MyMT™ Blog

Why ‘inflammaging’ matters to your menopause and post-menopause symptoms.

Women dying at the end of World War 2 in New Zealand, didn’t have to worry too much about menopause affecting how they were ageing did they? As you can see from the Statistics New Zealand graph below, the average age of death was under 70 years old.

Interestingly, it was still heart disease (which causes angina, heart attacks and heart failure), and influenza, that led many to an early death.

It’s a similar outcome today in the context that heart disease in women aged 50 and over, resulted in more deaths from the 1990s, among New Zealand women than any other single cause. It’s a similar issue in other countries too. Heart disease in the post-menopause years, remains the number one cause of early death in a number of countries, including Australia, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. 

Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, very little was known about the effects that menopause had on female cardiovascular health. Fortunately today, this is changing – mainly due to research on ageing, which has only recently been undertaken specific to women’s health.

Life-expectancies have been improving steadily in many western countries, hence scientists now better understand ‘how’ people are ageing, and also why the menopause and post-menopause transition matter to the way in which women age.  

Menopause is the gateway o biological ageing. Immune dysfunction and changes in inflammatory pathways are known contributors to the ageing process and tissue deterioration. 

For health practitioners who join me on the Practitioner CPD/CEU 12 week programme, I talk a lot about ageing and draw their attention to the women’s health and ageing research. Positioning the peri-menopause to post-menopause transition in the ageing science matters and this is the position I take in the MyMT™ symptom reduction and weight loss programmes, including my new Beyond Menopause™ program

The Rise of Chronic Inflammation in Midlife

The peri-menopause to menopause transition is now seen as an inflammatory part of a women’s life-cycle. (McCarthy & Raval, 2020). This is important to note, because the continual decline in reproductive hormones, also causes changes to the immune system, lungs, heart, muscles, nerves and blood vessels.

If women aren’t sleeping well, then over time, the inflammatory changes may accelerate. It’s why, in all of my programmes, I place an emphasis on getting sleep sorted out before anything else …. yes, it’s that important! 

Understanding the role of 'inflammaging' on your symptoms

Longevity researchers who study ageing and health have contributed huge amounts of knowledge to the understanding of ‘how’ we age.

One of these researchers is Australian, Professor Garry Egger, who is known around the world as one of the pioneers of Lifestyle Medicine.

I first heard Professor Egger at a health and ageing conference in Australia when progressing through my PhD. I was fascinated with his insights into the powerful connection between our health, inflammation and ageing. 

It was from him, that I first heard the term ‘Inflammaging’

Senescence is the process of growing older …. Not that any of us want to be reminded of that, but our cells and tissues have minds of their own. The Inflammatory Theory of Ageing and the Life-Course Theory of Ageing teaches that our cells, tissue and DNA have a pre-programmed life and therefore, as these cells and tissues change with age, then cell division stops.

Over time, larger numbers of old (or senescent) cells can build up in tissues, contributing to increased inflammation. This is also known as ‘inflammaging’.

The central issue in ‘inflammaging’ is that as we move through our 50s and beyond, our cells and tissues are undergoing changes that whilst part of our natural life-cycle, are also caused by the life-long exposures that our immune system has had to environmental and stress-related stimuli.

If you have sore joints, aching muscles, changes to your bone health or gut health, or you are putting on weight and feeling bloated, or you have brain fog and memory problems, these are concerns that are now related to inflammaging – the inflammation that comes with our ageing and many of us have seen this in our mother’s generation.

This was the first time that I began to look at menopause symptoms through the lens of health and ageing research.

The research from Professor Egger and others has been life-changing for thousands of women on my programmes who are now heading into post-menopause and wanting to turn around their health as they age.

As Practitioners also progress through their CPD Course, they learn about factors that contribute to inflammation as women age (factors that are pro-inflammatory, and most importantly, factors that are anti-inflammatory).

This is not ‘just’ about food either. It’s about sleep, energy, gut health, joint health as well as exercise that is helpful, not harmful. 

Certain Lifestyle Factors Increase Inflammaging

Understanding the role of ‘inflammaging’ in the life-course of chronic disease, including post-menopause weight gain, functional decline and frailty across the life-course, has led researchers to focus on the ageing of the immune system.

For women in menopause and going into post-menopause, when periods have ended for a  year or more, there is a greater susceptibility to the occurrence of this low-grade chronic inflammation.

This is now seen to contribute to post-menopause heart disease, auto-immune problems such as fibro-myalgia, and increased vulnerability to infectious disease. (Baylis, Bartlett et al, 2013). 

Whilst there is now convincing evidence that how rapidly we ‘age’ is connected to our genetic pre-disposition, there are other contributors to ageing that accelerate these inflammatory changes.

I talk about these in my 2 hour Masterclass on Menopause webinar which is now online for you, but some of these pro-inflammatory factors include: 

  • Exposure to life-long stressors, which in women, affects the accumulation of our chronic stress hormone called, cortisol.
  • Damage to our DNA, in particular the telomeres which are the protein complexes that protect our DNA.
  • A modern, western diet, full of processed foods, fats and sugar.
  • Poor gut microbiome health.
  • Inadequate sleep which prevents the immune system from healing and repairing overnight.
  • Being overweight or obese.
  • A high alcohol intake. 
  • Smoking.
  • Chronic Stress
  • Over or under-exercise.

Your Sleep is Important

When we all lead such busy lives, it’s so important to get our sleep sorted as we move through menopause and into post-menopause.

I can’t reiterate this enough.

As I often mention to women on my programmes, when we have been waking up night after night, then our brain and body reads this as our ‘new normal’ and we keep waking up.

But this is what leads us down the path towards worsening inflammation in our cells and tissues as we age and worsening cardiovascular health.

Not sleeping is now recognised as one of the main contributing factors to changing health in the post-menopause years contributing to weight gain and post-menopause heart disease.

The United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand have some of the highest incidence of post-menopause heart disease in the western world. 

If women aren’t sleeping, the heart and immune system stay under stress all day long, particularly, if women are undertaking heavy exercise or are in physically demanding jobs.

That’s why I love getting women sleeping all night.

It helps to reduce their worsening symptoms in menopause. Whilst your diet is important in turning around symptoms too, sleeping all night, to me, rates more highly because the human immune system and sleep are both associated and influenced by each other. 

Our immune system is under programmed senescence.

This is the term which describes programmed biological ageing. Think of autumn leaves discolouring and falling from a tree. This is an example of programmed senescence in plants.

Because we are ageing as we move through menopause, our immune system is as well. As such, it doesn’t produce as many immune-fighting lymphocyte cells in our bone marrow. When we don’t sleep, we are behind the eight-ball with our immune health even more.

Sleep deprivation makes a living body susceptible to many infectious agents too.

Sleep deprivation was so frustrating for me as I know it will be for many of you. I knew that my body wasn’t healing and recovering overnight and not sleeping was leaving me too exhausted to recover from the exercise I love to do.

At the time, I also didn’t understand that not sleeping was blocking fat-loss mechanisms overnight and causing increased hot flushes because blood pressure and cortisol remain higher during the day when we don’t sleep.

Cortisol that does not follow the normal daily diurnal sleep/ wake pattern can trigger blood sugar imbalances, food cravings and fat storage, especially around the middle.

As we move into menopause, cortisol needs to be settled down, especially in the context of inflammaging and heart health and we need to understand that as our periods end, our need for iron changes as well.

High iron levels are now known to impact post-menopause heart disease as women transition through menopause. 

Your Cortisol Levels Impact your Sleep Quality

But back to cortisol.

This is one of your chronic stress hormones. 

It works in synergy with your sleep hormone melatonin. If your cortisol levels are too high when you go to bed, then you don’t produce enough melatonin to keep you asleep for the healing hours between 2-4am.

Then, if melatonin levels are lower than normal, you either can’t get off to sleep or you wake up in the night or you don’t sleep deeply enough to have the restorative sleep that you need for all that you do in our day.

“Our capacity to remain healthy is badly affected by loss of sleep and sense of comfort” reports researchers who have looked at the role of sleep on the immune system.

They go on to state that white blood cells, called leukocytes, don’t reach the levels that they should due to lack of sleep and this makes women vulnerable to sickness, flu and immune system health changes.

For women in menopause, this may also lead to the autoimmune problem of fibromyalgia. 

When you don’t sleep and your sleep-wake cycle is affected, then your nervous system is also affected leaving you feeling more anxious and ‘wired’. 

Overnight, the nervous system and immune system work together – this is why when women are going through menopause and are waking up night after night, they feel wired, they feel hotter than normal and their muscles and joints remain sore or they put on weight.

In other words they remain ‘inflamed’ but many, like Sharon, in Australia, become frustrated when exercise doesn’t help them to lose weight but leaves them injured instead.

The good news is that in more recent years, scientists such as Professor Egger have opened the door on the positive changes that we can make to our daily lifestyle to reduce the speed of inflammaging.  It is becoming known that the progression of many chronic diseases can be slowed or even reversed.

Scientists are also gaining new insights into how exercise may be an effective strategy to mitigate the effects of inflammaging and in the MyMT™ programmes I get women off any exhausting high-intensity exercise, until they are sleeping all night.

This aspect, for numerous women, is the main contribution to their frustration with exercise not helping them to lose weight! It was the same for me as well as the women I interviewed as part of my doctoral studies. 

Join me to get the lifestyle-change support you need in menopause and beyond!

As you move through menopause and into the next phase of your life, your ‘third age’, the great news is that you don’t need to age like our mother’s generation. We all have the ability to slow down the rate of inflammaging.

How to achieve this in a progressive manner that doesn’t overwhelm you, is in the online MyMT™ programmes.  

Over 20,000 women have undertaken this online lifestyle-change programme in over 50 countries, and it would be my privilege to support and guide you too. 

If you are thinner or leaner, then the Circuit Breaker programme is for you, otherwise the weight loss Transform Me programme is the one to choose, or the Beyond Menopause programme, if you are now through menopause, but still struggling.

If you would like to know how the programmes work, then you can read about them HERE. I hope you can join me and if you are a Health Practitioner, then please sign up to my weekly newsletter HERE. This is designed to give you the evidenced information you need to help your clients!

Dr Wendy Sweet (PhD), MyMT™ Founder and Member: Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine. 

References:

Asif N., Iqbal R., et. Al. (2017). Human immune system during sleep. American J. Clin Exp Immunol.,6 (6):92-96

Baylis, D., Bartlett, D.B., Patel, H.P. et al. (2013). Understanding how we age: insights into inflammaging. Longev Healthspan 2, 8. https://doi.org/10.1186/2046-2395-2-8

Egger, G. & Dixon, J. (2009). Obesity and chronic disease: always offender or often just accomplice. British Journal of Nutrition, 102, 1238-1242.

Ferrucci L. & Fabbri, E. (2018). Inflammageing: chronic inflammation in ageing, cardiovascular disease, and frailty. Nat Rev Cardiol. 15(9):505-522. doi: 10.1038/s41569-018-0064-2. PMID: 30065258; PMCID: PMC6146930.

Franceschi, C. et al. (2018) Inflammaging: a new immune-metabolic viewpoint for age-related diseases. Nat. Rev Endocrinology, 14(10):576-590.

Lee, E., Anselmo, M, Tahsin, T. et al. Vasomotor symptoms of menopause, autonomic dysfunction, and cardiovascular disease. 2022, Am. J. of Physiology, 

McCarthy M, Raval AP. The peri-menopause in a woman’s life: a systemic inflammatory phase that enables later neurodegenerative disease. J Neuroinflammation. 2020 Oct 23;17(1):317.

Neves J., & Sousa-Victor, P. (2020). Regulation of inflammation as an anti-aging intervention. FEBS J. 287(1):43-52. doi: 10.1111/febs.15061. PMID: 31529582.

North American Menopause Society (12th Oct. 2022). Hot flashes are not just uncomfortable but also could be hard on the heart.

Theurey, P. & Pizzo, P. (2018). The Aging Mitochondria. Genes, 9(22), 1-13. doi:10.3390/genes9010022

“If you have ever wondered if there was a clear easy plan to follow to sleep all night, reduce hot flushes and prevent or reduce your weight gain during menopause, then ‘welcome’ – you’re in the right place now.”

Discover how either of my two Menopause Transformation programmes might help you too or take my Symptoms Quiz below… 

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