MENOPAUSE
MATTERS
HOW YOU CAN HELP
YOUR MID-LIFE CLIENTS
Menopause can be a game-changer when it comes to health and fitness. By understanding how it
affects women in their mid-life years, you can make a difference to how your clients feel, how they
look and how they stay healthy.
WORDS: WENDY SWEET
call menopause the ‘gamechanger’. Not only because, for
some women, their quality of life
is severely impacted by the symptoms of
menopause (more about this soon), but also
because, for some, this is the time when it
doesn’t matter how active or ‘healthy’ they
have been in the past: menopause navigates
its own path, causing all sorts of havoc on
hormones and metabolism.
For many women used to good health
in their past, the transition into and through
menopause can be fraught with challenges,
not only internally but also externally, in the
form of fat depositing in places that it hasn’t
previously done.
For fitness professionals, especially
personal trainers, training menopausal
women can be challenging, not only in terms
of understanding the support that some
female clients need at this time, but also in
terms of what works and what doesn’t when it
comes to exercise and nutrition prescription.
Here, we explore why and how
menopause and post-menopause are
critical events for the health of women and
why, now that hormone replacement therapy
(HRT) is no longer in vogue, finding new
ways to manage menopause matters.
I
World Health Organisation (WHO) as the
permanent cessation of menstrual periods
that occurs naturally or is induced by
surgery, the Greek derivative is men (month)
and pausis (cessation).
The years preceding menopause that
encompass the transition from normal
menstruation to cessation are termed the
peri-menopausal years and are generally
characterised by irregular periods. On
average, in non-surgical menopause, peri-
menopause begins around the late forties
and may las Ё