5 essential reasons lifestyle is important for your menopause health

5 Essential Reasons Lifestyle is important for your Menopausal Health

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A healthy lifestyle is important across all stages of life, but when a woman reaches the menopause years, it couldn’t be more important to start making lifestyle changes.  This is the time when we begin to notice the impact that some of our choices have on our symptoms, and ultimately, how we feel.  It’s a vicious cycle, as some symptoms make it really difficult to make changes, but the changes need to be made to see a decrease in symptoms. Add to this the confusion commonly felt as all the physical and emotional symptoms seemingly happen all at once.  Most of the time, women don’t know where to begin.  If this sounds like you (and it was once me!) read on as I explain how our lifestyle impacts on our menopause experience and health and what you can start doing now.

 

Lifestyle Factor #1 – Nutrition

 

Nutrition plays a big part in our menopause experience and our overall health.  With the drop in oestrogen and the subsequent weight gain in the middle, many women will first look at diets, restricting calories, and eliminating macros and food groups.  Opting for this type of lifestyle change may result in weight loss, but it will not be sustainable long term and eventually, you will regain the weight plus some more.  Diets cause stress, resulting in an increase in the stress hormone cortisol, which is only interested in getting you out of danger – or in the case of dieting, it wants to get you out of starvation mode.  Starvation mode results in fat being stored and not used for energy, and instead glucose being used for immediate release into the bloodstream – from the liver and muscles.  If this goes on for too long, muscle breakdown will occur as a result. 

 

So…… dieting is not the answer.

 

Instead, it’s best to look at what you are including in your diet now and ask yourself the following questions:

 

  • Do I eat 5 servings of vegetables a day?
  • Do I eat 2 servings of fruit a day?
  • How often do I snack, and what do I eat?
  • Do I eat breakfast?
  • Do I overeat?
  • Do I eat when I don’t feel hungry?
  • Am I eliminating macros or food groups?
  • Do I drink alcohol?
  • Do I drink enough water?
  • Do I eat processed foods often?

 

These questions are a really good start to find where the gaps are in your knowledge in nutrition and what will serve you best for your health and symptoms, once you identify the areas that you need to work on.

 

Lifestyle factor #2 – Exercise

 

Exercise usually goes hand in hand with diets, in that most women think that eating less and moving more, aka, calories in, calories out is the way to minimise the weight gain and other symptoms experienced in menopause.  Most often women find that when they are doing a lot of high intensity and cardio workouts, this is not making any difference to their weight gain or any other symptoms. The truth is, it is so much more than calories in, calories out.  Our physiology changes a lot with the hormonal changes in menopause and we need to look at managing our menopause with a broader view. It is very challenging for women to think about this through a different lens. The best way to exercise in menopause is to first find activities you enjoy, and then look at incorporating 3 types of movement – strength work, cardio and balancing exercises.  Strength using resistance bands and/or weights is important for muscle and bone strength, cardio is great for heart health and balancing is good for flexibility as well as bone and muscle strength.  Ideally, these three types of exercise should be mixed up throughout the week, and it doesn’t have to be all in the gym.  However, by all means, if you love going to the gym, keep going.

 

Lifestyle factor #3 – Sleep

 

Sleep can be so elusive to many women in menopause, especially if you are suffering from hot flushes and night sweats that are keeping you awake.  The hormonal changes in menopause disrupt our circadian rhythm making going to sleep and staying asleep a challenge.  Many women report waking up really early in the morning and not being able to go back to sleep, surviving on 3-5 hours of sleep most days, and then having to go to work and do everything else they normally would do, mostly low in energy and pushing through the day.  Firstly, if hot flushes and night sweats are relentless and have been going on for a long time, see your GP to discuss options for you.  We cannot function on little sleep for too long, and there is mounting research on the links between sleep and health.  Some other strategies you can consider are having a bedtime routine that includes going to bed at the same time each night and waking up at the same time each morning.  This includes not eating too close to bedtime, turning off devices at least an hour before bed and not exercising too late either – all these factors can affect sleep. Most importantly, give it time to see a difference.

 

Lifestyle factor #4 – Stress reduction

 

Life can be stressful but when menopause and all the symptoms hit all at once, the stress of menopause just makes it difficult to function on a daily basis for some women. Many factors can contribute to stress such as young children, ageing parents, working in a job, household duties, and family commitments. The first thing is to identify if stress interferes with your daily life.  This can feel like there isn’t enough time in the day, feeling rushed all day long and even feelings of anxiety that can include feeling overwhelmed and shallow breathing.  If you can identify any of these, the first thing to consider is to see where you can slow down in the day.  Breathwork and meditation are very good strategies that you can use to slow down your thoughts, breathing and take a break to reset.  It may also be a good time to consider where stressors can be eliminated in some way, and if it is something that feels too overwhelming for you, see your GP to discuss further.

 

Lifestyle factor #5 – Connection

 

Menopause is a time when connecting your habits and behaviours to your symptoms and experiences is a very good tool to use to give you feedback.  For instance, if you are having a hot flush, can you connect that to something that you’ve consumed? You can then make a note of it and see if a pattern emerges whenever you consume that particular food or drink and whether you have a hot flush.  Connection to others is really important in menopause, firstly because we feel like we are the only ones going through it sometimes, and secondly, if you can find a group of women that can empathise, support and listen to you and each other, you are going to feel heard and seen.  There is power in community during this time in our life. 

 

Lifestyle factors play such an important role in our health and wellbeing all through our lives, but in menopause when our physiology is changing, a different approach to what we would normally do is needed.  Lifestyle is one area of our life that we have control of and we are able to make the necessary changes to support and future proof health all through our menopause years.  If symptoms become debilitating it is important to see your GP to discuss further treatments that may be suitable for you.