Menopause and the Role of Oestrogen

Welcome to part 2 of my menopause blogs. Sorry it's taken a while to put together but my hormones play havoc with my ability to focus. One of the main symptoms I suffer with, as well as fatigue and lack of motivation. Somtimes working and exercising is all I can manage. If you haven't read part 1 go find it and give it a read Menopause, Exercise and Me!

So we’ve learnt a little about menopause and how it can be a varying experience for each of us. Before we get into how we need to exercise and eat to get the best out of ourselves we need to have a basic understanding of exactly what is going on and why it can be different for each of us.

When we start into perimenopause we have fluctuations in hormone levels and these fluctuations can last for up to 10 years. We’ve all heard of oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone but we could be forgiven for thinking they are only involved in our menstrual cycle and reproduction but they are important in so many more things. Hormones are effectively our bodies chemical messengers which communicate with almost every cell within our body. When hormone levels start to fluctuate, increasing and decreasing month to month, this is what causes all the many and varying menopause symptoms we can start to experience. 

Progesterone usually starts to fluctuate first when our egg stores start to reduce. If we don’t ovulate one month we don’t produce progesterone and become oestrogen dominant, then the next month or two we might ovulate and produce progesterone again. Eventually we get closer to actually reaching menopause our oestrogen levels also start to reduce. Remember, menopause is one moment in time, 12 months from when we last had a period. Even though progesterone may be reducing earlier in our menopause journey than oestrogen, the imbalance of the hormones also has an effect on us. 

It's never too late to start trying to rebalance the body and work to reduce some of the symptoms but if you take action sooner rather than later it can be a great help. Understanding what our hormones are for can help you understand how to work to mitigate those symptoms. 

Today I’m just going to talk about how much of an important role oestrogen plays within the function of our bodies. It's so much more than being involved in your menstrual cycle and you’ll soon start to understand why the menopause has such an affect on us and why our bodies don’t respond to exercise the way they used to.

Oestrogen

As I said before, progesterone usually decreases in levels first. This means we have an imbalance of too much oestrogen, and even though it's decreasing a little it won’t be as much as progesterone.  Here are most of the main jobs that oestrogen has within our bodies and how it affects us when it does decrease or becomes imbalanced with progesterone.

Promoting muscle growth - without oestrogen your body is not as effective at building muscle. This is why we can start to lose muscle mass and strength, and why it's important to start strength training, or to really increase the level of your training. If you’ve always strength trained you’ll most likely find your body doesn’t respond the way it used to! If you aren’t already strength training the sooner you start the better.

Supports mitochondria function - without getting to scientific mitochondria are the energy cells within our bodies. They turn fuel into energy. The more mitochondria we have and the better they function the more energy we have, especially for those runs, cycles and long walks we go on. 

Regulate inflammation - inflammation itself is not always a bad thing. It is our body's natural response to an injury, illness or disease. But if it's left to become out of control it can become harmful. We have different types of oestrogen (but I don’t want to go into this too much) and depending on the type of oestrogen it can be anti-inflammatory or increase inflammation. Progesterone is anti-inflammatory. This is one instance where the two hormones work together but if they become unbalanced it can cause a problem. This can be issues such as sore joints, gut problems, fluid retention, decreased iron levels leaving you fatigued.

Managing blood sugar - oestrogen helps to promote insulin sensitivity so as oestrogen reduces we become more insulin resistant. This means it's harder for your body to use starches, which we find in complex carbohydrates, and blood sugar as effectively as it once did. What we want is for the glucose from these starches to be pulled into our cells for energy but instead it pulls blood sugar into fat cells to get it out of circulation. This is why we can put on weight when we haven't changed anything about our diet and exercise than we have always done.

Regulating appetite - you may have heard of ghrelin and leptin. They are your hunger and satiety hormones. Oestrogen regulates these hormones. Ghrelin increases your hunger signals and leptin dampens down your appetite. Oestrogen also acts a little like leptin. So when oestrogen levels drop we can be  left feeling less satisfied after eating and have more cravings.

Mood regulation - serotonin and cortisol are at the route of this! Oestrogen helps to increase our levels of serotonin, our feel good hormone. It also helps to control our levels of cortisol which we all know as our stress hormone. So as you can imagine this is not a good combination for feeling calm and relaxed.

Body temperature control - when you have a hot flushes it's not your body heating itself up too much but actually the opposite. Oestrogen helps to regulate your body temperature by increasing blood flow to the skin and sweating. When oestrogen levels decrease your brain can overreact to changes in your body temperature and think that its too hot so it wants your body to release that heat so it widens your blood vessels, especially those near the skin of your head, face, neck and chest, and makes you sweat to cool you down.

Building bone - most of us know that osteoporosis becomes more likely after the menopause. This is because oestrogen helps to increase calcium absorption and also to control how much calcium we lose in our urine.

Blood pressure control - when oestrogen levels drop our blood vessels don’t constrict or dilate as effectively as they did. This can cause your blood pressure to slowly increase. This can contribute to a higher risk of heart disease after menopause, and make exercise harder.

Healthy vagina - oestrogen stimulates tissue growth so without it the vaginal walls can become thin and drier. For some women this doesn’t just cause a problem during sex but also during any activity

So there we go! The wonderful world of oestrogen, and we haven’t talked about progesterone or testosterone yet! I’m going to stop this one here with the hope that smaller bites of information will lead to more understanding. Hopefully part 3 won’t take me as long to put together, then we can start talking about how we can use exercise and change the way we train to help with some of the symptoms.

This list of roles that oestrogen plays has been summarised from ‘Next Level’by Dr Stacy Sims. If you want more information or a deeper understanding then I can highly recommend this book. 

For now keep moving, take it easy when your body says it needs to and try to stay motivated and happy.

Lyndsey x