Menopause Minute
Resistance Training is Not Just a Guys' Club
A new study from University of New South Wales has pulled together 30 different studies on resistance training and has found that women have the same relative gains in strength than men after the age of 50!
Previous research confused this be calculating "Absolute" gains - they didn't take into account that women are smaller and have less capacity for strength than men.
Why do post-menopausal women see such a big decrease in muscle mass?
Estrogen. A study from Finland measured a direct relationship between decrease estrogen and muscle mass over the transition from peri-menopause to post-menopause (from 6 months to 18 months). They measured a 1% decrease in muscle.
The change of 1% is small. The important thing to note is that muscle is a very important regulator of our daily metabolic processes.
What can we do to stop the loss of muscle?
Well we haven't figured out how to make menopause go away yet. So, the solution is to begin or continue to lift weights, training strength and endurance while lifting (3 to 4 sets of 8 to 15 repetitions) several days per week.
I have a free e-book on exercise for those 50+ if you haven't picked it up yet: HERE!
Yours in Fitness,
Tessa