#14: 🐳 Only Whales & Humans Experience Menopause
Scientists are struggling to understand why only five species lose the ability to reproduce
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🐳 Only Whales & Humans Experience Menopause
☕️ New Brain Region Identified To Be Activated By Stimulants, Like Caffeine & Amphetamines
🌀 Taking The Trip Out Of Psychedelics
📚 Anxious People
🐳 Only Whales & Humans Experience Menopause
Almost all animals reproduce until they die, even very long-lived ones like elephants and blue whales. As far as we currently know, only five species go through menopause, four types of whales: orcas, short-finned pilot whales, narwhals, beluga whales and…human women.
Why human women and whales go through menopause is a mystery, with several hypotheses as to why. One such theory proposed in the 1960s, is the grandmother hypothesis, that older women play a vital role in helping to feed, raise and teach their children and grandchildren.
A more recent hypothesis from Rufus Johnstone and Michael Cant from the University of Cambridge suggest that the loss of fertility helps to lessen reproductive conflict between successive generations of women, and because of these family dynamics, menopause should naturally evolve.
But…why?
Why should menopause naturally occur when it causes problems in long-term health for women, such as osteoporosis and heart disease?
On top of that, the age of menopause is tied to longevity. The average age of natural menopause in the US is 51, and studies have shown that women with later menopause tend to live longer and have an enhanced ability to repair their DNA.
The human ovaries age twice as fast as all other tissues, and after women reach menopause, cellular aging of other tissues accelerates by about 6%. And, scientists do not understand why.
Why don’t we know more about menopause?
Sadly, most research studies generally ignored women and minorities. Females were considered to confound data in clinical research - as their menstrual cycles are noisy and can mess up the data. Additionally, there is a general lack of research funding for reproductive research.
However, there has been a growing wave of interest in women’s health over the last few years. Particularly, in the early days of COVID19, statistics were showing that more men were dying than women. This spurred an influx of funding to study female physiology to better understand why and potentially leverage these mechanisms to help men.
Damn.
Despite the lack of funding and understanding of women’s reproductive health, institutes like the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (GCRLE) have been created to accelerate the pace of discovery on the underlying causes of accelerated aging in the ovaries.
Jennifer Garrison, founder of the GCRLE, says that because so little is known about the female reproductive cycle that research is forced to start with the basics. She is focused on answering fundamental questions such as “What causes decline in egg quality and quantity with age?” and “Why doesn’t a woman’s reproductive span correlate with her overall lifespan?”
She believes that if the basic questions can get answered, then the breakthroughs will follow and the moonshot of eliminating menopause all together could be possible.
Who’s working on delaying menopause?
1️⃣ Oviva Therapeutics founded by Dr. Daisy Robinton, has created a bioengineered form of Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) which can protect ovaries during chemotherapy, potentially improve IVF protocols, and might even be able to lengthen ovarian lifespan. AMH is used currently as a diagnostic in IVF to measure the fertility of a patient.
2️⃣ A team of Argentinian and Spanish researchers published a study in the journal, Aging, that they can delay age-associated decline in reproductive performance in female rats by stimulating the production of insulin growth factor 1 (IGF-1) through gene therapy.
3️⃣ Celmatix founded by Dr. Pirate Yurttas Beim has identified a promising novel compound which activates the AMH receptor 2 (AMHR2) to prevent premature menopause in women undergoing chemotherapy.
☕️ New brain region identified to be activated by stimulants, like caffeine & amphetamines
Our bodies contain an internal clock to synchronize our physiological processes over a period of about 24 hours, this is called our circadian rhythm.
People with irregular sleep-wake cycles often use stimulants to compensate for the circadian shifts and correct their sleep rhythms.
Pilots have chronic disturbances of their daily rhythms and are known to use the psychostimulant, amphetamine, in order to be able to stay awake and be active during their night shifts.
A research team at the Center for Brain Research at the Medical University of Vienna identified a new region of the brain, the lateral septum, responsible for shifts in the sleep-wake rhythm caused by psychostimulants.
These findings offer new starting points for research on how circadian rhythm is affected by more common stimulants, like coffee. It also opens up the opportunity for new therapeutic development for diseases associated with hyperactivity, such as ADHD, or problems with sleeping, like insomnia.
🌀 Taking the Trip Out of Psychedelics
Psychedelic substances, such as LSD and psilocybin, are known for their effects on the brain that can produce profound changes in perception, mood, and consciousness. These effects can be positive and sometimes negative, depending on the individual and the context in which the substances are used.
What is frightening to some is that some psychedelic trips can leave you hallucinating for hours, which for a lot of people is a non-starter. As an alternative, some have turned to micro-dosing, which is the taking of a sub-hallucinogenic dose of a psychedelic, and they have benefited from the positive aspects of the substance without the trip. This has led scientists to wonder if one can completely separate the trip from the medicine.
Some psychonauts believe the hallucination is part of the medicine. This thought is echoed by Christof Koch, Ph.D. and chief scientist of the Allen’s Institutes MindScope Program. He claims
“I strongly suspect that you cannot separate the two. Hallucinating is an essential part of the way these drugs work.”
Despite this claim, several companies are working to decouple the “trip” from the healing properties of these medicines.
Who is trying to commercialize this?
1️⃣ Delix Therapeutics, founded by David Olson, is synthesizing psychedelic-like molecules that lack the hallucinatory powers but retain the benefits of rewiring the human mind.
2️⃣ Onsero has licensed a novel compound jointly-patented by Yale, UNC-Chapel Hill and UCSF which triggers long-lasting and immediate antidepressant effects after just one dose. The compound is described as having the same antidepressant activity as ketamine and psilocybin but without the trip.
3️⃣ EmpathBio, a subsidiary of Berlin-based atai Life Sciences, started clinical trials in September 2022 with their MDMA-derivative, EMP-01, which avoids interactions with certain receptors linked to drug-induced increases in heart rate and blood pressure.
📚 Book of the Week
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
Anxious People is a comedic crime novel where 8 people at an apartment viewing are suddenly held hostage. Hilarity ensues. It is by far my favorite book I’ve read in 2022. It was turned into a Netflix series which aired in December 2021.
Fredrik Backman is a #1 New York Times bestseller author for his book, “A Man called Ove.” If you feel like having a good cry, you can also add his short story “And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer and Longer” to your reading list. He delivers a beautifully emotional tale of an elderly man’s struggle with dementia.
⚡️ Check This Out
Listen to the Hidden Brain episode “Relationships 2.0: An Antidote to Loneliness”
The quote “loneliness will manifest as anger” at minute 28 stopped me in my tracks.