#21 - Whales get it, why don't we?

Of the roughly 6,000 mammal species on earth, only a handful go through menopause the way we do (where fertility ends and life keeps going for years, even decades). Humans, five kinds of whale and, very recently, one group of wild chimpanzees in Uganda. That's the whole club. This episode is about what those animals can teach us about our own midlife and why the science quietly insists that menopause isn't your body giving up but instead it's your body being promoted. Huge thanks to Adrienne for sending me down this rabbit hole. I will never look at a pod of orcas the same way again. In this episode: Which animals actually go through menopause and which famous ones (looking at you, elephants) surprisingly don't Whether whales and chimps have a "perimenopause," and how scientists measured the exact same hormones your doctor tests in you The four-and-a-half-times statistic that shows just how much a family depends on its grandmother Why menopause evolved, the grandmother hypothesis and the smarter idea underneath it that most people miss Do these animals have symptoms? The honest answer, and what actually changes for them The reframe I can't stop thinking about: in every one of these species, the female who stops reproducing becomes the longest-living, highest-status member of her whole world Send it to a woman in your life who needs to hear that midlife is a promotion, not a demotion. That's the whole point of this show. Come find me on Instagram @project_me_us, and if you've got an episode idea that sends me down a rabbit hole the way Adrienne did. I want to hear it. New here? Perimenopause, Unfiltered is where we talk about perimenopause and menopause like real people, not like a pharmaceutical pamphlet. Subscribe so you will get an email when the next one is live.