Japanese women experience far fewer difficulties with
menopause than their North American counterparts, reports the Center for
the Advancement of Health. Most notably, reports of symptoms such as hot
flashes and night sweats are significantly lower among a study group of
Japanese women than among comparative samples of American and Canadian
women. In the July-August issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, medical
anthropologist Margaret Lock, PhD, of McGill University, Montreal,
Canada, presents findings based on a decade of research on menopause and
aging in Japan.
Dr. Lock contends that biological and cultural variables act in concert
to produce these marked differences in the way Japanese women and their
North American counterparts experience menopause. She further states:
"Together with other cross-cultural research, these data indicate that
postmenopausal life is a complex biosocial process, one in which
declining estrogen levels are but one factor among numerous others.
Menopause should not be conceptualized as simply an invariant biological
transformation with individual differences due solely to psychological
and cultural variation."
The cross-cultural survey was conducted with a sample of more than 1,200
Japanese women aged 45-55. These data were statistically comparable with
samples of over 8,000 Massachusetts women and 1,300 Manitoban women.
Open-ended interviews were conducted in Japanese with more than 100 of the
sampled women, and interviews were also conducted with gynecologists,
counselors, and others.
Dr. Lock concludes, "The complementary quantitative and qualitative
findings, when considered together with the greater longevity and the lower
incidence of heart disease, osteoporosis, and breast cancer characteristic
of female aging in Japan, suggest that further research is needed to
discover what it is that protects women from distress at menopause and
promotes healthy aging."
