Is it really possible for older women to have menopause just because men prefer younger women than them? A new study suggests that it may be possible.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines menopause as ‘a normal change’ in a woman’s life when her period stops caused by the lower production of the body of progesterone and estrogen. This normally happens between ages 45 and 55 or earlier if there are medical treatments involved. As of 2000, there are about 37.5 million women in the U.S currently at menopause.

While CDC says that it is a normal change, a new study by Rama Singh, a professor of population genetics and evolution at McMaster University, funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada that men’s biased on younger women may have triggered menopause to older women to impede their capacity to reproduced. His study aimed to prove that relationships may also be one of the causes of menopause aside from several existing theories about this normal change.

He used a computational model and computer simulation to present how men’s mating preference to younger women affected the fertility of older women leading to menopause.

His conclusion revealed that some women may have not experienced this normal change 30,000 years ago but nowadays, 100 percent do. Therefore, menopause is considered an evolutionary phenomenon and it was needed for survival. It is better to have women lose their fertility than men losing it.

The research team now wants to further their study to see if there is a way to delay menopause like how women are able to delay pregnancy. They are targetting 50,000 men and women as sample for the study.

The study was published on the June 13 issue of PLOS Computational Biology titled Mate Choice and the Origin of Menopause.