Climateric: fatigue or third stage of the general adaptation syndrome

Abstract

The origin of climacteric has been subject of debate. Most opinions agree in that it arises exclusively from natural selection. In this paper the author argues that, besides this reason there is another, even more important; for him, climacteric is the final response to fatigue or the third stage of the general adaptation syndrome, just as in elderly people there is a loss of the capacity of proliferation of fibroblasts and lack of response to insulin. From a genetic point of view, this corresponds to an antagonic pleiotropy: the genetic program that has made the human adrenergic and corticotropic systems hyperactive, has also caused that they do not reach senescence intact.

High concentrations of stress hormones during youth and adulthood in humans, as compared to chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, and the hormonal cascade reactions elicited by them are meaningfully related to our most conspicuous illnesses, our genotype/phenotype and, in the long term, with climacteric.