Menopause Mysteries

00:00:50

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Oh wait. Here’s something. File name Menopause. Case reopened. You are listening to Nice Genes!, the podcast that explores the science through every stage of life, brought to you by Genome British Columbia. I’m your host, Dr. Kaylee Byers, your guide into the cycles of science and genomics

 

00:01:11

Andrea Rathborne: I can clearly remember a day in the summer when I was 43, so exactly 10 years ago.

 

00:01:24

Dr. Kaylee Byers: That’s Andrea Rathborne.

 

00:01:26

Andrea Rathborne: And I was actually visiting a very dear girlfriend of mine.

 

00:01:30

Dr. Kaylee Byers: A little while ago, Andrea started a podcast called Half Betty, aimed at women in their midlife.

 

00:01:36

Andrea Rathborne: I was sitting by her pool and I just had this moment where everything was quiet and the thought came to mind, I just feel different.

 

00:01:47

Dr. Kaylee Byers: For Andrea, and many of her community members, this kind of moment might feel familiar.

 

00:01:53

Andrea Rathborne: It was something that I couldn’t put my finger on, but it was about not feeling entirely like I knew myself to be. And I thought, “Gosh, there’s something going on.”

 

00:02:06

Dr. Kaylee Byers: She didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back, she thinks she was starting to feel the effects of perimenopause.

 

00:02:12

Andrea Rathborne: And from there, over the course of the next number of years, there were all of the other signs and symptoms that I was in fact in perimenopause. So some of those included changes in my vision. I started to develop sore joints, things like not feeling as quick in my speech. Didn’t feel as though I could keep up.

 

00:02:36

Dr. Kaylee Byers: And with all those feelings that she didn’t quite understand, it was starting to affect other parts of her life, like at her job.

 

00:02:42

Andrea Rathborne: That brings up a memory for me of being at work and having really terrible, terrible cramps, not like anything I’d experienced since I was very young. And when that’s happening and you are at work, that is really, really hard because you’re so distracted by the pain that you’re managing or not managing. I also didn’t want to tell anybody because it felt like I was complaining. So not telling anybody and just dealing with that was really hard.

 

00:03:15

Dr. Kaylee Byers: For many people navigating menopause, it can feel like you’re not supposed to talk about it. You’re just expected to know how to handle it, even though it’s something everyone who menstruates will eventually face. Society has long treated menopause as if it’s a looming, ominous shadow on the horizon, especially when most of what we hear about perimenopause and menopause are the many, many symptoms that we associate with them.

 

For example, hot flashes, night sweats, irregular cycles, fatigue, mood changes, increased depression, anxiety, vaginal dryness, brain fog, hair thinning, muscle aches, breast tenderness, urinary incontinence, skin changes, digestive changes, tingling in the extremities, frozen shoulder, gum or dental issues, changes in taste or smell, ringing in the ears, brittle nails, restless leg syndrome to name a few. Today, we are turning down the gas on gas lighting and putting menopause on the front burner. What menopause even is, why we don’t know nearly enough about it and how genomics is helping us paint a bit of a clearer picture.

 

00:04:12

Shirley Weir: I went to my doctor and I thought, “This is going to be empowering. It’s going to be a great appointment.” I land in there and I’m like, “I think I’m showing the first signs of menopause.” And she looked at me and looked at my chart and she said, “Oh, you’re 41. You’re too young.” And for a minute I sat in her office and I thought, “Shirley, you need to suck it up.”

 

00:04:35

Dr. Kaylee Byers: To get us started on this hot topic is our first guest, Shirley Weir.

 

00:04:39

Shirley Weir: I’m the founder of Menopause Chicks, which is an online education platform. We support you as you navigate perimenopause to postmenopause with confidence in ease. My pronouns are she and her. And I absolutely love my job.

 

00:04:55

Dr. Kaylee Byers: So to start off, can you give us a definition of menopause and perimenopause? What are they? How are they different?

 

00:05:02

Shirley Weir: So menopause, as many words in the English language, has multiple meanings. So often we hear it as an umbrella term that covers practically everything from age 39 to grave.

 

00:05:15

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Great.

 

00:05:15

Shirley Weir:  But the true definition of menopause is the day that we end our ovulation, which means we can no longer reproduce. After a year of no period, so we’re period free for one year, that is often the medical definition that we hear. “I haven’t had periods for 12 consecutive months. I have reached menopause.” And that’s really important because perimenopause, it’s a new term. It was only coined in 1996. The prefix peri means around.

 

00:05:49

Dr. Kaylee Byers: I love it.

 

00:05:49

Shirley Weir: So perimenopause can be 5, 10, 15 years. We don’t know. And it’s different for everyone. Essentially what it means is the body is preparing for the end of reproduction.

 

00:06:02

Dr. Kaylee Byers: I appreciate that you highlight that we don’t really know because I’ve talked about perimenopause with a few folks. They always say, “You’re too young,” but I don’t think that’s true. I think it can be quite a window.

 

00:06:13

Shirley Weir: So everyone is different and individual. Everyone’s experience is going to be unique. They say-

 

00:06:21

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Heavy air quotes from Shirley here.

 

00:06:22

Shirley Weir:  … that the average age of reaching menopause in North America is 51. I don’t know that anyone is actually tracking that or studying it, but it makes sense that most of us end our reproductive years around 50-ish. In terms of perimenopause and being too young, it’s completely incorrect because your cycles could be changing at any age and stage. So there is no time limit. It’s never too early or too late to learn about how our hormones work.

 

00:06:56

Dr. Kaylee Byers: And you just mentioned this misconception about when you’re supposed to reach perimenopause. So what do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about menopause or things that folks don’t realize when they start navigating or entering this stage of their life?

 

00:07:11

Shirley Weir: There’s a lot. As human beings, we tend to focus in on those things that we can see. So periods are things that we can see, feel, it’s kind of a universal experience. But really what the conversation around these phases of life are referring to is ovulation, an ovarian function.

 

I’ve been doing this work for 13 years and what I’ve learned most is that we’re craving that health class that we never got. So in elementary school, middle school, what have you, we were all taught how to make a baby and then we were all taught the following week how not to make a baby. And you got the whole list of contraceptive choices and that was it. So I think that misconceptions often come from just continuing to talk about the same old, same old things like periods and hot flashes, thinking that you’re talking about menopause when it means so much more.

 

00:08:08

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Something that I came across a couple of years ago that, A, made me laugh, and B, really got me thinking about perimenopause was a comedy clip I saw on the CBC.

 

00:08:19

Clip: Unless it’s perimenopause. Is it?

 

00:08:19

Clip:  Is it?

 

00:08:19

Clip: I mean it can’t be.

 

00:08:19

Clip: No, it can’t be. But is it.

 

00:08:19

Clip: Is it?

 

00:08:19

Clip:  I don’t know. I still get acne. I have a snowboard.

 

00:08:28

Clip: It can’t be.

 

00:08:29

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Is it? Is it? I was curious and I wanted to get Shirley’s take on it.

 

00:08:34

Shirley Weir: So I haven’t counted, but I bet I’ve been sent this clip over a thousand times. It’s been out for a few years. I love these actors and the show, but as a social construct, what I pull out of this clip, one, is this misconception that perimenopause means old or aging. I still have a snowboard. I still wear a jean jacket. Yeah, exactly. There is no time limit on that, folks. I think it did a really good job at pointing out that we have an education gap. And that we don’t understand the roles of our hormones when cycles are regular, so how would we ever be able to recognize which changes could be related to hormone changes or could it be something else? It very quickly didn’t take too long for them to go to a medical setting, which is very interesting because I hear from folks often say things like, “Menopause is being too medicalized.” And it’s true and it’s not true. We need a health team to support and guide us just like we need a financial advisor. But really, I hope it didn’t leave the viewers with this message, but when anyone says perimenopause can last for 10 years, I know that women in my community hear things like, “Oh, I’m supposed to suffer for 10 years?” And that is not true. Perimenopause is not a synonym for suffering.

 

00:10:07

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Shirley’s right, perimenopause and menopause are natural parts of life, not something we should expect to suffer through. But they do come with changes and when good care or support isn’t available, those changes can feel a lot harder to manage. So what is it like navigating the medical system around menopause?

 

00:10:26

Shirley Weir: It’s not good news.

 

00:10:29

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Oh, good. Can’t wait.

 

00:10:29

Shirley Weir: I’m sorry. I believe that we’re making some strides, but here’s where we’re coming from. In 2018, the BC Women’s Health Foundation did a study that showed that 54% of women in my age demographic, we leave our health appointments feeling dismissed or disappointed. That number is higher for indigenous women and women of color. And the top two reasons for that appointment in the first place has to do with questions or concerns about menstruation or menopause. And that example is unfortunately both sad and common.

 

00:11:10

Dr. Kaylee Byers: And that dismissal has a ripple effect because when people are told to just deal with it, many end up suffering in silence. And this is not only a health issue, it’s an economic one too. A 2023 report from the Menopause Foundation of Canada estimated that unmanaged menopause symptoms cost the Canadian economy about $ 3. 5 billion every year. Yes, that’s with a B. That includes lost productivity, reduced hours, and even people leaving their jobs altogether to cope. So if menopause and the impacts of it are this widespread, you’d assume there’s a mountain of research devoted to understanding it. Right? Right? Not exactly. The way science has viewed menopause? Well.

 

00:11:56

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: Currently the scientific definition, which I don’t like, menopause is the irreversible end of our reproductive life.

 

00:12:04

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Oh, boo. Yeah, that sucks.

 

00:12:06

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: Yeah, that sucks.

 

00:12:07

Dr. Kaylee Byers: It sucks.

 

00:12:09

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: I’m Aspasia Destouni. She/ her. I’m a senior researcher at the University of Thessaloniki in Greece. My research focuses on reproductive genomics.

 

00:12:19

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Destouni’s research looks at how our biology and our genes shape the reproductive stages of life. And the more she’s learned, the more obvious it is. Science’s take on menopause kind of misses the plot. Why do you think it is that we understand so little about this experience of menopause?

 

00:12:41

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: So in general, female physiology was extremely understudied and this has been shown in numbers, not by the medical field, but by the banking sector quite astonishingly. So a report by McKinsey & Company showed that only about 2% of funding goes to female physiology and health.

 

00:13:01

Dr. Kaylee Byers: You just have to laugh or else you’ll cry really.

 

00:13:03

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: That covers from big pharma, but also public funding. Of course, they view it as an opportunity for investment in this area. But this is really infuriating if you think that female physiology is extremely profoundly understudied.

 

00:13:17

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Yeah, I mean I could talk about this forever, but even we don’t study things in female mice because it used to be that they thought, “Oh well, female mice, they’ve got all these other hormones.” Wait, what?

 

00:13:29

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: Exactly.

 

00:13:30

Dr. Kaylee Byers: When it comes to female health research, it’s safe to say there’s a bit of a gap. Okay, more like a chasm. Sure, a lot of that comes down to how female biology has been dismissed for centuries. No big deal. But also menopause, in all its glory, is a real head-scratcher of biology. What is it that is unique about menopause in terms of aging versus just other parts of how your body ages?

 

00:13:58

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: So the very first feature of menopause that’s very important, it’s that it’s disconnected from somatic aging. So we live up to 85 years today, but our ovaries stop working when we’re at 50 on average. So that’s really phenomenal and a puzzle for a variety of scientists, including evolutionary scientists, the medical domain, biologists, anthropologists, you name it. So an organ in the female body stops working, whereas all the other organs are fully operational and that’s quite astonishing why it’s disconnected. It has its own aging clock.

 

00:14:37

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Yeah, if you think about it, it’s pretty spectacular and special.

 

00:14:38

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: Spectacular and special.

 

00:14:42

Dr. Kaylee Byers:  She’s like, “You know what, I’m done.” And I respect that. Spectacular indeed. And maybe a little rebellious. Coming up. We are piecing together the menopause puzzle from what genomics is learning about our bioclocks and some surprising cameos from orcas and naked mole rats. Stick around.

 

You are listening to Nice Genes!, a podcast all about the fascinating world of genomics and the evolving science behind it, brought to you by Genome British Columbia. I’m your host, Dr. Kaylee Byers. And if you like nice Genes, hit follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your shows and leave us a review. If you like this episode, be sure to share it with everybody in your life.

 

Aging is very stigmatized in our society. From anti-aging creams and miracle goops to wrinkle-free promises and forever young slogans, there’s a lot of pressure to try to outrun it. But we shouldn’t. Aging is a wonderful and natural part of life, like a fine wine. We only get better with time. Speaking from a specifically scientific perspective though, when we talk about aging, we’re really looking at how our cells slowly lose their ability to keep their DNA in good shape. Every day, our cells are copying and repairing genetic material and over time those fixes get a little sloppier and bits of damage start to build up. For our ovaries, that breakdown in DNA happens at a different pace than the rest of our body, but we’re just beginning to crack the code on how it all works.

 

00:16:20

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: It all boils down to DNA integrity, so the species that can maintain the quality of their DNA live longer. And that mechanism that’s responsible for that is the DNA damage response.

 

00:16:30

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Back in 2021, a large genome-wide association study was conducted to investigate what biological mechanisms and genes influence ovarian aging, research that Dr. Dostouni herself describes as real DNA detective work.

 

00:16:44

Sarge: Byers, looks like we’ve got a break in the case.

 

00:16:47

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Finally, the DNA detectives are on it.

 

00:16:50

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: So those DNA detectives, what they do is they interrogate the genome.

 

00:16:54

Sarge: Tell us what you know.

 

00:16:55

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Sarge, that’s just a test tube.

 

00:16:58

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: And the interesting part about menopause that we know from genomics is that it’s similar to height. So if you report the age at natural menopause, the distribution of the age follows a bell-shaped curve. So it’s not one single event that happens at 50. So it’s not the switch. And that demonstrates of course, variation among women. So we need to know how much of that variation is controlled by the genome and how much is controlled by everything else that we call the environment. So the genome is explaining around 30%. The common variation explains 32% to 30% of that variance.

 

00:17:33

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Oh, interesting.

 

00:17:34

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: So your genetic blueprint can give us an estimate of the age that a female will enter the menopausal period.

 

00:17:43

Dr. Kaylee Byers: That’s super interesting. You can take that curve and you can find where someone might sit on it in terms of when they would enter menopause?

 

00:17:49

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: Exactly, yes. And this is important because you can fish out the individuals from the general population that are very high risk of becoming menopausal very early in their life. And these we need to identify soon and fast because we need to tell them how to preserve their fertility.

 

00:18:09

Dr. Kaylee Byers: So essentially what determines when menopause begins is about one third written in our DNA. The rest depends on factors like health, habits and environment. But the specific genes involved and how they actually set that timeline, that’s still being uncovered. How do our ovaries know when their egg reserves drop below a certain threshold? What signals tells them it’s time to shut down shop? And what’s really driving that internal clock? The number of eggs left, the quality of their DNA or something else entirely? To get closer to these answers, researchers like Dr. Destouni are zeroing in on the genes that keep our DNA healthy. What do you know about the genes involved in this reproductive aging? How do we use genomics to study what drives that aging?

 

00:18:55

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: So for the DDR genes, the DNA damage response genes, we have natural experiments with natural variation affecting gene expression in humans. So from that genomic study, for example, the CHEK2, which is a gene that controls DNA integrity, we know that women that have loss of function mutations enter menopause 3. 5 years later. So there is an indication in humans that if you inhibit that gene in the ovary, then you can prolong the ovarian function. And this has been shown in mice.

 

00:19:31

Dr. Kaylee Byers: So by looking at the genes involved in DNA repair and ovarian function, scientists can start to unpack why menopause happens earlier for some people and even begin to uncover ways to help extend reproductive health.

 

00:19:45

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: The most important thing that genomics can contribute to is preventive approaches against reactive approaches. Someone experiences early menopause or premature ovarian insufficiency. It’s too late to go to the clinic and say, “I have a fertility problem.” But if you have a genetic risk score that you can actually calculate from the time you’re born so you know where about in that curve you sit, there will be strategies in place to guide you through your reproductive options or monitor your reserve or preserve your ovarian reserve.

 

The other thing is that we can inform someone about lifestyle choices because we know that some lifestyle conditions like smoking or obesity, they predispose to earlier menopause. So if we know when a woman or a female individual will experience pre-menopause, she can change her lifestyle in order to prepare her physiology, her organism to mitigate some of the conditions that she have to deal with later on in that stage.

 

00:20:50

Dr. Kaylee Byers: And while looking at our human genome can help us better understand reproductive aging, sometimes the most surprising insights come from animals that age very differently than we do. One in particular is a rat of course. But this rat is of the naked mole variety. I really want to talk about naked mole rats. I once saw a documentary when I was living in Sweden about naked mole rats and the subtitles, we called them half blind sausages.

 

00:21:15

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: Yes.

 

00:21:15

Dr. Kaylee Byers: But also they’re a really interesting species to think about in this reproductive aging space. So why are naked mole rats so interesting to compare to humans when we think about reproductive aging?

 

00:21:27

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: So naked mole rats are interesting to compare to every organism that ages because they don’t age, they don’t die of physical aging. So they flip the script basically. They remain reproductively capable throughout their life. So they’re eusocial animals. That means that they have a designated female, the queen, that can breed throughout her life. She can produce five litters of 13 pups per year. And it’s very interesting because she keeps doing that, unless she dies and then she needs to be replaced.

 

00:22:01

Dr. Kaylee Byers: It is interesting, but it also does sound like it sucks.

 

00:22:04

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: The job description is not so good. So they’re very interesting animals because they don’t age. And the other interesting thing is that contrary to the mice that we study in the lab, and contrary to humans, oogenesis starts during their postnatal life. Whereas in mice, in humans, oogenesis starts during the fetal life.

 

00:22:25

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Oogenesis is the process where egg cells or ova are formed in the ovaries. In most mammals, this process happens before birth, meaning females are born with all the eggs they’ll ever have. But in naked mole rats, it’s a whole different story. Their ovaries can keep producing new ova long after birth.

 

00:22:43

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: So when let’s say a subordinate female that’s not the designated queen of the colony needs to take up that space, she becomes activated and starts recruiting the follicles. So it’s very interesting.

 

00:22:57

Dr. Kaylee Byers: By digging into the genomes of these half-blind sausages, scientists can uncover the molecular levers behind their extended reproductive lifespan and possibly see what keeps their ovarian clocks ticking. What those discoveries could mean for our own reproductive possibilities? Well, more DNA detective work needs to be done. So maybe being the eternally fertile queen of a naked mole rat colony isn’t for everyone. It’s my nightmare, frankly. It does make for great science. But like Dr. Destouni said, naked mole rats reproduce until they die, which means they don’t experience menopause. That’s a uniquely human thing. Or is it? Is it?

 

00:23:33

Clip: Is it?

 

00:23:34

Clip: Is it?

 

00:23:36

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Turns out we aren’t the only ones to pull the reproductive handbrake midlife. Out in the ocean, scientists have discovered that toothed whales like orcas stop reproducing decades before the end of their lives. On land, studies from Uganda have shown hormonal evidence that chimpanzees experience a similar thing.

 

00:23:58

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: They measured estrogen and follicle-stimulating hormones, luteinizing hormones, and they had the profile similar to that we measure in humans. So this is the second animal that we know that manifests menopause.

 

00:24:12

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Okay, so we know that menopause happens to not just us, but a couple other species that we know of so far. But what evolutionary path could have gotten us here that we would have menopause?

 

00:24:23

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: The most prominent theory in humans is the grandmother hypothesis, but this has not been proven yet in humans.

 

00:24:32

Dr. Kaylee Byers: The grandmother hypothesis suggests that menopause evolved to allow older females to stop reproducing and instead help ensure the survival of their existing offspring and grandchildren. In orcas, studies have shown this may be exactly what’s happening. Menopausal females live long past their fertile years and their presence appears to boost the survival of younger pod members.

 

00:24:53

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: But in chimpanzees, the grandmother hypothesis was sort of dismissed because the older females do not live close to their daughters, so they don’t take care of their offspring. The other hypothesis is the reduction of reproductive conflict. So you don’t want an old reproductively capable female coexisting with a younger one competing for reproductive resources. So the evolutionary layers that led us to adapt this way are more complex than we think.

 

00:25:22

Dr. Kaylee Byers: How has this research made you think about societal attitudes towards aging and reproductive aging?

 

00:25:28

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: There’s some sort of stigma associated with reproductive aging. There’s a stigma associated to infertility in general. Also, stigma associated with a woman becoming, let’s say useless to society because she fulfilled her role. But I think women are not perceiving themselves anymore like the organic incubators or the organic feeders of the next generation. And I’m very happy about the next generation of females that are very dynamic and I’m sure they would like to have solutions in place that medicines and science now cannot provide them with. Women should come together and women scientists to empower women in reporting and demanding solutions, not being stigmatized by what they experience.

 

00:26:16

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Dr. Aspasia Destouni, it was really a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us.

 

00:26:21

Dr. Aspasia Destouni: Thank you very much.

 

00:26:23

Dr. Kaylee Byers: It’s easy to feel real frustrated about the lack of knowledge and support available out there for people in menopause. But for Shirley, this just opens up room for new opportunities and perspectives.

 

00:26:33

Shirley Weir: We still carry a bulk of the caregiving role, whether that’s for younger children, aging parents, doing our jobs to the best of our ability and caretaking for the home. As we move closer to the age of menopause and beyond, some of those roles and responsibilities may go away. You might be an empty-nester for the first time, but you might also be taking on other roles. So I don’t want to just diminish that. But one of the things that I felt was empowerment. And one of the phrases that we use a lot is putting your own name at the top of the to-do list because perhaps for the last two decades or three decades, your name wasn’t even on the list. And there’s a theory that points to the fact that when you are no longer menstruating or you’re no longer worrying about contraception, those are two less things that give you some sort of sense of freedom. And also you might have another calling. It’s a short life, but it’s a long span. And I’m really actually excited about some of the examples that we’re seeing in pop culture, in Hollywood, even in podcasts where we’re talking to 80-year-olds and saying, “Hey, share your wisdom with us.” Because you may have been raised in a society that said you are supposed to get married or you’re supposed to have kids. I want you to hold up a mirror and say, “Is that actually true?” You might’ve been raised in a society that said periods equal pain and menopause is a life sentence of suffering, and those aren’t true actually. We’re not meant to suffer.

 

00:28:09

Dr. Kaylee Byers: If there was one thing you could have folks who are listening to this come away with, what would it be?

 

00:28:14

Shirley Weir: That language can be very healing. Whether you are listening to a podcast, talking to a friend at work or preparing to go into your health appointment for that curious investigative conversation about the healthcare that you need and deserve, advocating for yourself is absolutely job one. I think that we do need to acknowledge that we still live in a society where these conversations are not yet water cooler conversations or backyard barbecue conversations, and I implore the members in my community to be like, “Yes,” and you have a responsibility to all the other individuals who are following you on this path or into that doctor’s office.

 

00:28:59

Dr. Kaylee Byers: That is a very empowering way to leave things. Shirley, thank you so much for coming on to talk to us about menopause, perimenopause and postmenopause, the whole life cycle.

 

00:29:09

Shirley Weir: Thank you for having me.

 

00:29:11

Dr. Kaylee Byers: There’s only so much we can cover in a single podcast episode, so I want to leave you with the message that when it comes to menopause, there’s so much more to explore. And we know support isn’t always easy to find. If you’re looking for a place to start, we’ve added a few resources to the show notes. Even small conversations with friends, family, or people that you trust can chip away at the silence around menopause. What really matters is this, we need to empower ourselves and each other to be curious, ask questions, and advocate for the science and care we deserve.

 

Our guests for today were Dr. Aspasia Destouni, Senior Researcher in Reproductive Genomics at University of Thessaloniki in Greece. And Shirley Weir, Founder of the online community “Menopause Chicks”. Special thanks to Andrea Rathborne, creator of the Half Betty Podcast.

 

You’ve been listening to Nice Genes!, a podcast brought to you by Genome British Columbia. If you like this episode, go check out some of our previous ones. Wherever you listen from. Share it with your friends and leave us a review. You can also DM the show on social media by going to @GenomeBC. Have rats on the brain here at Nice Genes!, From the naked mule rat, not a true rat, by the way, to some heroic rats sniffing out a disease that has plagued humanity for so long.

 

00:30:31

Rat Trainers: The bar which contains the samples. Rat will start sniffing the sample from number one, from number 10.

 

00:30:34

Dr. Kaylee Byers: Next time we open up the case file on tuberculosis, why it’s still the world’s most deadly infectious killer, even though it’s treatable. As always, thank you so much for listening. Ovary and out.