I’ve never seen any other female animal BLEED every month.
I understand the physiology of how a woman’s reproductive system works, but since every other animal manages to reproduce without the mess, why is the human’s system so messed up?
It just seems so illogical! Women loose a significant amount of iron in the blood they use. SO we have health issues like anemia to worry about.
What is the advantage? Isn’t there a better way to do this?
Well, for one thing, most female animals of other species are pregnant at the ealiest possible opportunity.
And besides, it’s all part of Intelligent Design isn’t it?
you’ve obviously never seen a dog in heat, wearing a maxipad, inside a diaper, held up by an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys.
Chicks menstruate to do a sort of monthly clean out so we have a nice little nest for the egg to sit in NEXT MONTH.
IF YOUR DAMN SPERM WOULD JUST GET IN THERE AND DO THE JOB!
i’m sorry. what?
Have you seen this?
My science BS alarm went off, but I can’t find anything else on the subject, other than sites that suggest similar ‘treatment’ (limiting animal products, going to a whole foods or vegan diet) to CURE amenorrhea…
I have seen cats menstruate. They lick themselves immediately. It isn’t a huge flow, either.
Also, my gynecologist said it was fine that i wasn’t menstruating at all when I was on Depo Provera for two years. She said the body prefers to be in a ‘pregnant state’ rather than shedding cells and bleeding every month. It’s healthier.
God - that website is such a load of crap. If menstruation isn’t natural, how is it that until that “scholar” and her ilk showed up, the species developed, evolved and became what it is today? Things that don’t promote or facilitate our continuity are eliminated from the gene pool. That a monthly preparation for pregnancy involves a fairly complex series of events is perfectly natural, and I’m darn sure that evolutionary biologists can explain numerous connections to our survival in analyzing the human mammalian reproductive cycle. And then the stuff about raw foods - which I see is another recent fad. Sheesh. This kind of clap-trap, masquerading as science is probably more responsible for the missle gap than anything else. (What? That’s over? well, never mind…) Cecil has been fighting ignorance for decades, and clearly he has his work cut out for him.
I don’t see why anemia would be a problem. I was taught that menstruation isn’t bleeding. The “blood” you see is the sloughed-off lining of the uterus, deposited gradually over the past couple of weeks. Yes, it contains a lot of blood, but it’s blood that was already outside of the body (yes; technically, the inside of the uterus is outside the body). As such, there’s no reason why it would cause anemia (not during menstruation, anyway; there’s an argument for anemia during the buildup, but I don’t know if it happens).
FWIW, my dog used to drip blood after heat, until we had her spayed. I think the “only humans (or “only primates”) menstruate” is a little simplistic.
Women do lose blood, real blood, during menstruation. Some women lose a lot of blood. If you bleed for longer than usual or heavier than average, sometimes your body cannot replace the iron lost during menstruation. You become anemic.
I read about the theory on this site a while back - more in relation to the fact that female humans have far less pregnancies now than they would have done in a more primitive age. In cavepeople times, they would have probably been almost continually pregnant, bar times of famine (when periods can dry up) and breastfeeding. Many pregnancies might have miscarried, or babies been stillborn, or died in infancy, but generally there would have been a lot more.
It’s sort of obvious, when you think about all the hassle we go through with birth control now.
The story that I read related to the pill, IIRC there was a quote from some researcher about how the only reason women on the pill have a week off was because “a bunch of grey-haired guys in the sixties decided they should have a period every month.” The researcher’s theory was quite the opposite - that it’s actually a healthier thing not to.
My wife’s dog is in heat right now and she is leaving red spots on the floor everytime she sits. My wife tied an old towel around her so she could come into the living room.
Hmmmmmmmmmm.
No definite answers yet. Even if some animals do shed dome blood, it’s nothing like what women experience.
More theories please!
Humans have more frequent seasons of being in ‘heat’…so to speak…whereas some animals are in heat less frequently, but have bigger litters.
I believe some ‘animals’ are in heat maybe once per year…and since they are unlikely to be in your living room, you don’t notice the similarity between all animals to humans.
Now, compared to whatever cropped up in similar species, the chain thatr evolved into humans had a reproductive advantage by way of the 28 day cycle of fertility in the female…
How do I know this? Well, we are here and they aren’t…so for us upright intelligent creatures, the 28 day cycle and small litters were the most efficient ways of passing on genes.
Maybe some other human species menstruated twice a year…had bigger litters…or whatever. Fact is, it didn’t get them and advantage over our species…with our females 28 day cycle.
The story that I read is that the week off was a much easier sell than the alternative. The pill didn’t seem so weird if women still had a “period” once/month, and so more were likely to buy it than if it had been just a continuous horomone cycle.
I read somewhere that menstruation might help women shed pathogens from the uterus and vagina. Remember that humans are one of few species that have sex outside of estrus, making STDs and other sex-linked maladies a bigger issue than for mose critters.
Twice I’ve had mild bacterial infections (or I was pretty sure I did; self-diagnosis is dodgy, as always) that I was procrastinating about seeing the doc about, and they went away with my next period. IANAD, YMMV.
Er, sorry, “sex-linked” is the wrong term . . . That means gender-linked. What I meant was intercourse-related.
Well, according to my biology professors, all the higher primates have menstrual cycles rather than estrus cycles. IIRC, a menstrual cycle is dependent on internal hormonal stimuli, and environmental factors don’t matter, as long as the body takes in enough food. An estrus cycle, on the other hand, is triggered by external stimuli like seasonal changes in the amount of daylight.
Damn, I am going to go look up my copy of The Naked Ape. I am pretty sure that it talked about this in there. Heavy menstruation is one of the odd things that distinguishes us from the animals.
And we are not animals?
:rolleyes:
I’d also heard that eating only raw foods stopped menstruation. Does anybody know if this is true or not? Erm, with some evidence if possible…
I work for a group of female OB GYNs and they all concur that it’s not a problem to stay on any kind of birth control all the time so there is no period. As a matter of fact, since I am 38 and have never had children, my doc here recommends it, since it supposedly decreases my chances of ovarian cancer. All those eggs popping out month after month after month…