How Pilates can help with your perimenopause and menopause
Menopause can be an incredibly challenging time for women, emotionally, physically, and mentally. It can have a big impact on your daily life, including relationships, social life, family life, and work.
Being able to recognise menopause in yourself is the first step to taking control and then finding a tool kit of support around you will best help you move through this life transition.
How does Pilates help perimenopause and menopause?
Well, let’s start with some basics…
Perimenopause and menopause are a natural part of a woman’s life course and usually occur between the ages 45 and 55 years of age, as a woman's oestrogen levels drop (although it can start earlier). According to the NHS, in the UK the average age for a woman to reach menopause is 51.
With women living to an average age of 80 years, we can expect that around 30 years of our life will be after our menopause so it’s important that we can empower ourselves with the knowledge that will help us live our lives feeling the very best we can.
Whilst Menopause is when a woman stops having periods for 12 months, Perimenopause is the period the time from the start of menopausal symptoms until after a woman has experienced her last period. Periods will usually start to become less frequent over a few months or years before they stop altogether. They might be more irregular and become heavier or lighter. For some women, they can stop suddenly.
There are over 30 recognised symptoms associated with perimenopause and menopause, some women will experience just some of these symptoms whilst others may experience all of them. Here are just some of the symptoms:
Changes to your mood, like low mood, anxiety, mood swings, and low self-esteem
Problems with memory or concentration (brain fog)
Hot flushes, when you have sudden feelings of hot or cold in your face, neck and chest which can make you dizzy
Difficulty sleeping, which may be a result of night sweats and make you feel tired and irritable during the day
Palpitations, when your heartbeats suddenly become more noticeable
Headaches and migraines that are worse than usual
Muscle aches and joint pains
Changed body shape and weight gain
Skin changes including dry and itchy skin
Reduced sex drive
Vaginal dryness and pain, itching, or discomfort during sex
Recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs)
These symptoms are caused by the decreasing levels of oestrogens that naturally occur as we age as well as declining levels of both progesterone and testosterone.
Every system in our body needs oestrogen so when levels decrease it can affect our whole body health.
Every system in our body needs oestrogen so when the levels begin to decrease it can affect our brain health and cognitive function, our heart health (after menopause women’s risk of developing coronary heart disease increases), our bone density decreases meaning we’re more prone to develop osteopenia and osteoporosis and our pelvic health meaning that the muscles of the pelvic floor begin to weaken meaning we may experience issues such as urinary incontinence or pelvic organ prolapse.
How can Pilates help with menopause symptoms?
Maintaining your fitness and exercising regularly is really important at this transition stage in your life and Pilates can be a very effective way of managing some of the symptoms associated with Perimenopause and menopause.
In a Pilates session, you will concentrate on how you move. It’s typically low-impact, focusing your attention on the precise and concentrated movements that improve your control and your coordination with your breath. Due to its focus on the small stabilising muscles surrounding the pelvis, Pilates is a brilliant form of Menopause exercise.
Pilates provides multiple benefits that will help support cardiovascular health, bone density, strength weight management and help improve your mood. It will help ensure your pelvic floor to stay strong yet supple and elastic by working through its full range of movement.
The Pilates apparatus such as the reformer and tower bar, as well as the magic circle and resistance bands, mean that you’ll introduce resistance into your bones and muscles which helps to increase bone density and prevent the risk of falls as we age (one of the key risks associated with osteoporosis).
Pilates is also a mindful movement practice, meaning that it focuses on the mind-body connection and how to build it, this can help improve symptoms of brain fog as you’ll learn how to focus on just one thing (what is happening in your body) and clearing your mind of all other distractions. Learning a new task has been scientifically shown to help your brain health.
If you haven’t done Pilates before, you reap all the benefits of exercise, plus everything that comes with concentration, and you begin to listen to and work with your mind-body connection.
At Lauren Hilton Pilates, we’re passionate about supporting women with Pilates every day, including through major life transitions, from pregnancy to postnatal into menopause we truly believe that Pilates is a transformative movement practice that once in your life, you’ll never want to live without!
We held a menopause workshop at the studio last year, which was really well supported by our clients, but we realised that this support needed to be ongoing and not just a one-off workshop. So to provide that ongoing support, we’ve created a brand new Pilates for Menopause collection of classes within our LHP Pilates At Home online membership platform. In these online classes, we hone into the vital areas of strength, bone loading, mobility, pelvic floor health, body awareness & breathing.
Pilates for Menopause
The new class collection is now available to members on Lauren Hilton Pilates At Home.
We’ve collated a variety of classes, short and long, that cover practical Pilates movements that can help support your mind and body through this life phase, including classes that will;
Improve your bone density and strength
Help you to connect to your pelvic floor
Teach you how to let your pelvic floor release and strengthen through its’ full range of movement
Build strength in the muscles that surround your pelvis and spine
Improve your heart health with specific Pilates exercises
Improve joint mobility and flexibility
Decrease hormone-related aches, pains, and stiffness
Building that all-important mind-body connection through mindful meditation and restorative movement classes
Help to calm your mind and ease anxiety.
How do I know if I’ll benefit from the Pilates for Menopause collection of classes?
Perhaps you're a woman over 35? Maybe you feel stiff in the morning? Feel really tired? You've noticed more tightness in your neck, shoulders, or back? Or perhaps your hips feel less mobile? Maybe your core has weakened? Are you active, but getting more injuries and needing a longer recovery time? Or maybe you're experiencing an ever-changing array of symptoms like hot flushes, new aches and pains, anxiety, sleep problems, and brain fog (to name just a few!).
If you resonate with any of this then this class collection is for you.
Movement is vital for our health and wellbeing during the stages of menopause.
Each month we’ll add to the collection, so for as long as you subscribe your library of classes will grow, meaning your menopause tool kit will grow too.
I already have symptoms, is it too late for me to start Pilates to help with menopause?
You can start Pilates at any age, and any stage of menopause – it is never too late.
The joy of moving can be lost during this time in our lives, but Pilates with LHP will enable you to regain strength, confidence, and the pleasure of ease of movement in your body.
Find out more about our Pilates At Home membership here, or sign up below:
Roll out your mat with Lauren wherever and whenever it takes you. Our unlimited Lauren Hilton Pilates At Home membership gives you access to a curated selection of on-demand Pilates workouts at home or on the go.
Further resources:
The Menopause Doctor - Dr. Louise Newson
Newsonhealth.co.uk (Consultations and Services)
Balance-menopause (App, Symptom tracker, Resources, Podcasts, Leaflets)
Dr Naomi Potter, Menopause Doctor
Nigel Denby, Menopause Dietitian
Emma Ellice-Flint, Menopause Nutritionist
Dinah Siman, Menopause Pilates
Books worth reading:
Menopause - Dr Louise Newson A Haynes Manual
Me & My Menopausal Vagina - Jane Lewis
Oestrogen Matters - Dr Avrum Bluming and Carol Tavris, PhD
The XX Brain - Dr Lisa Mosconi
The Complete Guide to The Menopause - Dr. Annice Mukherjee
MBoldened, Menopause Conversations We All Need to Have - Edited by Caroline Harris
The Good Menopause Guide - Liz Earle
The Pelvic Floor Bible - Jane Simpson
Natural Menopause - Edited by Anne Henderson
Perimenopause Power - Maisie Hill
Hot Flushes, Cold Science - Louise Foxcroft
Note: We’ve shared these links to books and websites as helpful resources for you as a reader seeking more information on perimenopause and menopause. The book links are via bookshop.org which supports independent bookshops. These books will also be available from all good bookshops. Lauren Hilton Pilates is not affiliated with any of these businesses.
