The Brains of Lisa Mosconi
I discovered Dr Mosconi in my Youtube feed last week. She did a TED talk about the affect of menopause on women’s brains and I was fascinated. Before you think that oh, this is a woman’s thing, hang on. Brains are for everyone and her research has ramification for every brain.
After studying brains for over 20 years, Dr Mosconi posits that male and female brains are structurally the same, however they age differently, and this is due in part, to the different hormones of men and women. Men have higher testosterone and this ages over the long span of a male lifetime, however oestrogen in women begins to deteriorate from midlife.
Menopause, or the decline of hormones is women, can impact the ageing of a woman’s brain more drastically. Statistically for every man that suffers from dementia, there are two women who also have the disease. Women are more likely to have anxiety, depression, headaches and Alzheimmer’s disease.
The reason for this is that the brain is part of the neuro-endocrine system or brain to hormones. Even in 2020, the endocrine and lymphatic systems are still largely unknown beasts in the human body, but their interactions are crucial to optimal health and well-being. So if the hormones start declining, the brain is starved from a crucial…
