Anne Montgomery asks me to comment on how many menstrual periods human women are designed to experience during their lives. Well, that's not exactly how she phrased it, but I can't figure out yet how to snip and move pieces of digests. Anne, you're absolutely correct that our bodies were designed to begin menstruating when the hormones were cranked up and when the fat stores were sufficient to support pregnancy and lactation. Seventeen years would be typical for very malnourished populations, 14-16 more typical for adequately nourished, and 10-13 is what we see in the over-nourished West. And yes, our bodies "expect" to be either pregnant or nursing for much of our adult life, so menstrual periods would be few and far between. This is especially apparent in studies of menstruation cross-culturally, where anthropologists used to make a big deal about "menstrual huts" and menstruating women being dangerous and polluting, and they had to be hidden away from the rest of society so they wouldn't pollute everyone. Once female anthropoloigsts started studying this topic, and interviewing/observing the women, instead of just asking the men, they discovered two things: (1) women, for the most part, loved this opportunity to get away from their normal round of work and hang out in the menstrual hut and relax and rejuvenate, and (2) they hardly ever got to, because they very seldom had periods during their lives. The view of menstruation as being "normal" month after month, year after year, decade after decade, is simply not accurate. Not that I would want to spend 30 years pregnant or lactating, but contraceptive makers could have come up with a better birth control pill than one that mimics "normal monthly cycles." Likewise, there was a flurry of interest last year in a woman in Berkeley who came up with a "theory" that menstruation was actually good for women because it cleansed their uteri (uteruses?) of evil germs brought in by sperm. She got her work published in a reputable scientific journal (Nature, maybe?) and even got one of those MacArthur genius grants. She was totally ripped apart in the anthropological literature for her failure to notice that most of the world's women hardly ever have menstrual periods, and it is difficult to explain the adaptiveness of something that happens only to Western women and only for the past 100 years or less. The most excellent book on anthropological studies of menstruation is titled: Blood Magic, edited by Alma Gottlieb and Tom whose last name I forget. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Katherine A. Dettwyler email: [log in to unmask] Anthropology Department phone: (409) 845-5256 Texas A&M University fax: (409) 845-4070 College Station, TX 77843-4352