At age 44 most women still have ovarian function, and have much better health than if they were suffering from hypogonadism (menopause). Not being able to have babies

Text Box: and still produce ovarian hormones would create the evolutionary advantage, not ovarian failure.
Organ failure only creates poorer health and from an evolutionary aspect poorer health is never an advantage. The symptoms of hypogonadism are the same for women and men. Symptoms include making bones more brittle, making thinking more fuzzy, causing the genitals to shrink and lose function and sensitivity, which has a profoundly negative effect on sexual relationships, and many, many more problems. Why then attribute the evolutionary advantage to ovarian failure instead of ovarian function combined with infertility?
Suggesting that ovarian
failure evolved to help the family unit gives some people an evolutionary ‘permission slip’ to not treat hypogonadism in women. Theories are just that, theories. No matter the reason for ovarian failure, the result is the same, hypogonadism. There is

Text Box: nothing normal about that and no one should tell anyone, woman or man, that they should ignore the ill health associated with it or that they should forgo effective treatment.
Long before our ovaries
fail other organ systems begin to fail. Around age 40 both women’s and men’s eyes begin to fail. Would we ever suggest that someone not wear glasses and embrace fuzzy letters? Would we ever suggest to anyone to wear glasses for only a short period of time and then learn to adjust their lifestyle to accommodate not being able to read clearly? While this change in eyesight can happen at any age, would we tell anyone ever not to wear glasses to replace the function that their eyes no longer provide? Would we ever counsel women to do their best to avoid wearing glasses but not men? Hypogonadism is a condition that affects women and men with the very same ill health. Why encourage anyone to endure any unnecessary ailment?