Can Hot Flashes be My Teacher? My Journey to Menopause Advocacy

Written by: Dominique Debroux

Being Told HRT Wasn’t for Me, Sent Me on a New Path
Nine years ago, menopause hit me like a brick wall. Hot flashes, sleep issues, weight gain, muscle pain—the works! As a cancer survivor and with cancer in my family history, I was told that HRT was too risky.

I thought, that’s okay, I got this. Nutrition and alternative therapies had been part of my cancer healing, and had motivated my research towards becoming a nutritional chef using food as therapy for the body and mind. Remember, this was 2016 and even though the initial interpretations of the infamous 2002 WHI study on hormone replacement were being questioned, OBGYNs still took the ultra-conservative stance when it came to cancer risks. So, I started learning natural methods and creating delicious recipes to treat my new post-menopausal normal.

But what was I going to do about the feeling that life was over? Signals were clear, society wanted me to take a big step back now that I no longer had any of the youthful glow of fertility. I felt dread of the future. My documentary filmmaker husband, Christopher, was working for a menopause study, so I asked, well raged at him actually, to find more info from the doctors he was interviewing.

An Unexpected Discovery
I had already consulted some top doctors so I didn’t expect Chris to bring me miraculous new treatments, but I hoped for more than what I heard. The general consensus was that menopause had not been studied until relatively recently because living beyond menopause was a modern issue. One doctor said that we need to treat menopause to “fix nature’s mistake” of living beyond our fertility. Really! Does nature make mistakes?

Chris has a hyper-logical mind that won’t stop until he fits together a storyline. The view of menopause he heard from the doctors didn’t make sense, so he started researching. The longer modern lifespan point was taken apart with one look into biological anthropology. Another interesting fact, humans are the only land mammal that have long post-menopausal lives. That rare adaptation inspired our deep dive into interviewing more anthropologists, sociologists, a neuro phycologist, and geneticist. A different evolutionary perspective of menopause came into view that we call The Wise Women Hypothesis.

Menopause Made Us
Turns out, we became habituated to fire 2 million years ago and experienced cooked meat and plants. Instead of constantly roaming, maintaining a fire had our ancestors stop to set up camps. Stopping put greater needs on social organization and at the same time cooking increased the quality of nutrition from food, so life-spans increased. Yes, all the way back in our pre-human ancestors.

As females lived longer and became post-fertile, they were able to leverage their inherent social capabilities to handle the social pressures of a camp, without the burden of reproduction. The groups that had more post-fertile females and therefore were better organized were able to supercharge the potential of fire, cooking, and birth-rates. The social pressures of all these changes fueled rapid brain growth.

Far from being a mistake, menopause is what made us the humans that we are. We exalted the importance of the feminine and lived that way for most of human history. Patriarchy rose 10,000 years ago as we domesticated animals and mis-understood reproduction to be male dominated while females thought to be only the hosts.

Christopher detailed the development of The Wise Women Hypothesis in our upcoming documentary film WISE WOMEN – WHY MENOPAUSE MATTERS. Find links to the trailer and current cut of the film at the end of the article.

Hot Flashes Became My Teacher
With menopause having been so significant to our evolution, I started to look at my symptoms differently. What if they were training posts or signals to help me grow into this new, leadership phase of life?

I watched my hot flashes. Most happened when I was suppressing my feelings or words. As if my flashes wanted to burn away all the “be sweet” and “don’t rock the boat” messages that I had been taught as a woman. Now, when a hot flash starts, I listen for its message and let the words or emotions fly. The flash goes away much faster and is much less intense.

How about the rest of my symptoms? Studies show that post-menopausal women are more susceptible to heart disease, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s and dementia. Well, there are also nutritional, supplemental and lifestyle habits that are potent preventatives of those conditions. As I took on those habits, I felt so much better, pain free and physically strong. My symptoms put me on a path of research, careful consideration and disciplined practice that maximizes this phase of life.

I Advocate for A Different Perspective on Menopause
The conversation of menopause has shifted since I started my journey, thankfully we are now openly discussing it. However, medicine still stands on the belief that women’s reproductive longevity has not evolved along with longer lifespans and they believe that’s a problem. Therefore, the main medical therapeutic route is to continue at least some level of the hormones we have during fertility. I wonder what therapies medicine would discover to support us older women if they saw menopause as the doorway to a vital leadership phase, rather than the problem of a stunted reproductive phase.

Now, as I see this life phase through the lens of how menopause made us, and as my flashes burn away decades of repression on my voice, I advocate that we open our eyes to the larger perspective of women. The first time we embraced menopause it made us the humans we are. Now reclaiming and supporting the importance and capacity of post-menopausal women will bring us the leaders we need to move humanity to what’s next.

 

WISE WOMEN- Trailer https://f.io/G0Sd16ve

WISE WOMEN – Movie  https://f.io/p70AsWxB