| Menopause, local biologies, and cultures of aging |
| Margaret Lock 1 *, Patricia Kaufert 2 |
| 1Department of Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada 2Department of Community Medicine, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada |
| email: Margaret Lock (cy61@musica.mcgill.ca) |
*Correspondence to Margaret Lock, Department of Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University, 3655 Drummond Street, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1Y6, Canada
| Abstract |
Menopause marks the end of menstruation, once generally accepted as the closure of women's reproductive lives. The current medical view of menopause, however, is as a pathological event with its own distinct set of symptoms and diseases. Researchers have described women as facing a dramatic increase in the risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, stroke, and Alzheimer's, all as the result of the impact of changing hormone levels, particularly the decline in estrogen. The clinical literature has interpreted these findings in terms of the absolute necessity of replacing these lost hormones for all women who are menopausal regardless of any other physiological, social, or cultural characteristic they might possess. Using research done in Japan, Canada, and the United States, this paper challenges the notion of a universal menopause by showing that both the symptoms reported at menopause and the post-menopause disease profiles vary from one study population to the next. For most of the symptoms commonly associated with menopause in the medical literature, rates are much lower for Japanese women than for women in the United States and Canada, although they are comparable to rates reported from studies in Thailand and China. Mortality and morbidity data from these same societies are used to show that post-menopausal women are also not equally at risk for heart disease, breast cancer, or osteoporosis. Rather than universality, the paper suggests that it is important to think in terms of  local biologies , which reflect the very different social and physical conditions of women's lives from one society to another. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 13:494-504, 2001. © 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc. |
Received: 6 December 1999; Revised: 23 June 2000; Accepted: 2 February 2001
| Relationship between menopausal symptoms and menopausal status in Australian and Japanese women: Preliminary analysis |
| Abstract |
The main aim of the present study was to explore the midlife experience for women living in Australia and Japan. The specific objectives of the study included: (i) comparing menopausal symptoms between the two groups; and (ii) comparing the factor structure of symptoms and exploring their relationship to menopausal status. Postal questionnaires were distributed to two structured, random population based samples of midlife women aged 45–60 years; consisting of 712 women living in Australia and 1502 women living in Japan. Analysis showed significant differences in menopausal symptoms related to psychological symptoms (P < 0.001), including anxiety (P < 0.001) and depression (P < 0.001), somatic symptoms (P < 0.001), and vasomotor symptoms (P < 0.01). The analysis, which excluded hormone replacement therapy (HRT) users, found that there were significant differences seen across menopausal status in the following symptoms: difficulty in sleeping (P < 0.01), difficulty in concentrating (P < 0.01), feeling dizzy or faint (P < 0.001), loss of interest in most things (P < 0.01) and loss of feeling in hands or feet (P < 0.001). In the postmenopausal stage specifically, significant differences were seen in the areas of feeling tense or nervous (P < 0.01), feeling unhappy or depressed (P < 0.01), parts of body feeling numb or tingling (P < 0.05), headaches (P < 0.01), and sweating at night (P < 0.05). Our analysis revealed that the experience of menopause for women is different between Australian and Japanese women.
Received 10 January 2003; accepted 20 November 2003.
Women's midlife symptom-reporting in China: Cross-cultural analysis |
| Jeanne L. Shea * |
| Department of Anthropology, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405 |
| email: Jeanne L. Shea (jlshea@uvm.edu) |
*Correspondence to Jeanne L. Shea, Department of Anthropology, 515 Williams Hall, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405
Funded by:
Mellon Foundation FLAS CSCC NSF Chiang Chingkuo Foundation NIMH Cora DuBois Trust Freeman Foundation Lintilhac Foundation Parimitas University of Vermont Dean's Fund
|
| This report draws on data from the author's China Study of Midlife Women (CSMW) to test the popular notion that East Asian women have a low level of midlife symptom reporting compared with North American women. Symptom-reporting frequencies from a general population sample of 156 Chinese women of age 45-55 in China are compared with rates from published studies on midlife women in Japan, Canada, and the U.S. While the Japanese women's rates of reporting 16 core symptoms are uniformly low, the Chinese women's frequencies range from low to moderate. Except on hot flashes and headaches, the Chinese women's symptom-reporting rates tend to be more similar to the North American than to the Japanese sample. This analysis demonstrates that women's midlife symptom reporting in China cannot be equated with findings on women in Japan. Sources should be more cautious in making generalizations about East Asian women in this regard. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 18:219-222, 2006. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc. |
Received: 2 July 2005; Revised: 7 November 2005; Accepted: 16 November 2005
Artiklarna i sina helheter kan köpas från WILEY.
Senaste Blogartiklar
