BLAME THE CAVEMAN

EVOLUTION has created a range of health issues. This week: Menopause SCIENTISTS have long been baffled by why women hit menopause and stop being able to have children around the age of 50.

However, according to the ‘grandmother hypothesis’ there may be an evolutionary reason. The theory is it helped humans survive as older women had more free time to care for grandchildren and ensure their survival. In a study, published in the journal Nature, researchers looked at the records of 3,000 families over the past two centuries and found women who had mothers to help with childrearing had children sooner, more of them and the youngsters were more likely to survive into adulthood. Virpi Lummaa, evolutionary biologist at the University of Turku in Finland, believes grandmothers helped evolution by ‘making it more likely their children reproduce earlier’.