Paleo Women/Diet and Menstruation

truth seeker

The Living Force
A few of us were talking about changes in menstruation after starting to increase or go on a completely meat diet. At least two of us, I
believe, reported the not having a period for some time (for me about two months). Since we are around the same age, menopause was considered but I find the coincidence interesting enough to consider that perhaps something else is going on.

I've been doing a bit of research within the last month and unfortunately haven't come up with much as these issues are not usually given much attention or seem misogynistic.

Currently, I think these changes may be an adjustment period as the body heals from years of dietary abuse but I'm also wondering if perhaps what we know as the monthly flow didn't originally start out as a more seasonal estrus - more in line with some animals? Or even a monthly covert ovulation that occurs without any overt signs? Perhaps what we currently view as normal in this regard is yet another symptom of agriculture?

Perhaps I've missed it somewhere, but has anyone come across such info in their reading?

I'm perfectly fine with not having a period but am just curious as to what may be happening.

ADMIN NOTE: Changed thread title to "Paleo Women/Diet..."
 
That's very interesting. I couldn't really tell because I'm nearly 8 months pregnant, but I think it's interesting because menstruation was always related to agriculture somehow, and this can go somewhat beyond what we see as obvious.
Also, why didn't the hunters gatherers have tons of children? It seems that they either used a natural birth control method, unknown for us, or they had longer fertile periods.
 
I just had my period return (4 days ago) after a pause of more then a year (Hurray!). In my case I know that extreme stress, sleep deprivation, and overall physical exhaustion were the trigger at the time, although the more recent change to a paleo diet might have delayed it even more.

I haven't come across anything in my reading, but I have a few thoughts. One of the causing factors for the period to stop is going through what the body perceives as famine. A sudden loss of weight, food deprivation and/or continuous physical exertion are amongst common factors. My guess is that the body enters "energy efficiency" mode when it perceives stress, it knows that the time is not ripe for reproduction, and it stops ovulation.

Considering that we have led a lifetime of burning glucose, a major change to burning fat will likely involve a period where our bodies perceive famine. And I don't think that this period will only be restricted to the initial adaption phase where we aren't yet in full ketosis and don't have enough carbs to burn. There are, as we've been finding out, many internal changes that may last for several months, if not more then a year. It is such a huge transformation that I think that it is, in a way, natural for a woman's body to stop reproductive functions whilst all its energy is focused on a multitude of small, and not so small adaptations.

I am also considering that overall calorie restriction may be playing a role. We have found that protein should be restricted and many of us had to adapt to smaller portions. The end result is that with proper quantities of fat we will be fully satisfied but again, until then, there is a period of adaptation where the body may perceive a famine.
In the end, some of us have perhaps adapted to overall smaller meal portions, which brings me to the next point:
Nora Gedgaudas also mentions in her book how studies on calorie restriction have resulted in greater health and longevity. If I remember correctly, with calorie restriction the body enters regeneration mode and it starts to work more efficiently when compared to unlimited calorie consumption. It's as if as our bodies perceive that fuel is not unlimited, they make better use of whichever they are given. My speculation with this is that with calorie restriction menstruation may be less frequent, the message our body receives is that although it can still reproduce, it has to do so in a restricted manner, in conformance with food availability. Unlimited food = unlimited reproduction, limited food = limited reproduction.

ADDED: An interesting side thought is how nowadays' overabundance of food also goes hand in hand with overpopulation.

From my experience with previous (and shorter) periods of amenorrhea, after going through some sort of stress or change, it would usually take my body a longer period of time until it became "convinced" that it had finally regained stability and could resume reproductive functions.

Some of these thoughts are just my speculations though.

Now, what I would also like to report is how the diet has affected me when actually menstruating. When I had my last period in August 2010 I had just started the USD. My meals were then restricted to meat and veggies. I had no grains, no starch, no sugar. All in all my meals were very similar to my current diet, with the exception that I didn't have as much fat. I had, back then, my first painless period ever. This, for someone who always had extremely painful periods, the type that would send me to the hospital, was absolutely remarkable.
My period returned this Saturday and, again, it was completely painless. Actually, I felt absolutely nothing. It was a shock when I realized it had returned as there was no tiredness, no mood change, no pain, no discomfort, nothing, zero, nada. I am utterly amazed at this.

Edit: added sentence and corrected grammar
 
skycsil said:
Also, why didn't the hunters gatherers have tons of children? It seems that they either used a natural birth control method, unknown for us, or they had longer fertile periods.
If memory serves, I seem to recollect having read or seen (on TV) the explanatory hypothesis concerning contemporary hunter gatherer tribes that prolonged periods of breastfeeding (up to well over a year) contribute to not being able to get pregnant during that time - but I forgot the explanations as to the precise mechanism involved. Might be worthwhile looking into a bit farther...

Gertrudes said:
My speculation with this is that with calorie restriction menstruation may be less frequent, the message our body receives is that although it can still reproduce, it has to do so in a restricted manner, in conformance with food availability. Unlimited food = unlimited reproduction, limited food = limited reproduction.
This seems to be right on the mark! I remember having read about precisely this occurrence during famines in the past and also during wartime more recently (as in WW II). As already said, profound stress is a major contributing factor as well.
Just some thoughts.
 
truth seeker said:
A few of us were talking about changes in menstruation after starting to increase or go on a completely meat diet. At least two of us, I
believe, reported the not having a period for some time (for me about two months). Since we are around the same age, menopause was considered but I find the coincidence interesting enough to consider that perhaps something else is going on.

I've been doing a bit of research within the last month and unfortunately haven't come up with much as these issues are not usually given much attention or seem misogynistic.

Currently, I think these changes may be an adjustment period as the body heals from years of dietary abuse but I'm also wondering if perhaps what we know as the monthly flow didn't originally start out as a more seasonal estrus - more in line with some animals? Or even a monthly covert ovulation that occurs without any overt signs? Perhaps what we currently view as normal in this regard is yet another symptom of agriculture?

Perhaps I've missed it somewhere, but has anyone come across such info in their reading?

I'm perfectly fine with not having a period but am just curious as to what may be happening.

For what it's worth. I didn't have my period last time when I "should" have (I'm 21 years old). When I started the diet for some time, my first menstruation (during the diet) led to a great decrease in blood loss and symptoms, and the next time I should have had it, I didn't notice anything. No blood loss and no symptoms either.

I was also wondering about the reasons for this.
 
Palinurus said:
I remember having read about precisely this occurrence during famines in the past and also during wartime more recently (as in WW II). As already said, profound stress is a major contributing factor as well.
Just some thoughts.

It makes me wonder whether eating the quantity and quality of food that is actually appropriate for our bodies isn't a natural way of controlling population growth. Well, in a sense we know it is, Vegetarian Myth explains very clearly how we have destroyed the planet with agriculture and an overabundance of food production. But I'm thinking that that may also be reflected on an individual internal level.

I remember also reading (or was that a video?) somewhere how populations tended to stagnate when cross breeding. Interestingly, we tend to think that when there's breeding amongst a certain population group, on a long run this will tend to lead to all sorts of abnormalities and birth defects. However, it seems that the opposite can be true. Because of that precise danger (birth defects), nature is challenged to be creative and there is greater development amongst individuals who have been born and raised generation after generation within the same small community. I'm sorry that I can't remember where I read/watched this! I know it was recently, so I may be able to find it.

Back to the point, perhaps unlimited food resources and an overall sense of "comfort" can lead to less challenge, less need to be creative and a ripe condition to simply continue reproducing without control. The message is perhaps: there's food, there's genetic variety, there are material goods abound, there's plenty (even excess) to reproduce. Would it be the other way around, the message could be: there is sufficient, but not abound. We need to awaken all "internal systems" to continuously monitor internal bodily functions and limit reproduction accordingly.

I don't really know, but thinking about this is an interesting exercise :)
 
Palinurus said:
Gertrudes said:
My speculation with this is that with calorie restriction menstruation may be less frequent, the message our body receives is that although it can still reproduce, it has to do so in a restricted manner, in conformance with food availability. Unlimited food = unlimited reproduction, limited food = limited reproduction.
This seems to be right on the mark! I remember having read about precisely this occurrence during famines in the past and also during wartime more recently (as in WW II). As already said, profound stress is a major contributing factor as well.
Just some thoughts.
Dunno. It would make sense in terms of famine but I would think one would feel hungry which I'm not. Perhaps the idea of calorie restriction and limited food supply in terms of the paleo diet has been misunderstood by researchers? Maybe it's mankind's preoccupation with lack and restriction that causes some researchers to project that onto the body in this specific case? If the body 'feels' well fed and is working optimally in most if not all areas, and people are showing signs of improvement, to me, the changes in the female cycle would follow suit. The same may hold true for what we believe about bathroom functions, to put it nicely. According to mainstream society, we are led to believe that we should be going at least twice a day. On an all meat/fat diet, this isn't the case. I don't see this as the body withholding this function but rather using the fuel that is given in it's most optimal way. Maybe it's the same with menses? Perhaps what we viewed as 'normal' was really the body getting rid of excess 'waste' due to an inappropriate diet? Could it be that what is really normal is the body using it's own materials optimally? Good points though, both of you.
 
Interesting. If there is a link between the Paleo diet and menstruation, I'd say that is just another reason that agriculture has made us overpopulated.
 
truth seeker said:
Dunno. It would make sense in terms of famine but I would think one would feel hungry which I'm not.

I wouldn't think it is necessarily so, particularly in this context. What I'm doubting is that the message our body receives will necessarily meet what we consciously sense and think. In our case, for example, we have changed fuel, this is a massive transformation that will surely use a lot of one's reserves. In that sense, our bodies can perhaps temporarily perceive lack of glucose as famine, although we are not consciously hungry. Not only that, but they will also need to use a lot more energy to process all the changes.

truth seeker said:
If the body 'feels' well fed and is working optimally in most if not all areas, and people are showing signs of improvement, to me, the changes in the female cycle would follow suit. The same may hold true for what we believe about bathroom functions, to put it nicely. According to mainstream society, we are led to believe that we should be going at least twice a day. On an all meat/fat diet, this isn't the case. I don't see this as the body withholding this function but rather using the fuel that is given in it's most optimal way. Maybe it's the same with menses? Perhaps what we viewed as 'normal' was really the body getting rid of excess 'waste' due to an inappropriate diet? Could it be that what is really normal is the body using it's own materials optimally? Good points though, both of you.

That is also how I see it. Although I think that a change such as what we have gone through can cause a stoppage in an otherwise "regular" cycle, our current diet may well lead to less menses in general. This won't necessarily be a bad or abnormal thing, but rather a normal, if not optimal state, not only in favor of the species itself, but of the planet's living system. Just thinking out loud here.
 
I remember a discussion in an endocrinology course about modern women having three times number of
periods compared to hunter gatherers and that may be contributing to some gynecological problems including cancers. They attributed more periods to less pregnancies and childbirth but I wondered if diet plays a role. Some researchers believe it does. Though they link the cancer to increased fat intake. However, years ago the nation of islam had a pamphlet on women's health that claimed monthly menstruation is not typical or natural, though other non-human primates also have heavy cyclic menstrual bleeding. Though I take their stuff with a grain of salt. There have also been some controversy between the evolutionary biologists and endocrinologists regarding menstrual cycles that confuses things to me.


In the personal sphere, with the exception of this month, since last march my periods have been much heavier and longer than usual. At times it would last for more than two weeks. After checking for hormone levels, abnormal cells, pre cancer etc. everything was ok except my iron levels. I also have fibroids. When my iron levels normalized with diet and the periods were still frequent and long and heavy, it was even suggested that heavy bleeding can occur pre-menopause, and so I may be in early menopause. At 41 that's pretty early. As I've increased the my meat and fish oil intake since late august, the real difference was observed this month. My period was only seven days, moderately heavy and without pain. I suppose the ketogenic diet was the reason for the improvement. So, I was also wondering if it it's not about early menopause and just that a sustained ketogenic diet would reduce the frequency and extent of bleeding in general. Which gets back to the question: not counting pregnancy and breast feeding how frequent were periods for a normal hunter-gatherer woman?


I also found this article . It is interesting though they fall for the anti-fat dogma. From what I understand however, it is increased fat intake in young female lab animals not in adults that is correlated with rather than cause increased cancer.

Some tidbits from the article:

In evolutionary terms, menstruation is a relatively recent
development (Finn 1994). Multiple hypotheses have surfaced as to why a
few mammal species menstruate while the vast majority does not. The opinion
of many scientists is that since natural selection has not eliminated it,
menstruation must have some benefit (Travis 1997). However, since menstruation
only occurs when pregnancy does not take place, natural selection may not
have had an opportunity to select against any negative effects of menstruation.
Until recently, most females became pregnant within a few years of first
menses, and would therefore pass on their genes before the deleterious
effects of menstruation occurred (Finn 1996)

While the reasons behind why women menstruate remain unclear,
research shows that the number of menstrual cycles modern women experience
differs greatly from the number experienced by pre-agricultural women.
It is impossible to know with certainty the reproductive patterns that
prevailed 10,000 years ago. However, it is likely that the reproductive
patterns of Stone Age women are more closely related to those of current
hunter-gatherer societies than to those of western women (Eaton and Eaton
III 1999). The best opportunity to study the natural pattern of human reproduction
occurs with women in current foraging societies. American women currently
experience three times as many menstrual periods as women who have continued
living in the ways of earlier ancestors. Foraging women are 16 years old
at menarche, 19.5 year old at first birth, nurse for three to four years,
have a completed family size of 5.9 live births, and an average age at
menopause of 47 years. They experience a total of 160 ovulations in their
lifetime. Contemporary American women are 12.5 years old at menarche, 24
years old at age of first birth, nurse for 3 months (if at all), have a
completed family size of 1.8, and are 50.5 years old at menopause. American
women experience approximately 450 ovulations within their lifetime (Eaton
et al 1994). A study done with the Dogon women of Mali shows a similar
relationship. The Dogon are a foraging society that practices natural fertility
by not using modern contraceptive methods. The Dogon have a fertility rate
of 8.6 ± 0.3 live births per woman. Median number of lifetime menses
experienced by the Dogon was 109, with a U-shaped relationship between
menstruation and age showing that, from menarche to menopause, women in
primary child-bearing years (20 —34 years old) rarely menstruated (Strassman
1999). Overall, this data indicates that monthly menstruation for decades
on end is not the historical norm. Today, women have earlier menarche,
later first birth, and fewer pregnancies. There is also a decreased suppression
of menstruation through lactation as _ of children are never breast-fed
and the rest only breast-feed for 3 months. Early menarche is an especially
recent development. In the 19th century, the age of first menarche
was the same as in the hunter-gatherer women observed today. The earlier
age of first menarche can be linked to an increase in caloric intake, while
at the same time occupational, educational, and social forces have led
to a later first birth (Eaton and Eaton III 1999). The consequences for
these changes in menstrual cycling may be seen in cancer rates among women
in industrialized nations.
The increased number of menstrual cycles experienced by
western women may increase the risks of developing cancer in the reproductive
organs. Breast cancer afflicts one out of eight women (Strassman 1999).
Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine the breast cancer rates in
ancestral hunter-gatherer societies. However, medical anthropologists estimate
that it was rare. One model suggests a 100-fold increase in breast cancer
rates from those in ancestral women (Eaton and Eaton III 1999). Less than
2% of current breast cancer cases are caused by heritable mutations. The
other 98% of breast cancer cases are probably due to the longer time span
between menses and first live birth, along with increased menstruation
rates (Strassman 1999). The chances of developing breast cancer decrease
with later menarche, earlier first birth, high parity, and earlier menopause.
This is because the susceptibility of the breast to carcinogens is directly
related to its epithelial cell proliferation rate and inversely related
to its degree of tissue differentiation. After menarche, but before the
first
birth, epithelial cells in the intralobular terminal ducts are especially
susceptible to carcinogens. Pregnancy and lactation induce differentiation
of these cells into well-developed secretory lobules that have a slower
proliferation rate and are more resistant to carcinogens. Increased exposure
to estrogen from an increased number of menstrual cycles also elevates
the risk of breast cancer as estrogen accelerates breast epithelial cell
proliferation (Eaton et al 1994).


I am going to check out one of the books listed in the citation: Coutinho, E.M., Segal, S.J., 1999. Is Menstruation Obsolete?
New York: Oxford University Press. A blurb on Is menstruation obsolete?. . Note that one of the authors promote depo-provera birth control for stopping menstruation. I don't agree with that at all but the book seems interesting and I will add it to my very long reading list

Another interesting book I want to check out is Fibroids, Menstruation, Childbirth, and Evolution: The Fascinating Story of Uterine Blood Vessels.

Given the bits and pieces remembered form my course, and what I've come across my guess is that childbirth and breast feeding has a lot to do with total number of cycles, particularly amongst hunter-gatherers but diet also regulates the age at which menarch and menopause occurs. Furthermore, diet is certainly a strong influence on the health associated issues with menstrual cycles. Thus both diet and number of pregnancy contributes. What is the "normal" average age for menarche and menopause is the question. Is it the estimated 16 years for pre-agriculuralist compared to 12 for westerners?
 
3D Student said:
Interesting. If there is a link between the Paleo diet and menstruation, I'd say that is just another reason that agriculture has made us overpopulated.

I'd say so, even though the hunter gatherers supposedly had more children it seems a paleo diet can result in less periods for some.

On this site is an interesting comment regarding paleo and amenorrhea. I would like to see the actual proportion of followers of the paleo diet who report amenorrhea.


With most big proponents of the paleo diet being male and the general taboo against this subject, it's not surprising that menstruation and the paleo diet is little discussed. That's a shame, because the beneficial effects of the paleo diet on menstruation is one of the main reasons I keep to the diet.

In most of the modern world, getting your period is a pain. It can last as long as a week and be accompanied by all manners of maladies ranging from irritability to stomach upset. Young women are getting their period earlier and earlier, at the ages of 11 and 12. This has been tied to disease later in life.

It's hard to know what menstruation was like in the paleolithic, but the modern hunter-gatherers studied provide some insight. Foragers, and most women in the rest of the world, get their period around 16. That makes sense because if women started earlier it might make for risky pregnancies. In Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, menstruation is described as a "thing of no account." It's the conventional narrative that menstruation would have been rare for hunter-gatherers, but this is not true. It would have been less because of breast feeding and pregnancy, but still part of the female experience.

This excellent article about that myth talks about how sometimes !Kung women will have periods but will have not released an egg. It also talks about the myth that exercise causes amenorrhea

"I learned, by studying runners, what is true for all women - ovulation and menstruation are not the same. Regular periods can and do occur with no ovulation or with disturbed ovulation[8,13,14]. However, like most doctors (and consequently, ordinary women), Is Menstruation Obsolete? implies that periods mean ovulation. It also infers that amenorrhea is (just) anovulation. In fact, amenorrhea means both estrogen and progesterone levels are low-a situation that always causes fast bone loss and the risk for osteoporosis."


She contrasts low fertility caused by living an active and natural life, with the Western illness of amenorrhea, which seems to be unrelated to those things.

My own experience is that prior to starting the paleo diet, I had very heavy periods lasting as long as a week and accompanied by irritability, stomach sickness, and headaches. After I had been on the paleo diet for awhile, my periods became shorter, lighter, and easier. The times I have gone off the paleo diet and had bad periods again have been a huge incentive to stick with the diet.

Why are my periods so much better now? Well, the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 has been linked to PMS. The reduction in body fat also probably decreased the length of my period.

The problems with modern periods can be linked to various modern habits from contraceptive pills to environmental toxins to delayed childbirth. However, it's clear that appropriate nutrition plays a role.

Edit:

Some women have reported amenorrhea on the paleo diet. The causes of amenorrhea seem to be varied and some are serious, so a visit to a doctor might be in order.
 
I may have gone completely off the rails with this one but I'll put it out there as food for thought while possibly looking at the bigger picture:

I wonder if it's not just a factor of overpopulation. What I'm thinking is of what is lost during menstruation (and in men possibly fecal matter)? - iron. I may be completely off here, but if we go with the theory that menstruation may be seasonal, and that this information seems to have been well hidden, perhaps one of the possible reasons behind agriculture was not only to dumb us down and make us tired but also to keep us further imprisoned in terms of frequency?

Q: So, they are lucky that they have any specimens at all. Who knows, when they find a very ancient specimen of a modern type human, they won't believe it - it will be called an "anomaly!" There ARE artifacts that are EXTREMELY ancient, which give evidence of the presence of modern type man, and they just simply argue themselves to death over them.
A: Yes.
Q: They ignore them. But, during the time Neanderthal man was on the Earth, did he live alongside Modern man?
A: Yes. Except modern type man was different then.
Q: In what ways?
A: DNA and psycho/electrical frequencies.
Q: Does this mean that their physical appearance was different from what we consider to be modern man?
A: Radiance.
Q: What do you mean "radiance?"
A: You find out!
Q: Oh, that's interesting. Well, there are legends that the Northern people had "light" in their veins. Very ancient belief. Is this what you are referring to?
A: Maybe.
Q: Was this light related to the hemoglobin level, the iron level in the blood?
A: Maybe.
Q: Did they have a much higher iron level in their blood?
A: Possibly....

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/schwaller_de_lubicz_2.htm

Perhaps with these changes our bodies are further preparing to be able to surf the wave? Just some further thoughts.

edit: clarity
 
I just listened to The Journey of Crazy Horse by John Marshall III. Crazy Horse was a Lakota Sioux war chief in the last years of an intact buffalo hunting tribe in America. Lakota Sioux women practiced abstinence until their children were about five years old.

Crazy Horse's life spans the last decades of the free Lakota way of life. It is a fascinating and well written account of Crazy Horse's life from the Lakota point-of-view. It is a heart rending story of a heroic figure in Lakota history. Crazy Horse gave his life to preserve the life of the people. His sacrifice and the Lakota Sioux's determined effort preserved the old stories which are the source material for John Marshall's book.
 
I was wondering if maybe the sleeping in total darkness is affecting some of you
on a personal level I have never really have had any problems menstruation wise, no pain or cramps what ,so ever and they have been timed to the moon all my life.
I do believe that women have 2 different cycles, a menstruating one and a ovulation one and that the ovulation cycle is lunar and based on the phase of the moon at the time you where born.
only if your lunar o coincides with the mid point of the m cycle you are ''properly'' fertile,this has worked for me as contraception method very well.
so of late I have noticed that I have gone from once every 4 weeks (29.5)days to a once every 3 weeks cycle since I am sleeping with blocked out windows where as before I made sure to sleep in full moon light when available.
I also think our h/g ancestors did get exposed to star light and moon light and glow of the fire in their sleep,maybe we need to rethink the total darkness sleeping?
from what I remember of the book ''Hanta YO'' http://www.archive.org/details/souvenirsimpres16lamagoog
Lacota women breast fed untill they chose to get pregnant again and the weaning of the kid was a signal to the partner that she was ready to have sex again and from reading about !Kung women that because you have to carry a toddler till they are 3 or 4 as a foraging woman you dont get pregnant (by whatever means) until the kid can walk and keep up and now that some !Kung tribes have been encouraged to settle and become cattle breeders the women now have babies every year or so
 
I had meant to ask that very same question one or two years ago, Truth Seeker, but then it totally slipped my mind. So thank you for bringing this up!

I had read an article by Malcolm Gladwell about contraception and menses (full article here: _http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_03_10_a_rock.html) and I had found this bit interesting:

Gladwell - John Rock's error said:
In 1986, a young scientist named Beverly Strassmann travelled to Africa to live with the Dogon tribe of Mali. Her research site was the village of Sangui in the Sahel, about a hundred and twenty miles south of Timbuktu. The Sahel is thorn savannah, green in the rainy season and semi-arid the rest of the year. The Dogon grow millet, sorghum, and onions, raise livestock, and live in adobe houses on the Bandiagara escarpment. They use no contraception. Many of them have held on to their ancestral customs and religious beliefs. Dogon farmers, in many respects, live much as people of that region have lived since antiquity. Strassmann wanted to construct a precise reproductive profile of the women in the tribe, in order to understand what female biology might have been like in the millennia that preceded the modern age. In a way, Strassmann was trying to answer the same question about female biology that John Rock and the Catholic Church had struggled with in the early sixties: what is natural? Only, her sense of "natural" was not theological but evolutionary. In the era during which natural selection established the basic patterns of human biology--the natural history of our species--how often did women have children? How often did they menstruate? When did they reach puberty and menopause? What impact did breast-feeding have on ovulation? These questions had been studied before, but never so thoroughly that anthropologists felt they knew the answers with any certainty.

Strassmann, who teaches at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, is a slender, soft-spoken woman with red hair, and she recalls her time in Mali with a certain wry humor. The house she stayed in while in Sangui had been used as a shelter for sheep before she came and was turned into a pigsty after she left. A small brown snake lived in her latrine, and would curl up in a camouflaged coil on the seat she sat on while bathing. The villagers, she says, were of two minds: was it a deadly snake--Kere me jongolo, literally, "My bite cannot be healed"--or a harmless mouse snake? (It turned out to be the latter.) Once, one of her neighbors and best friends in the tribe roasted her a rat as a special treat. "I told him that white people aren't allowed to eat rat because rat is our totem," Strassmann says. "I can still see it. Bloated and charred. Stretched by its paws. Whiskers singed. To say nothing of the tail." Strassmann meant to live in Sangui for eighteen months, but her experiences there were so profound and exhilarating that she stayed for two and a half years. "I felt incredibly privileged," she says. "I just couldn't tear myself away."

Part of Strassmann's work focussed on the Dogon's practice of segregating menstruating women in special huts on the fringes of the village. In Sangui, there were two menstrual huts--dark, cramped, one-room adobe structures, with boards for beds. Each accommodated three women, and when the rooms were full, latecomers were forced to stay outside on the rocks. "It's not a place where people kick back and enjoy themselves," Strassmann says. "It's simply a nighttime hangout. They get there at dusk, and get up early in the morning and draw their water." Strassmann took urine samples from the women using the hut, to confirm that they were menstruating. Then she made a list of all the women in the village, and for her entire time in Mali--seven hundred and thirty- six consecutive nights--she kept track of everyone who visited the hut. Among the Dogon, she found, a woman, on average, has her first period at the age of sixteen and gives birth eight or nine times. From menarche, the onset of menstruation, to the age of twenty, she averages seven periods a year. Over the next decade and a half, from the age of twenty to the age of thirty-four, she spends so much time either pregnant or breast-feeding (which, among the Dogon, suppresses ovulation for an average of twenty months) that she averages only slightly more than one period per year. Then, from the age of thirty-five until menopause, at around fifty, as her fertility rapidly declines, she averages four menses a year. All told, Dogon women menstruate about a hundred times in their lives. (Those who survive early childhood typically live into their seventh or eighth decade.) By contrast, the average for contemporary Western women is somewhere between three hundred and fifty and four hundred times.

Strassmann's office is in the basement of a converted stable next to the Natural History Museum on the University of Michigan campus. Behind her desk is a row of battered filing cabinets, and as she was talking she turned and pulled out a series of yellowed charts. Each page listed, on the left, the first names and identification numbers of the Sangui women. Across the top was a time line, broken into thirty-day blocks. Every menses of every woman was marked with an X. In the village, Strassmann explained, there were two women who were sterile, and, because they couldn't get pregnant, they were regulars at the menstrual hut. She flipped through the pages until she found them. "Look, she had twenty-nine menses over two years, and the other had twenty- three." Next to each of their names was a solid line of x's. "Here's a woman approaching menopause," Strassmann went on, running her finger down the page. "She's cycling but is a little bit erratic. Here's another woman of prime childbearing age. Two periods. Then pregnant. I never saw her again at the menstrual hut. This woman here didn't go to the menstrual hut for twenty months after giving birth, because she was breast-feeding. Two periods. Got pregnant. Then she miscarried, had a few periods, then got pregnant again. This woman had three menses in the study period." There weren't a lot of x's on Strassmann's sheets. Most of the boxes were blank. She flipped back through her sheets to the two anomalous women who were menstruating every month. "If this were a menstrual chart of undergraduates here at the University of Michigan, all the rows would be like this."

Strassmann does not claim that her statistics apply to every preindustrial society. But she believes--and other anthropological work backs her up--that the number of lifetime menses isn't greatly affected by differences in diet or climate or method of subsistence (foraging versus agriculture, say). The more significant factors, Strassmann says, are things like the prevalence of wet-nursing or sterility. But over all she believes that the basic pattern of late menarche, many pregnancies, and long menstrual-free stretches caused by intensive breast-feeding was virtually universal up until the "demographic transition" of a hundred years ago from high to low fertility. In other words, what we think of as normal--frequent menses--is in evolutionary terms abnormal. "It's a pity that gynecologists think that women have to menstruate every month,"Strassmann went on. "They just don't understand the real biology of menstruation."

To Strassmann and others in the field of evolutionary medicine, this shift from a hundred to four hundred lifetime menses is enormously significant. It means that women's bodies are being subjected to changes and stresses that they were not necessarily designed by evolution to handle. In a brilliant and provocative book, "Is Menstruation Obsolete?," Drs. Elsimar Coutinho and Sheldon S. Segal, two of the world's most prominent contraceptive researchers, argue that this recent move to what they call "incessant ovulation" has become a serious problem for women's health. It doesn't mean that women are always better off the less they menstruate. There are times--particularly in the context of certain medical conditions--when women ought to be concerned if they aren't menstruating: In obese women, a failure to menstruate can signal an increased risk of uterine cancer. In female athletes, a failure to menstruate can signal an increased risk of osteoporosis. But for most women, Coutinho and Segal say, incessant ovulation serves no purpose except to increase the occurence of abdominal pain, mood shifts, migraines, endometriosis, fibroids, and anemia--the last of which, they point out, is "one of the most serious health problems in the world."

Strassman does not seem to think that differences in diet influences menses that much, but I must say I have repeatedly noticed (in me, friends, clients) differences in how women menstruate when they change their diet. I stopped the pill 7 years ago (after bein on it for about 10 years) and my periods work like a clockwork. They used to last 4 days. Now, I'm currently transitioning to the paleo diet and I must eat between 30 to 70g of carbs a day (so that's not exactly ketosis but waaayyy less carbs than several months ago, and even less than two years ago when I was a vegetarian). Well, my periods now last for more than 6 days. If menstruations are one of the ways the body get rids of toxins, etc. regularly, and are a means of detoxing, then maybe it would detox a lot at first (heavier, more regular periods?) when one stops eating stuff one is not supposed to eat? And then, after a while, maybe periods self-regulate and are no longer monthly?

FWIW, the acupuncture meridian that 'deals' with periods is the stomach meridian. When it is overworked or tired, periods are painful, rare or too heavy. I noticed more than once that taking special care of my digestion a few days before my periods are due greatly decrease the pain of the first day, for example. Or a stomach meridian flush or brush helps in bringing about periods that are overdue.

I don't know if that helps...
 
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