Menopause Does Not Cause A Woman To Gain Weight

A report published in the peer-reviewed journal Climacteric, by the International Menopause Society, found that the menopause does not cause a woman to gain weight, however, it does affect the way fat was deposited in the body.
Regardless of whether a woman put on weight or not, the menopause did cause a shift of body fat from the hips to the abdomen.
The review group of the International Menopause Society considered the evidence on why women gain weight around the menopause and concluded that the weight gain seen around the menopause is more due to ageing and environmental factors and is not hormonal.

Abdominal fat is a problem as it increases the risk of future problems such as diabetes, heart disease, sexual function and quality of life in postmenopausal women.

Their advice to women is to take early steps to ensure they don't gain excess weight after the menopause and to stay in shape by being active and exercising.
Some women may also benefit from estrogen therapy, but the pros and cons must be assessed with the doctor first.

Extreme Caution in using HRT

A study conducted by Olga Glinskii and her associate leads her to advise extreme caution in HRT use.

The vascular system depends on estrogen for maintenance. When the body decreases its estrogen production, as in after the menopause, the body is unable to regulate blood vessels like it did before.
This might explain why women lose the protection they get from certain conditions such as heart disease and stroke after menopause," said Olga Glinskii, research assistant professor of medical pharmacology and physiology in MU’s School of Medicine and lead author of the study.

She says, “because the body eventually will naturally adapt to the loss of estrogen, we advise extreme caution when using estrogen-based therapy in postmenopausal women.”

"Eventually, the body starts to recognize that it needs blood vessels and starts to adapt through natural responses.
If we start adding estrogen to a system that is learning to adapt without it, we upset this transition process.
What happens to the vascular system during menopause is complex on many different levels, and we do not know enough to determine the best way to use hormone therapy."

After a period of deterioration, the body learns to adapt to the estrogen loss and eventually maintains the system in a different way.

Tread Carefully with HRT

Not so long ago, the belief that giving post menopausal women estrogen would help prevent heart disease was well publicised.

Now, however, the findings are that giving supplemental estrogen actually increases the risk of heart disease (along with the risk of stroke, breast cancer, blood clots in the legs, and dementia).

So in fact no woman should still be taking hormones to lower her risk of heart attack or stroke.

Even though hormones do have benefits in some people, generally, however, the risks outweigh the benefits.

The Women’s Health Initiative found that the increased risk of heart attack and blood clots began as early as the first year of hormone use. That means most women who use hormones to control symptoms do face some heart risk (as well as an increased risk of breast cancer).

If you do need to take estrogen for severe menopause related problems, then try and use the pills for no more than three years unless your severe symptoms are persistent and your endocrinologist advises you to do so.

Tread Carefully with HRT...