Much Bigger Discovery Than NPR Said
I heard on NPR last week about the discovery that women can produce new eggs later in their reproductive lives, but the radio article was so hurried and brief that I misunderstood many things about this important biological discovery - most of all, I failed to grasp that this isn't just a stem-cell-enabled innovation, but rather an outright contradiction of something that we'd been taught as basic fact all our lives!
I recommend the National Geographic article. It's complete and accessible. Here's the scoop: human women are not born with all the eggs they will ever have in their lives, and menopause is not the result of those eggs running out or aging out. Instead, eggs, not unlike sperm (though at astronomically smaller volumes), are produced constantly. Much, much new thinking and new research must be done! Exciting.
I recommend the National Geographic article. It's complete and accessible. Here's the scoop: human women are not born with all the eggs they will ever have in their lives, and menopause is not the result of those eggs running out or aging out. Instead, eggs, not unlike sperm (though at astronomically smaller volumes), are produced constantly. Much, much new thinking and new research must be done! Exciting.