Exercise Your Way to a Healthy Menopause

Reproductive hormones decline during menopause, bringing an end to menstruation. Falling levels of those hormones -- estrogen and progesterone -- also put older women at higher risk for heart disease, osteoporosis and loss of strength of the pelvic floor muscles.

"Aerobic exercise can help reduce the risk of chronic diseases for women of any age, but the benefits are significant for women in menopause," says Wulf H. Utian, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of the North American Menopause Society. "A well-designed exercise program guided by a physician that combines aerobic exercise and resistance training can make you look and feel better."

Aerobic exercise is exercise that moves large muscle groups and causes you to breathe more deeply and your heart to work harder to pump blood. Resistance training involves working with weights. Kegel exercises can strengthen muscles of the pelvic floor to decrease problems with leaking urine.

Exercise assets

According to Dr. Utian, these are the benefits of exercise:

• It can lower your cholesterol level and make your heart healthier. Decreased estrogen levels can speed the development of coronary artery disease and increase your LDL ("bad") cholesterol level, which is responsible for plaque accumulation in the arteries. "Aerobic exercise helps reduce your risk for heart disease by enhancing cardiovascular fitness and lowering cholesterol," Dr. Utian says. "Aerobic exercise and muscle strengthening can help prevent a heart attack, or make a person more able to withstand and survive it."

• It can help you burn calories and maintain a healthy weight. Regular aerobic exercise can also help you lose weight, reducing your risk for heart disease and diabetes.

• It can strengthen and rebuild your bones. During menopause, declining estrogen levels reduce bone mass, causing bones to become thin and break. Weight-bearing exercise, such as walking and strength training, work against the force of gravity and can strengthen your bones.

• It can strengthen pelvic muscles to fight urinary incontinence. During and after menopause, pelvic-floor muscles can weaken and sag, leading to urinary incontinence and uterine displacement. Exercising these muscles may prevent or reduce the effects of these problems. Such exercises are called Kegel exercises. When done correctly, they tighten, squeeze and lift the muscles between the pelvis and tailbone.

Getting started

Talk to your health care provider before starting an exercise program. Your provider can help you design an exercise program suited for you. If you are older than 65 and have not had a bone density test, talk to your provider about getting one to measure bone-mass levels and check for osteoporosis.

Dr. Utian suggests the following exercises and workout regimens to manage menopause:

• Aerobic exercises. These exercises improve heart and lung activity by making your body use more oxygen. Do aerobic exercises for 30 to 60 minutes most days of the week.

• Muscle-strengthening exercises. These exercises help prevent osteoporosis, strengthen your back and increase your flexibility. You should do muscle-strengthening exercises at least four times a week. Start out doing each exercise a few times, then gradually increase the number of repetitions.

Dr. Utian also recommends stretching exercises, including overhead stretching done standing against a wall, bent-knee stretches done while lying on the floor and squats done while holding onto the back of a chair.