Menopause Hormone Therapy and Training: What MHT Can and Cannot Do for Body Composition

Let's talk about just a small moment on hormones. So, two big broad topics. Um, you know, in terms of HRT post-menopausally, I assume I know the answer to this, but do you see for obviously it's not appropriate for some women, but for a large population of women, you know, it can be medically appropriate. People can see a big quality of life improvement. Do you also see um improvement in training? like do you see massive shifts for people? Um is this something that you know you do you approach training differently for women postmenopausly if they've got estrogen on board or not or not really at all? — No. Um so we talk about menopause hormone therapy. Um and I'll preced it as MHT because I don't like the UK idea that it's a deficiency syndrome. So, we're talking about menopause hormone therapy and the different formulations we see. — Yeah. Thanks. You can use it really — frame. Thank you. — Yeah. Um, so when we're looking at all the different components of estradile, is it conjugated? Is it micronized? And how it affects the body. The goal of MHT is to have a very low physiological dose to attenuate symptoms. And it is a powerful tool and toolbox to help people get quality of life back. It is not a physiological dose that is the same as the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle or late permenopause because it's still relatively low. So we have to put the work in to build lean mass. help maintain bones. It does help with bone density. Of course we know that we look at visceral fat gain. It slows the rate of that because it improves um the anti-inflammatory properties within the cells. But we can do that with omega-3s as well. So when I talk about the training shifts that occur in pmenopause, it's what you're doing in the moment to help attenuate all the symptoms and help with body composition, but also to carry you through into post-menopause because you have a biological state. We need to take care of that. You're having all the changes before menopause. And then in postmenopause, we still want to maintain some jump training for bone health. We want to maintain lean mass through strength training. We want to do some intensity work for cardiovascular and brain health. So it isn't a fact of training differently. It's where in the journey do people start to train and apply these concepts. And if they are on MHT, that's just something that they've done to help with quality of life, but it doesn't change the training components. — No free lunch. There's no shortcut here. Um, so what I'm hearing from you is those late 30s and 40s are crucial to, you know, building and maintaining strength later on. Um, you know, tensile strength, bone strength, muscle strength, all the things. Um, — right. All the things. Uh, it's really a window to really leverage if you can. So, I will keep that in mind for my low energy availability, lovely patients that come to me.