Can Menopause Cause You To Shrink?
As a child growing up, do you remember comparing your height to every relative who stood still for five minutes? Remember your joy as you slowly grew taller than an aunt or your mother?
Suddenly, even though you stopped growing, you kept getting taller and taller over them. What happened?
Could it be that your female relatives have indeed been shrinking?
The average woman stands to lose between 2 to eight inches of her height once she reaches menopause. Many medical experts believed at one time that this loss was inevitable. Now the medical community realizes that it isn’t.
Osteoporosis appears to be the main culprit in this phenomenon. Even though both men and women get osteoporosis, it is more women that have the noticeable side effects. So is there any way to prevent this from happening to you? Yes - have a regular fitness program and take calcium supplements.
If you are 40 years old or over - it is vital that fitness is part of your daily routine. In order to stay at your current height, it is important to retain your bone mass and this can be done through exercise. By exercising regularly, you will reduce your risk of developing a large number of health issues involving your cardiovascular system and even cancer or diabetes.
Before you set out on your new routine, you should make it a priority to choose an exercise or group of exercises that provide you with a sense of pleasure.Don’t jump on any exercise of fitness fad because it seems to be popular. Before you commit yourself, ask yourself what activities you could visualize yourself participating in for the rest of your life. If you actually enjoy the specific exercise, you’re much more likely to continue with it faithfully.
Consider, though, some type of weight-bearing exercise. This type of activity helps build the strength of bones through the stimulation of the mineralization and remodelling process. Every major muscle in your body is attached to an underlying bone by tendons. Each time you contract a muscle, a force is exerted on that bone. Any activity, in fact, that builds muscle also places stress on your bone and helps to build bone mass.
Although any activity such as t’ai chi or even yoga can build bone mass, the best way is through actual weight lifting. And no, you do not have to be the female version of Arnold Schwarzenegger to get the benefits.
But, there are some outstanding - and astounding - benefits that accompany this particular exercise. Just read the results of this study conducted by Miriam Nelson, Ph.D. of Tufts University.
Two groups of post-menopausal women were studied by Dr. Nelson. None of women in either group were doing a regular fitness program or taking any hormone replacement supplements.
One group remained sedentary; the other began a simple weight lifting program. They only exercised twice a week for 40 minutes at a time. At the end of one year, the women who lifted weights had vastly improved results in their strength tests. In fact, their scores matched those of women in their late 30s and early 40s. And just about all the women lost inches from their body - if not weight - without changing their diets.
However the most telling result in the women was how they chose to spend their free time. Those who had begun the simple fitness program one year before were now much more active in other areas in their life - dancing, in-line skating and doing things that they had only dreamed of doing before.
The more on the go you are, the stronger your bones will stay and ultimately, the taller you will stay for the rest of your long, healthy life! There are few “fitness musts” for women over 40 years of age but the only real “must” is to chose an activity or two that you enjoy doing and just keep on doing it.