Blog Layout

10 Reasons Why Exercise Will Benefit Your Mental Health During Menopause

Joanne Fazel • Jul 07, 2022

10 Ways in Which Exercise Can Benefit Your Menopause Mental Health

Anxiety and depression, brain fog, memory issues, lack of concentration, mood swings -all of these symptoms are common during the menopause transition and can be debilitating for some women.

But never fear, because the answer doesn’t necessarily lie in medication. Movement and exercise can actually benefit women experiencing negative mental health symptoms during menopause and in this article, I want to explain 10 ways in which exercise can improve menopausal mental health.

How Does Exercise Help Menopause Mental Health?

1. Can be as effective as medication

Studies have actually shown that exercise can be as effective as medication in reducing anxiety and depression. And that could be pretty life-changing because medication obviously comes with side effects and may come with a list of contra-indications. With exercise you’ve got a means to improve anxiety & depression symptoms naturally without having to remember to take medication or worrying about unpleasant side effects.

2. Boosting Brain Chemicals

When you boost your heart rate during aerobic activity your body releases endorphins. These are chemicals produced in the brain which lead to feelings almost of euphoria, wellbeing and happiness. This is what you may have heard referred to as the ‘runners high’ but actually you can experience it with any aerobic activity, not just running.

3. Mood Regulation

Exercise increases specific neurotransmitters in the brain, such as dopamine and serotonin, which control your mood. So, if you are experiencing low mood or wildly swinging moods, exercise can be a really good way of actually just increasing that good mood and keeping a bit more stable. 

4. Deep Breathing

You’ll find when you exercise, you are going to be breathing more deeply. Whether that's because you are doing some kind of aerobic or resistance activity and you need to take on board more oxygen, or you are doing something more mindful, such as yoga or Pilates when you consciously breathe in and out on certain movements. This deep breathing actually stimulates what's known as your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system that keeps everything calm. It’s the opposite to your sympathetic nervous system which is triggered when your stress response kicks in and puts you into ‘fight or flight’ mode. By utilising this deep breathing mechanism, it pushes your body back into that calm state and reduces your stress levels.

5. Calming our stress response

When you do aerobic or mindful exercise such as yoga, your brain actually releases a neurotransmitter called GABA. This neurotransmitter actually supports the body's response to stress as well by attaching to GABA receptors which then inhibits fearful brain signals and calms our sympathetic nervous system.

6. Improving resilience 

Exercise can improve your resilience - to life, to stress and the general chaos of what's going on around you. We all have busy lives with all kinds of emotional stressors coming at us as well as dealing with our actual physical menopause symptoms that can be stressful to cope with. Exercise can actually help to rewire the brain so that stress response is reduced.

7. Promotes new brain cell growth

Exercise also promotes what is known as BDNF (brain-derived neurotropic factor). This is a protein that actually promotes the growth of new, healthy brain cells. It actually aids your cognitive function and may improve your brain power.

8. Clears your Head

Exercise is also great for mental clarity, concentration and memory. We often experience this when we talk about going for a walk to clear our head, perhaps if you've had an argument with somebody or you've got a big work project you are fretting about. There's something on your mind. It's partly the act of walking that can help you to focus a little bit better and think more clearly for the next few hours.

9. Aids better sleep

Exercise may also improve your sleep. There is a vicious cycle that goes on when you're not getting good sleep, that triggers off your stress response. Having high stress then has a negative impact on your ability to have good sleep. Lack of quality sleep can massively affect mood & lead to that feeling of foggy brain. So, if you are exercising and it's helping you de-stress it can also improve your sleep and stop that vicious cycle continuing.

10. Gives structure & purpose

Finally, exercise can give a sense of structure to your day. If you have carved out some time for your yourself, whether it's to go for a walk, do a workout class, go to the gym or a run - it gives that structure to your day. This can be very helpful if you are experiencing depression, for example, which can leave you feeling very unmotivated and make you want to lie in bed all day. It's helps to break you out of that cycle by giving you a purpose and reason to get up and to get that exercise done. It can be very helpful to just change that focus of your thoughts. So instead of letting the thoughts run away with you, it's focusing you only on what you need to do in that moment. It's quite hard to be thinking about other things when you are engrossed in activity.
 
So, for all of these reasons, exercise is an important tool in your box to improve your mental health during the menopause. If you are not doing much activity at the moment, it's important to really consider how to get started by taking small steps towards more exercise to begin with, gradually increasing as you get stronger and more confident.

If you have been experiencing menopause symptoms which are getting in the way of you enjoying life and would like to learn how to tackle them naturally so that you can get back to feeling like yourself again and experience the menopause transition in a more positive & empowered way,  then my 12-week private menopause wellness program might be right for you. Find more details here 


Share by: