Though not the most appalling part of life, menopause is a period of life that most women must go through. The common symptoms of menopause, such as night sweats hot flashes, persist throughout many women’s days and become a nuisance that makes getting through the day more difficult. Apart from the physical effects of menopause, the neurological effects seen throughout menopause also hold some ground. In Jena Pincott article ‘Menopause Predisposes a Fifth of Women to Alzheimer’s,’ Pincott discusses the neural effects seen in women during premenopause, perimenopause and postmenopause and just how our brain activity reacts through this portion of our life.
The main cause of menopause is the decline of the sex hormone estrogen, which regulates a surplus of bodily functions such as brain metabolism and glucose uptake. Pincott analyzed this estrogen depletion with the direct of the Women’s Brain Initiative and associate director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Center at Cornel Medical College located in New York, Lisa Mosconi. Mosconi analyzed the PET scans of women’s brain activity during premenopause, perimenopause, and postmenopause and there was a linear decrease of brain activity after each stage. A typically health brain PET scan will display high glucose metabolism levels in areas throughout the brain; there are various regions of the brain that are illuminated by bright red and orange blotches, such as in premenopause. In perimenopause, around the 40s, glucose metabolism in the brain slows down by about 10 to 15 percent. By the time postmenopause begin, the brains glucose metabolism has slowed down by 20 to 30 percent. This drop in glucose metabolism can result in different forms of cognitive impairment, such as forgetfulness, confusion, and disorientation, adding to the WONDERS of menopause. But I am not stating all these facts for nothing, these all lead to the larger idea: the decline of estrogen and brain energy throughout menopause make women more susceptible to acquiring Alzheimer’s disease. But why exactly does this happen? Based on findings from the director of the Center for Innovation in Brain Science at the University of Arizona, Roberta Diaz Brinton, estrogen plays such a key role in our brain biogenetics that when there is a decline of estrogen, our brain is said to adapt to this by using ketone bodies from our white brain matter, essentially increasing the likelihood of dementia. But all hope is not lost yet, in a research article by Pauline M. Maki et al., they study how the use of hormone therapy can minimize the decline of memory function.
In Pauline M. Maki et el. ‘Perimenopausal use of hormone therapy is associated with enhanced memory and hippocampal function later in life,’ they study how hormone therapy plays a keep role in enhancing our memory function. The researchers did long-term testing from a diverse group of women in all three stages of menopause, including those who received hormone therapy and those who did not. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the various task set up for the participants, they were able to determine that hormone therapy before menopause (pre/perimenopause) was conducive to enhancing both verbal memory and hippocampal/parahippocampal function. Hippocampal and parahippocampual are key components to memory encoding and retrieval, which as we know, gets reduced during menopause. The findings from Jena Pincotts article ‘Menopause Predisposes a Fifth of Women to Alzheimer’s,’ and Pauline M. Maki et el. ‘Perimenopausal use of hormone therapy is associated with enhanced memory and hippocampal function later in life’ provide substantial hope to possibly reducing the likelihood of women acquiring Alzheimer’s disease at an unruly rate.
So maybe menopause isn’t the most appealing portion of life for a lump sum of women, but there is still hope for allowing some relief regarding the symptoms brought on by menopause and its late life affects.
References:
Maki, P. M, Dennerstein, L., Clark, M., Guthrie, J., LaMontagne, P., Fornelli, D., Little, D., Henderson, V. W., & Resnick, S. M. (2011). Perimenopausal use of hormone therapy is associated with enhanced memory and hippocampal. Science Direct. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006899310025436
Pincott, J. (2020) Menopause Predisposes a Fifth of Women to Alzheimer’s. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/menopause-predisposes-a-fifth-of-women-to-alzheimers/
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