Menopause Affects Japanese
Women Less Than Westerners
(19 Nov, Science Daily)
Japanese women experience far fewer difficulties with menopause than their
North American counterparts, new research shows. 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."
This story has
been adapted from a news release issued by Center For The Advancement Of
Health.
