4 ways your exercise should change during menopause

Is exercise leaving you exhausted? Are your joints and ligaments aching and sore? Do you get restless legs?

I used to be the same too. Whilst these symptoms can occur in non-exercising women, many of the women who are used to doing daily exercise, often have no idea that these symptoms have anything to do with their hormonal changes in peri-menopause clashing with the type of exercise they are doing.

That’s why, in this post, I’m going to talk about the effect of your hormonal changes on your joint and muscle health as you transition through menopause.

When I present my seminars, I not only have a ‘physiology-hat’ on, but also my ‘socio-cultural hat’ too. It took me many years to do my PhD and what I loved the most was exploring the connections that have been made between how we live our lives as we age and how much our beliefs are influenced by the political, social, cultural and historical landscapes that we have engaged in over our lifetime. Because of the readings I did in this area, I came to the realisation that women in their 50’s today are unique in terms of our symptoms in menopause. This is because we are the first generation of women to come into menopause in the context of the modern fitness and sporting industries.

Think about it. Our mother’s generation or grandmother’s generation, never did the amount and type of exercise that we have enjoyed. Nor did they have the incredible influence of sports and exercise science, including sports nutrition, supplements, weight loss diets and popular exercise regimes, changing our beliefs (or more-often confusing us) about how to exercise, eat and compete. When I began to ‘connect the dots’ on all of the influences on my own beliefs about how to exercise as I reached peri-menopause, I realised that I wasn’t factoring in the effects of moving into a changing hormonal environment on my exercise choices.

Is this you too? That’s why I often talk about our muscle and joint health at my seminars. And I’m so glad that I do, because many women are continuing to do the same exercise they did when they had oestrogen, as I used to as well! I was so pleased when, after one of my seminars, a physio came up to me and said,

“Thank you so much for challenging me about the role of changing oestrogen on our joint health. I see this all the time in my practice – women who are doing so much high-impact exercise and not sleeping and then experiencing sore joints and muscles that we often can’t explain.”

That’s when I pointed her to the literature on the effect of oestrogen on tendon and ligament metabolism and function.* Oestrogen plays a huge role in our joint and muscle function. Prior to menopause, oestrogen helped our joints to stay supple. Not only did higher levels of oestrogen help our collagen production but oestrogen is also involved in the ability for our muscles to tolerate heavy loads and to heal and recover overnight. This is all to do with the role that oestrogen plays in the uptake of Vitamin D and the production of calcium (calcium helps muscles to contract) and also because, oestrogen plays a significant role in helping tocopherol (Vitamin E) get across the joint membranes to help keep them healthy.* It makes sense then, that when oestrogen levels decline in menopause, our joint and muscle function is affected too.

When I  began to experience symptoms such as sore joints and muscles as well as insomnia, and for me, my weight was going up despite exercising regularly, I looked to my research on women’s ageing. As I often say in my ‘Masterclass on Menopause’ seminars, our entry into menopause is the start of our biological ageing, so when we know how to adjust our daily lifestyle to accommodate our changing hormonal environment, we can reduce the impact of our symptoms. This is what I teach women to do in the MyMT 12 week programmes.

But it’s also important to understand that we need to change our exercise to suit our changing joint, tendon and muscle health too. Especially, if you have done a lot of impact-type exercise over the decades as many of us have.

All throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s I ran almost daily, did triathlons, including Ironman. I also helped to pioneer the BodyPump classes and taught high-impact aerobics for years. Sporty Spice indeed. So, when I began to look at Theories on Aging as part of my studies and discovered that there was a ‘wear and tear’ theory of ageing, I realised that I needed to look through this lens as well. The wear and tear theory of ageing was first introduced in 1882, by Dr. August Weismann, a German biologist. He believed that cells and tissues have vital parts that wear out resulting in more rapid ageing.

Like components of an ageing car, parts of the body eventually wear out from repeated use, killing them so as they aren’t able to replace. Scientists now know that there is some basis for this theory, especially because when we lose the ‘hard-caps’ on our DNA, known as the telomeres, this can increase the rate of inflammation and cause more rapid ageing of our joints and tissues.

This is also why it’s important for some of you to switch up the exercise you are doing, so you don’t make your joints any worse! I have numerous strategies in my Re-Build My Fitness programme to help women choose the right exercise to transition and I share four of these below:

1. Change to non-impact or low-impact activity. Whilst this seems obvious, many of our generation are so used to high-impact exercise, that we push ourselves through the pain. In your menopause transition, can I advise you not to!
2. Ensure you have Omega-3 rich olive oil to help your joint health. This is high in tocopherol which your lovely joints need.
3. If you aren’t sleeping or you are over-weight, then it’s really important for your joint and muscle health as you age, to sleep all night and lose weight. This is why I have the ‘Transform Me’ programme for you. If we aren’t sleeping, then we aren’t healing overnight. When we aren’t getting our restorative sleep, our immune health suffers. Some women then head towards an inflammatory condition called fibro-myalgia. It is very common in menopause and requires a medical diagnosis.
4. Your bones, muscles and joints need to strengthen and lengthen as you transition menopause. The right strength training and stretch programme can actually stimulate the cells in your muscles and tendons to renew and repair. Maintaining physical strength is a key strategy that leads to healthy ageing and in the Re-Build My Fitness programme, I have body-type specific programmes for you. Collagen is an important part of this process of cell regeneration as we age, so another thing you can do is increase your collagen-building foods in menopause too. Bone-broth soups are great!

Maintaining skeletal muscle mass and strength is vital for your healthy ageing. It’s why I’m so passionate about you understanding how best to manage your symptoms with the right lifestyle strategies in your menopause transition. This includes your exercise. Some of you might have lost the will to exercise because you are tired and sore, or you don’t have time, but getting back into exercise is crucial to ensuring that your joints, muscles and tendons remain as healthy and strong as they can at this stage of your life.

That’s why I have everything you need to know in the powerful online My Menopause Transformation programmes. It’s time to stop feeling tired and depressed and instead feel energetic, healthy and ready to live life again and enjoy your 50’s. These programmes have now been completed by over 1000 women world wide. Whether you want to reduce your symptoms with Circuit-Breaker, lose weight with Transform Me or get the right exercise into your life with Re-Build My Fitness, I look forward to you joining me on my online programmes.

Wendy Sweet RN, PhD
Women’s Healthy Ageing Researcher and MyMT™ Creator and Coach 

 

*References:

Frizzerio, A. et al. (2014).  Impact of oestrogen deficiency and aging on tendon: Concise review. Muscles, Ligaments and Tendons Journal, 4 (3), 324-328

Kendall, B. & Eston, R. (2002). Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage and the Potential Protective Role of Estrogen. Sports Med. 32(2), 103-123.