The Science of Menopause Weight Gain
I remember the morning distinctly. I got out of bed and hobbled to the bathroom, dismayed that my weight was going up not down. I wasn’t sleeping and it seemed like every joint in my body was aching.
But it was the belly-fat and diaphragmatic fat that filled me with despair. My breast size was also increasing and exercise was becoming uncomfortable. So many women in their menopause years experience these same changes in the distribution of their weight.
So, we go on crazy diets, we exercise more, but nothing really seems to change. Do you wonder why?
I can tell you that you aren’t alone. Over 80% of the 500,000+ women who have undertaken the MyMT™ Symptoms Quiz, also say that they are feeling hot, tired and overweight now that they are in their menopause transition.
The symptoms of menopause are numerous and there’s a reason for this. A woman’s menopause transition is the gateway to the next stage of her life – her post-menopause years, and as such, our declining reproductive hormones affect other organs and tissues around the body.
I didn’t understand this when I went through menopause 15 years ago, as the hallmark symptoms of menopause were considered to be hot flushes/flashes, brain fog and anxiety. None of the other symptoms were even mentioned.
As a university-level lecturer in physiology and sports science, my Doctoral research on women’s healthy ageing and exercise led me down the menopause-symptom and menopause weight gain rabbit hole.
Midlife is a time of life that many women find that their tolerance to exercise changes. According to much of the physical activity participation research, most women also give up exercising in mid-life (Arigo et al, 2022). I now understand why.
When sleep evades you night after night and your joints and muscles are sore, the last thing you feel like doing is exercising for your health. The women I interviewed as part of my PhD found this too.
This is also why, if you feel overweight and exhausted, then please be cautious about the emphasis on heavy weight training and high protein diets – your body and metabolic state, including your liver and muscles, may not be ready for these interventions.
I hope you enjoy this article about 5 Reasons For Your Menopause Weight Gain and can pre-register for my next members-only sale on the MyMT™ Transform Me Programme (I have more information for you at the bottom of the article).
Menopause is an Inflammatory Event in a Woman's Lifecycle
As I began to put menopause into the context of the scientific evidence on biological ageing, I learnt that the role of oestrogen around the body is extensive. It’s not only the ovaries that women need to focus on.
Oestrogen is a powerful hormone that works by attaching to oestrogen receptors throughout the body.
These receptors can be found in oestrogen target tissues throughout the body, including in the brain, breasts, skin, muscles, tendons, heart, blood vessels and yes, the fat cells.
As women move through their menopause transition and oestrogen is naturally declining, then these receptors also start to die-off, primarily due to natural ageing and the fact that oestrogen isn’t available to attach to them.
But we also lose oestrogen receptors on target tissues and organs, because of the build-up of inflammatory changes that has occurred due to lifestyle influences and environmental toxin exposure over the decades.
The (relatively) new science of this is known as epigenetics.
This simply refers to the study of changes in gene expression that occur without altering the DNA sequence itself – much of these changes occur due to environmental and nutrition choices over our lifetime.
This helps to partly explain why women differ in their experience of menopause symptoms and weight gain. And also why there are various symptoms that many of us don’t attribute to the menopause transition.
The role of inflammation in many diseases of older age, especially with regard to cardiac and immune health for women, is important in this context.
Our symptoms can be so confusing, can’t they? No matter whether you are on a hormonal treatment or not, there are natural, lifestyle changes that are evidenced to relieve symptom chaos and weight gain in midlife. The thousands of women on the MyMT™ Programmes are proof of this.
My 5 reasons for your symptom chaos and weight gain during menopause:
1. Does Menopause Affect the Liver?
When oestrogen/ estrogen production begins to decline in peri-menopause, the two master reproductive hormones which are produced in the pituitary gland [Luteinising Hormone and Follicle-stimulating Hormone], are still trying to send signals to the ovaries to increase production of oestrogen.
However, as I’ve mentioned earlier, ovarian oestrogen receptors are ageing and dying off. Because all of the hormones are connected in some way around the body, the other hormones in the thyroid, adrenal and pancreatic glands try to readdress this imbalance.
So, if you have a lot of stress in your life, (including from exercising a lot when you aren’t sleeping), then cortisol levels can increase. Cortisol is your chronic stress hormone and can impact the health of your liver.
High cortisol levels, particularly in the context of chronic stress or conditions like Cushing’s Syndrome, can negatively impact the liver during menopause, potentially leading to increased fat accumulation and insulin resistance. In other words, a stressful life is the slippery slope to metabolic mayhem.
If the liver is inflamed, then it may not be able to metabolise oestrogens, toxins, and cholesterol effectively.
This all sounds confusing I know, but even though oestrogen levels are declining during menopause, there are numerous oestrogens present in your food, your environment and in many household chemicals. It’s these oestrogens that women also need to be cautious of, because if the liver can’t clear EXCESS oestrogens, then they can be taken to fat cells instead.
For those of you struggling with your weight, these ‘other’ sources of oestrogens can be transported to fat cells when the liver is inflamed.
Fat cells store these additional oestrogenic compounds as women move through menopause. Furthermore, for women who may be overweight heading into peri-menopause, the fat cells are now known to produce their own oestradiol.
Adipose tissue produces oestradiol, a type of estrogen, through a process called aromatization. In postmenopausal women, adipose tissue becomes a significant source of estrogen production, particularly estrone and oestradiol.
Hence, oestrogen storage in fat cells cause them to expand and oestrogen can become the ‘dominant’ hormone in relation to it’s opposing hormone, progesterone.
2. Ongoing Stress Reduces Progesterone
Whether you are overweight with increasing belly-fat, or not, then there are consequences to your metabolic and immune health, when your chronic stress hormone, cortisol, is out of balance.
This can happen when the cortisol-melatonin hormones are out of balance. If you aren’t sleeping, then this imbalance may be why. I talk a lot about how to turn around your sleep in all of the MyMT™ programs which you can read about HERE.
If your cortisol levels stay elevated in the evening, then it also remains elevated overnight, contributing to feelings of heat and night sweats.
In sports science research, an over-stressed and over-trained female athlete, often presents with disrupted menstrual cycles. This is because the two master hormones, FSH and LH, are reduced in production.
This is a female survival mechanism, as in times of stress, reproductive function is preserved.
When cortisol levels are higher all the time, they aren’t working in synchrony with your sleep hormone melatonin. And when cortisol is always having to be produced by your adrenals, it is using up your precious progesterone, which is low compared to oestrogen.
I often talk about this in my seminars and refer to women who may be doing a lot of exercise. Again, too much physical exercise can be a source of stress for some women, especially if they are overweight or putting on weight. It’s all about helping your adrenals to rebalance!
3. Other Hormones, Including Sleep Hormones, May Be Out of Balance
In all women, there is a powerful connection and ‘talking’ of many different types of hormones, to keep the body in balance. These hormones are:
- Hypothalamus and Pituitary hormones
- Thyroid hormones
- Adrenal hormones
- Pancreatic hormones
This nerve and hormonal connection is called the HPA-Thyroid Axis.
During the menopause transition, our busy lives, our stress, our food, exercise and lack of sleep, can all alter the function of this axis.
When this axis is out of balance, you may feel anxious, depressed, moody, have increasing hot flushes (and more severe) and you may have palpitations, sore joints and even more fatigue and weight gain.
The way to manage the HPA-Thyroid Axis is through improving the optimal function of the pineal gland – which controls your circadian rhythm. (Hirotsu et al, 2015).
This is why the very first module you listen to in my 12 week Transform Me programme is simply called ‘Sleep All Night’. It’s that important.
Especially for those of you wanting to reduce your anxiety, reduce inflammation, improve brain-fog, rebalance your hormones and for many of you, lose weight.
4. Low Vitamin D Levels May Make Symptoms Worse
Your skin is your largest organ and is full of oestrogen/ estrogen receptors. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin and is produced in the skin with the help of oestrogen.
Therefore, many midlife and older women are at risk of low vitamin D levels and because Vitamin D is now recognised as a hormone, low levels have an effect on other hormones in the body too.
When Vitamin D is low, hot flushes are increased and memory loss/ foggy brain may become worse. Vitamin D is involved in the production of calcium and our bones and muscles require calcium to help them to remain strong.
Vitamin D is such a powerful hormone for women to monitor in menopause because it is also implicated in melatonin production, which is your sleep hormone. When Vitamin D levels are low, your insomnia increases and serotonin production is reduced, contributing to worsening mood swings and depression.
5. Changing Inflammation Impacts your Symptoms and Weight Gain in Menopause
One of the most important messages that I have for all women moving through their menopause transition, is that menopause is so much more than ‘just’ hot flushes or brain fog and changing hormone levels.
Menopause heralds in your biological ageing, and this process is known to increase inflammation. In health and ageing science, the term used is ‘inflammaging’.
It refers to the natural inflammatory changes that occur in the liver, gut, muscles, heart and blood vessels, as women get older.
These inflammatory changes are sped up based on our past lifestyle.
Don’t forget that over the past 4-5 decades, there have been numerous societal and nutritional changes, which are known to impact the acceleration of inflammation with age.
This includes processed foods, medicines, chemicals, high impact sport and exercise and environmental pollutants, which have led to cellular changes in our cells and tissues. This is seen through the relatively new science of epigenetics, as I mentioned earlier.
By the time menopause arrives, much of this ‘invisible’ inflammation is switched on as the hormonal environment changes with age. That’s why, to turn around our symptoms, we have to reduce the effects of this inflammation.
Yes, it can be done!
MyMT™ Transform Me - Visible Results SALE
The MyMT™ Transform Me Programme is your exact step by step, road map for turning around your sleep, liver health, gut health, stress, aching joints, hot flushes and re-balancing your HPA axis. It is only when we make all of these changes, that we STOP gaining, and START losing weight.
Starting mid-July, I will open up my members-only sale to women in the MyMT™ email community. I hope you can pre-register using the link below and join me. This will enable you to save NZ$100 off the price, reducing it to NZ$299 (approx. AU $272, USD$180, CAD$245, £130 depending on the daily exchange rate).
In just 12 weeks, I hope you will find out why so many women say ‘There’s no other Programme like it.”
Dr Wendy Sweet (PhD)/ Women’s Healthy Ageing Researcher/ MyMT™ Founder & Coach.
References:
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Cadegiani FA, Kater CE. Hormonal aspects of overtraining syndrome: a systematic review. BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil. 2017 Aug 2;9:14.
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Genazzani A.,Petrillo T.,Semprini E.,Aio C.,Foschi M.,Ambrosetti F.,et al. Metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance and menopause: the changes in body structure and the therapeutic approach, GREM Gynecological and Reproductive Endocrinology & Metabolism (2024); Volume 4 – 2/2023:086-091 doi: 10.53260/grem.234026
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Mohd Azmi NAS, Juliana N, Azmani S, Mohd Effendy N, Abu IF, Mohd Fahmi Teng NI, Das S. Cortisol on Circadian Rhythm and Its Effect on Cardiovascular System. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jan 14;18(2):676.
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Saji Parel N, Krishna PV, Gupta A, Uthayaseelan K, Uthayaseelan K, Kadari M, Subhan M, Kasire SP. Depression and Vitamin D: A Peculiar Relationship. Cureus. 2022 Apr 21;14(4):e24363.
Siddiqui R, Makhlouf Z, Alharbi AM, Alfahemi H, Khan NA. The Gut Microbiome and Female Health. Biology (Basel). 2022 Nov 21;11(11):1683.
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