45 plus: Exercise for your ageing body

Whether you like it or not, your body will go through a number of changes as it ages. How these changes affect you depends in part on your genes. Think how your parents or siblings have aged and you've a good idea of how you will.

Your level and type of physical activity and, of course, your diet also play their part. I strongly encourage everyone to be as physically active as possible throughout their whole life, but evidence suggests that the window from 35 years upwards has a more significant effect on your ageing than your physical activity levels in earlier years.

A number of physical changes occur in women pre-menopause, a phase often referred to as peri-menopause. These include:

Decreased metabolism

Owing to changes in hormones and muscle mass, your body needs fewer calories to perform its normal, everyday tasks. Not adjusting this calorie balance slowly contributes to weight gain and specifically a 'shape shifting' phenomenon in women.

Oestrogen levels fall

  Specifically, they become more erratic, waxing and waning, and the storage site of fats shifts to the abdomen. Consequently any weight gained is laid down around the middle, and so the middle age spread is born!

  Post menopause:
 

Rising cholesterol and blood pressure

Increases the risk of heart disease and contributes to other cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.

Decreased bone mineral density

The average bone loss in women during menopause is two per cent each year, yet it is possible to lose up to 20 per cent of bone in the five to seven years after menopause.

Weight gain

The shape shifting scenario and the changes in blood pressure and cholesterol can put women at a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Falling oestrogen and testosterone

Women lose about 66 per cent of their oestrogen and 50 to 60 per cent of their testosterone. In most cases body fat is redistributed from the hips to the midsection, compounding the effect of the middle age spread that you may have started to experience during your 40s and peri-menopause.