Walking eases menopause problems

Walking for 45 minutes, a few times a week, can help women reduce weight and improve overall well being after menopause.

Menopause brings several hormonal alterations in a woman's body and is often accompanied by weight gain. Aerobic exercise is known to improve health-related quality of life after menopause. But whether walking helps shedding weight gained after menopause has not been investigated so far. To judge the impact of walking on the weight loss and overall health of premenopausal and postmenopausal women, researchers enrolled 35 moderately obese and sedentary American women who were either nearing or had reached menopause. Thirty women finished the programme - 16 premenopausal and 14 postmenopausal. The women, guided by trainers, walked for 45 minutes on an indoor track every other day for 16 weeks. Though moderately obese, all participants were healthy.

At the beginning of the study, post and premenopausal women had similar health-related quality of life ratings including body pain, health, vitality, physical and social functioning, and emotional and mental health. At the end of the programme, both groups of women appeared to benefit physically and mentally, although in different ways.

Greater weight loss was achieved by the premenopausal women who lost an average of about almost 2 kg weight compared to half a kg weight for the postmenopausal women. Premenopausal women also tended to lose more fat mass. Postmenopausal women, however, tended to benefit with a larger drop in their waist size and from gains in lean body mass.

The programme also appeared to have an impact on both groups' sense of physical and mental well being. Postmenopausal women had the larger gains in health-related quality of life scores in body pain, daily physical functioning, general health, emotional and mental health while premenopausal women had the greater gains in all physical activities of life, vitality and social functioning.

The findings show that despite modest body weight losses, walking does improve physical and mental well being, irrespective of menopausal status adding evidence to the earlier studies, which state that physical activity improves quality of life before and after menopause.