On average, women around the world experience menopause around the age of 50 , but this age also varies depending on the country in which we live. In recent years, scientists have discovered other factors that affect this diversity. Earlier menopause can occur, for example, from regular smoking , and it can also depend on the age at which menstruation begins.
A new study has found that women’s sexual behavior is also linked to menopausal age. An 11-year study found that women who had sex once a week or at least once a month had a later onset of menopause than women who had less than a month of sexual activity.
Data were collected from 1996 onwards for women aged 42 to 52 years who had not yet experienced menopause. Women were grouped according to whether they had sex every week, every month, or less than once a month. Sexual activities also included oral sex, erotic touches and complacency.
Other behavioral and physiological factors were also taken into account, such as a woman’s body mass index, number of children born, level of education and estrogen levels.
Expensive ovulation
The researchers believe that this link is due to the fact that the body experiences a “compromise” between continuing ovulation and stopping fertility. Compromises are important in biology because the amount of energy that the body needs to spend on physiological processes is limited. In other words, energy used for one thing cannot be used for another, and once it is used, it is no more.
When it comes to menopause, there may come a time in life when the energy invested in ovulation can be better used elsewhere. Especially if there is no possibility that ovulation could cause pregnancy.
Ovulation requires quite a bit from a woman’s body. Not only does it take a lot of energy to maintain the eggs and release them every month, but the body’s immune function is also impaired during ovulation .
The whole point of ovulation is that the body is preparing for pregnancy, but if a woman does not have sex at that time, then, of course, it is impossible to conceive a baby.
So if the body does not receive physical indications of a possible pregnancy, what is the point of investing energy in the expensive ovulation process?
Therefore, the researchers also chose different types of sexual activity as a criterion, as they are all types of vaginal stimulation that can “fool” the body and make it think about possible pregnancy. This means that menopause can also be a little tricky.
Positive compromise
Once ovulation has stopped, energy can be spent elsewhere, such as in grandparents’ activities. This is related to existing research showing that menopause evolved over time to allow women to engage in childcare .
It is important to emphasize that this study only shows that there is a relationship between sexual activity and menopausal age, but it cannot be said that it is 100% more likely that menopause will occur later with more sex. It must be remembered that there are no processes or medical interventions that can completely prevent menopause – this is an inevitable biological process that all women have to go through.