Exercise helps women cope with menopause

• "The irritability, the crankiness, the mood swings," said Toth-Appell, who is married with two sons and works as a computer systems operator.
• For Toth-Appell, these were the days (and nights) of menopause, a gradual hormonal process that typically affects women from about the age of 40-55 with a median age of 51.3 years.
• Earlier this year a National Institutes of Health panel recommended what it termed the "de-medicalization" of menopause, calling it "a natural process that occurs in women's lives as part of normal aging."
• While reassuring, it also complicates the issue, because as the NIH panel noted in its consensus statement, what many women see as the consequences of menopause may actually be related to an equally natural process: aging.
• "It is difficult to determine which symptoms occurring during this time are due to [menopause] specifically and which are due to general aging and/or life changes commonly experienced in midlife," the panel wrote.
• Regardless of whether mood swings, fatigue and aches and pains are related to menopause or simply to getting older, women experiencing such symptoms want relief (as well as from the hot flashes and night sweats that, although their causes are still not known, appear to be related to menopause, not aging).
• The most common medical response involves prescription drugs (or creams or patches) that contain some of the hormones, such as estrogen, that the body is no longer producing.
• For Mastrangelo, also an exercise physiologist, this led her to study what the NIH panel called "behavioral interventions," such as physical activity.
• Among menopausal women on a resistance training program for eight weeks, 50 percent reported a decrease in hot flashes and headaches, 40 percent a decrease in stress and anxiety, and 30 percent reported an increase in energy and sex drive.