You have all probably heard this many, many times before. Exercise is good for you. Exercise will help keep you healthy. You should exercise on a regular basis. I’m sorry to say, this blog post will not say anything different. On the contrary, if you’re not already exercising, it is time to start.
Take a minute and imagine how you want to live when you are older, what kind of life do you envision yourself having when you are 70+, 80+? Do you want to be able to go shopping, get your groceries, go for a walk, carry your grandchildren (if you have any will say)? Do you want to be able to get out of a car or a sofa with ease? If the answer is yes, it is time to prioritize yourself and your exercise.
The dramatic fall of our estrogen levels during perimenopause and menopause also affects our ability to maintain muscle mass and bone density (amongst much more, but let’s focus on that for a while). If you live a sedentary life after menopause, you will lose 1-2 % of your muscle mass (lean mass) a year. That is a lot, especially when you consider the average life span of a woman in Sweden is 84 years, by that time you will have lost 30-60 % of your muscle mass. Just imagine what that does to your ability to move around and live an active life. At the same time, your bones are becoming less dense. By the time we are 50, about 2-3 % of Swedish women have osteoporosis and by the time we are 80 about half of all women have it. So, what is the harm of having brittle bones? In Sweden alone, we had 124 000 fractures due to osteoporosis in 2019. That is 338 per day. Fractures from osteoporosis don’t need trauma to occur, it can happen from day-to-day activities such as bending over or rolling over in bed. The sad fact is, it can be fatal to get a fracture when you are elderly, one in three people will die within 12 months of having a hip fracture, 40% will not be able to walk on their own again.
That is quite gloomy. And you won’t even notice it until you are there. But is it a fact of life and we cannot do anything to prevent it? Of course not! And that’s where exercise comes into the picture!
A lot of times, when talking to friends and relatives (and nagging them about working out) I hear: But I am active, I take brisk walks and get my steps in every day! Or: I go out and jog for 30 minutes 3 times a week, I won’t get osteoporosis. But that doesn’t prevent it. Science has shown that dynamic, intermittent training, increasing the load, done rapidly and in diverse or unusual patterns in few repetitions is what our bones need to stay healthy. With that said, if you like to take walks or go out for a run, that is super good and you should do that as well!
Another way of decreasing the risk of fractures is maintaining your muscle mass.
Estrogen acts on a woman as testosterone does for a man when we talk about lean mass. Estrogen stimulates the basic muscle cells to grow. Estrogen also regulates different proteins in your body to come together and those proteins cause muscle contractions. With lower levels of estrogen in your body these processes are thrown off track and we can’t stimulate our bodies to contract the muscles as strongly as we were able to do before perimenopause. But is it impossible? No, we just need to work out perhaps differently than what we are used to. We need to stimulate the nerves connected to our muscles and they will send a message to our body that the muscles need to grow. This calls for lifting heavy weights. Which can seem daunting, scary and maybe even boring. (But it is not, I can assure you!) As a woman in your mid-life, you need to let go of what we have been taught regarding lifting weights in the gym. We have to dare to lift really heavy. We have to lift until we cannot do one more repetition. We need spaghetti-legs and jello-arms after our work–outs. We need to lift until failure. But, you might think, I don’t want to be bulky and big and have huge muscles. I can promise you, you won’t. You will get leaner but it is damn near impossible to become bulky as a postmenopausal woman, that would require many hours every day in the gym, absolutely no cardio training and a focus on diet that is hard to pair with a normal life.
But what about here and now? Can exercise help with the symptoms of peri–menopause? Studies have shown that resistance training (weightlifting) helps with hot flashes. Hot flashes occur when your hypothalamus misinterprets your body temperature and tells your brain to fire up the engines and warm you up. When you are super warm, your body realizes that you really didn’t need all that heat and cranks the thermostat down to cold in order to cool you down. This leads to an almost unbearable sweat, starting in your torso, making its way up through your head, quickly followed by chills and shivering from the cold that follows. It can be really uncomfortable but not dangerous. Night sweats also get better with exercise, no more waking up soaked in the middle of the night!
Weight training also helps to regulate your glucose control, gut microbiome and your body composition (that stubborn belly fat that creeps up on you with age). It keeps your cholesterol in check. It helps you maintain your cardio–vascular health. It will make you sleep better, it keeps anxiety at bay. It clears up the brain fog. And as an added bonus – it can make you feel more at peace with yourself and your body and enhance your sex life!
But what kind of work out is the best for a woman in her perimenopause or post menopause? It is recommended that you ought to focus on resistance training over moderate intensity training. That means going to the gym to lift heavy stuff. How heavy? Start off with lighter weights until you know how you should move your body and maintain your form during the exercises and then add weight. In the end it should be so heavy that you can only do maximum 5 reps in 3 sets. And it should get heavier over time, when you can easily do all your sets you have to add weight. Your work out should also include some kind of sprint training that gets your pulse up to about 80% of your maximum heart rate (your maximum heart rate is easily calculated, just take 220 minus your age, for me that is 220-46= 174) for about 30 seconds. It should be so hard that in the beginning you might only make 30 seconds and no more. In time, you should reach 30 seconds + 1 minute’s rest for 5 sets, but that takes time. This can be sprinting on the tread mill, doing burpees, squat jumps or anything that gets your heart pumping. The third part of your exercise regimen should be plyometric training. That means explosive jump training. Again, squat jumps (what has been shown to be the most effective exercise for bone density), box jumps, rope jumping. If you can’t jump, or you want to have some options, kettle bell swings or taking a medicine ball and slamming it into the floor is effective too. The last important part of your training is balance training, such as exercises standing on one leg.
I know, it is a lot. It can sound overwhelming, remember this is just a recommendation from studies produced on the topic. With a well put together program you can do all this and be out of the gym in 30-40 minutes.
If you don’t ever want to do this kind of workout, remember that all exercise is better than none. And you don’t need to do all parts during the same session, you can do your jumping and/or sprinting when you go out jogging or walking. You can do your weightlifting at home with a heavy backpack and everyday items (do some squats with your grocery bags or why not some bicep training). You can train your balance by standing on one leg whilst putting on your socks and shoes or balance on the curb when you’re out walking.
Exercising should be fun so find your favorite way to get going and remember – if you are new to it, the hardest workout session is the first!