Are Monthly Periods Normal?
And, ironically, Segal says, it’s not all that natural to menstruate as much as women today do anyway. The average American woman has 450 periods during her lifetime. Throughout most of human history, he says, women menstruated a lot less. “Over the millions of years going back to the Stone Age, the usual pattern was for young females moving around in nomadic tribes, always exposed to males, to become pregnant as soon as she showed the first signs of sexual maturity.” And maybe even without ever having her first menses even occurring, he adds. Typically these young women spent their years either pregnant or lactating, which means they did not menstruate, and sometimes even pregnant and lactating, for the rest of their lives. “And this went on for millions of years,” says Segal. Segal says there are studies that indicate a correlation between the number of menstrual cycles a woman has in her lifetime and the incidence of ovarian, endometrial and breast cancer. “The greater number of per
