“You might not remember me?“, she said as she came in the door at my Masterclass on Menopause seminar one evening. I peered at her face and immediately said, “Joy, it’s you.” Old primary school friends who have not seen each other for 40 years. But although the years pass by, there is always a glimmer of recognition that takes you back in time and place.
I always love the connections that I make during my live-events – sometimes it’s old friends, sometimes it’s women who are on the MyMT™ programmes. It gives me a thrill and reinforces the research of Canadian Psychologist and Social Behaviour Neuro-scientist, Dr Susan Pinker, that face-to-face connection is important for our health as we age.
Thanks to her research on women’s health and ageing and the dimensions of women’s health as they age, I often say that “Exercise and fitness are not the main determinant of our health as we age. And whilst it is important, if we aren’t sleeping, too much exercise becomes problematic, especially if women aren’t sleeping. The purpose of sleep is to heal and restore and when we don’t get it, our immune health suffers. In fact, the major determinant of your health as you age is simply, ‘social connection‘ and it’s more powerful than we think.”
Attending a recent lifestyle medicine conference in Newcastle, UK, last week, I was reminded of Dr Pinker’s research on social isolation, when attending a session by Regius Professor Rose Anne Kenny, from Trinity College Dublin.
“Lack of social relationships is the highest risk for cardiovascular disease in older people, especially women” mentioned Regius Kenny.
Professor Rose Anne Kenny is an award-winning physician and researcher who has been Head of the academic department of Medical Gerontology at Trinity College Dublin since 2006. She is the founding Principal Investigator of The Irish LongituDinal study on Ageing (TILDA) and studies into the dimensions of cardiovascular health in older women, have seen the emergence of the link between social isolation and CVD.
Loneliness has emerged as a key social-emotional factor linked to health outcomes, especially in women 50 years and older.
And whilst, there are numerous aspects of both social and emotional functioning, including depression, linked prospectively to cardiovascular outcomes, those individuals, with smaller or less diverse social networks, lower perceived social support, and less frequent social interactions have increased risk of incident cardiovascular events and cardiovascular mortality. (Thurston & Kubransky, 2009; Ward et al., TILDA Study, 2021),
As Regius Kenny mentioned in her talk, the problem with loneliness and social isolation, is that over time, this triggers inflammatory changes and increased cortisol and other stress hormones, which link to cardiovascular disease.
This is also why, there has been emerging interest and a growing body of evidence on the health benefits of leisure and recreational activities for older people, especially women, and the role that these play in reducing loneliness and social isolation. (Fancourt et al, 2021).
Understanding the Dimensions of Women’s Health and Ageing During Menopause
Women in their 50’s today are the first generation to be going into menopause facing the complexities of modern life – and the scientific exercise and nutrition research hasn’t kept up with this pace of life-course change.
For example, the highest incidence of poor health as women age, stems from post-menopause heart disease.
Many Health and/or Exercise Practitioners have not had the understanding about this from an exercise and lifestyle perspective, so they continue to train women with exercise prescription that has been intended for younger people and athletes. After all, this is the main content of sport, exercise and health-education curricula.
Healthy Ageing is Multi-Dimensional
What is ‘healthy ageing’?
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines healthy ageing as “the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables wellbeing in older age.”
Functional ability is about having the capabilities that enable all people to be and do what they have reason to value. This includes a person’s ability to:
- meet their basic needs;
- learn, grow and make decisions;
- be mobile;
- build and maintain relationships; and
- contribute to society.
Functional ability consists of the intrinsic capacity of the individual, relevant environmental characteristics and the interaction between them. The level of intrinsic capacity is influenced by several factors such as the presence of diseases, injuries and age-related changes.
Understanding this definition, helped me to put the menopause-jiqsaw together and look at why so many women experience worsening symptoms in their 50’s especially with changing cardiac, liver and muscle health. With many of these health changes accelerating during the midlife years for women, it enabled me to follow the women’s health and ageing research and position menopause in this scientific evidence.
Part of this, was also exploring the epidemiology of menopause symptoms. Discovering that there are women from different cultures who don’t have the symptom experiences or health changes that many women from western cultures experience, was insightful.
This led me on a journey to explore women’s changing health in mid-life and most, importantly, how we could reverse the effects of symptoms in menopause, not by following research that has been undertaken on younger people and males, but by looking at research that has been focused on women in mid-life.
The more I read, the more I began to understand that there were so many gaps in the menopause research, that didn’t focus on evidenced lifestyle solutions.
I also began to question the fitness and nutritional messages that we were subjected to as well. I had become so confused about how to look after myself because of the changing messages around nutrition, Ketogenics, Paleo, exercise, weight loss strategies, menopause supplements, HRT and more. And if I was confused, then I figured that a lot of other women might be confused too.
This was the start of how I began to think about how we, as Practitioners can influence midlife women, by understanding the science of ageing and help to allay the confusion about lifestyle changes during menopause. In the MyMT™ Practitioner Course, I explain much of the science of ageing. I explain the multiple influences on women’s health as they age and why, for millions of women globally, these changes start in midlife menopause.
Putting on our healthy ageing hat on behalf of our clients and following the research also means understanding that women’s healthy ageing, is also about nutrients in specific foods. Whilst I go into this in more depth in the MyMT™ Education Practitioner Course, this knowledge is important to bring to your clients as well.
For example, when it comes to better understanding global prevalence of both depression and dementia, it is notable that both Japan and Ikaria in Greece have some of the lowest rates compared to western countries. [Buettner, 2016; Rizzi et al, 2014).
Long-lived women from Ikaria, Greece are known to eat at least 2 cups of green, leafy plants a day. More than 150 varieties of wild greens, such as purslane, dandelion, and arugula (rocket), grow all over the island of Ikaria. These rich, dark, wild mountain greens are a great source of minerals including, folate, iron, magnesium, potassium, and calcium, as well as carotenoids–the colorful pigments the body converts to Vitamin A.
This was one of the first changes I made to my own diet to improve cognitive function and reduce depression. This is now one of my ‘non-negotiable’ daily nutritional strategies and it is the same for women on the MyMT™ programmes as well.
Centenarians in all of the “Blue Zones” regions have access to leafy greens and hearty vegetables and they make up a large portion of their daily diets. In New Zealand, Australia, the UK and America, where many of you are from, there are plenty of these wild greens available and access to organically cultivated greens including collard, mustard greens, beetroot greens, spinach, silver-beet and kale that have nearly the same plenitude of nutrients.
Today, Ikarians are almost entirely free of dementia and some of the chronic diseases that plague Western countries.
The basis of the MyMT™ Education courses, which have CPD approval from various organisations, have come out of my doctoral research on women’s healthy ageing.
If you are finding that your knowledge on various aspects of lifestyle science for women’s ageing through the menopause transition isn’t informed by the scientific women’s health and ageing evidence, then I hope you can join myself and the Course Convenor, Georgia, when you can.
I would love you to have access to all the fabulous information I have in these important educational programmes.
References:
Buettner D, Skemp S. Blue Zones: Lessons From the World’s Longest Lived. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2016 Jul 7;10(5):318-321. doi: 10.1177/1559827616637066.
Fancourt D, Aughterson H, Finn S, Walker E, Steptoe A. How leisure activities affect health: a narrative review and multi-level theoretical framework of mechanisms of action. Lancet Psychiatry. 2021 Apr;8(4):329-339. doi: 10.1016/S2215-0366(20)30384-9.
Rizzi L, Rosset I, Roriz-Cruz M. Global epidemiology of dementia: Alzheimer’s and vascular types. Biomed Res Int. 2014;908915. doi: 10.1155/2014/908915.
Somes J. The Loneliness of Aging. J Emerg Nurs. 2021 May;47(3):469-475. doi: 10.1016/j.jen.2020.12.009. Epub 2021
Thurston RC, Kubzansky LD. Women, loneliness, and incident coronary heart disease. Psychosom Med. 2009 Oct;71(8):836-42. doi: 10.1097/PSY.0b013e3181b40efc.
Ward M, May P, Normand C, Kenny RA, Nolan A. Mortality risk associated with combinations of loneliness and social isolation. Findings from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Age Ageing. 2021 Jun 28;50(4):1329-1335. doi: 10.1093/ageing/afab004.
