men cause menopause according to new theory

Men at Fault for Menopause

In what may be simply as natural a law as anything ever produced by evolution, a theory has emerged from McMaster University in Canada that lays cause of female menopause on men. In short, it’s one more thing that men are at fault for causing.

The person behind the theory is Dr. Rama Singh whose background is in the field of evolutionary biology.

“Our first assumption is that mating in humans is not random with respect to age, which means men of all ages prefer to mate with younger women,” said Singh, an evolutionary biologist at McMaster University in Canada. “If mating is with younger women, any deleterious mutations which affect women’s reproduction later in life will accumulate because they are not being acted on by natural selection.”

Now, it should be noted that the theory is not rooted in any form a man-hating. Rather, Dr. Singh believes it is the effect of men preferring younger women to mate with as a means of transferring their genes to a new generation of offspring sooner. It is believed that this preference may have given rise to genetic mutations in women that stunt child bearing later in life IE menopause.

The theory was modeled and indicates that menopause may have developed in females over a period of 50,000 to 100,000 years. The theory may also support what is known as the “Grandmother Theory” that claims menopause developed as a way for older women to aid their children in child-rearing. The details of the new theory can be found in the current issue of the PLOS Computational Biology Journal.

On The Web:
Men Cause Menopause? Sexual Preference For Younger Women May Be Behind ‘The Change’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/14/men-cause-menopause_n_3441544.html

Hot Flash! Men May Be Cause of Menopause
http://news.yahoo.com/hot-flash-men-may-cause-menopause-210407073.html