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To understand why menstruation evolved, we have to think of it as a by-product of spontaneous decidualisation. Natural selection may have acted to advance each belligerent’s goals. There is some evidence that the embryo gets some genetic reinforcements from its father, whose genes are pitted against those of the parent in the early stages of embryo development. The parent wants to conserve their energy so that they can have many children to propagate their genes. Its goal is to divert as much nutrition as it can from the parent so that it can grow to propagate its genes human embryos are amongst the most invasive during pregnancy. On one side of the battlefield, we have the embryo, and its genes. In fact, pregnancy is an all-out evolutionary war. Pregnancy is often viewed as a magical time in a person’s life, during which the birth parent forms an intimate bond with their child. And yet, menstruation evolved independently at least three times, so it must have some evolutionary advantage. It would be like deep cleaning your spare room every month for a guest who might not arrive, and whom you might not even want in your house. Menstruation seems like such a wasteful, energy-consuming process. Among my favourites: ペリー来航, Japanese for ‘the arrival of Matthew Perry’ – the naval commander not, sadly, the Friends actor les anglais ont débarqué, French for ‘the English have landed’, in reference to the red coats the English wore in the Napoleonic wars and, inexplicably, kommunister i lysthuset, Danish for ‘communists in the gazebo’.
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A recent survey from the makers of the cycle-tracking app Clue found over 5000 euphemisms for the word “period”. Still today, menstruation is poorly understood because periods are widely stigmatised and talking about them openly is uncomfortable. Throughout history, people have been forced to isolate themselves during their periods, for fear they would spoil food or cause men to lose their virility. Conveniently, it could also clear a field of pests if the menstruator walked around in it naked. Pliny the Elder explained that menstrual blood could stop seeds from germinating, wither plants, and make fruit fall from trees. The number of myths, taboos and misconceptions surrounding this phenomenon are a testament to how rare and alarming it is – the word taboo itself likely derives from the Polynesian word for menstruation, tapua. Other primates menstruate (though not as heavily as humans do), as do some species of bats and elephant shrews.
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It turns out, menstruation is quite rare in the animal kingdom, even amongst mammals. Your regularly scheduled underwear-staining, cramp-inducing crimson tide has arrived. If not, progesterone levels fall rapidly, and the endometrium begins to shed. If the egg is fertilised, the uterus is ready to receive it so that it can implant and start growing. Every cycle, before an egg is released from the ovaries, reproductive hormones like progesterone cause the lining of the uterus – the endometrium – to thicken and fill with blood vessels. We are taught that menstruation is a normal part of the reproductive cycle, a necessary by-product of being a sexually reproducing species. Regularly bleeding out of your vagina is not one of them. Opposable thumbs, the power of speech, the capacity to think and reason: there are many reasons to relish being human. Image credit: Patricia Moraleda via Pixabay