As you start to hit 40 and beyond you find that your joints may be starting to ache more than they used to, you start to become more injury prone, and your movement may not be as great as it used to. As you can appreciate, it has a little to do with ‘wear and tear’, however your hormones have a lot to do with this, as does your gut health. These aches and pains can decrease your quality of life and even make you feel miserable. It is important therefore to establish why this is happening and what you can do about it, to ensure that you can continue to move pain free, or as relatively pain free as possible, and continue to have excellent quality of life. Nobody wants to live with chronic pain. This is something we take into great consideration at Terrific Fitness and is why we do not believe in the ‘one size fits all’ approach to training, even in our group fitness classes.

Why changes in hormones increase joint pain:

With the fluctuation in production in your oestrogen and progesterone hormones you may notice fluctuations in joint and pain. As you get further away from 40, you may notice these aches and pains become stronger and more consistent. This is due to the decrease in production of oestrogen.

Oestrogen aids in the production of cartilage and connective tissue as well as production of bone density and reducing inflammation.

As oestrogen production starts to decrease joints starts to feel stiffer and less mobile due to reduced cartilage and connective tissue and the swelling of joints due to an increase in inflammation. This may reduce your mobility and movement.

How to reduce joint pain in perimenopause and menopause:

Improve your gut health

Your gut health plays a huge part in the level of inflammation in your body as well as the production and repair of all cells in the body. The better your gut health, the better your overall health.

• Reduce intake of processed food and focus on wholesome fresh foods. Lots of fruit and vegetables, natural fibre, proteins, and good fats. These foods are nutrient dense with all nutrients being bio usable by the body. Processed foods contain no bio usable nutrients, empty calories, toxins, and irritate the gut, increasing inflammation. This includes pastas, breads and fast food. Simple rule of thumb, if it goes in the fridge it’s a keeper, if it goes in the pantry, consume very sparingly.
• Reduce toxicity by avoiding alcohol, caffeine, recreational drugs, cigarettes, and chemical exposure.
• Reduce sugar intake as much as possible.
• Supplement with Magnesium, L-glutamine, probiotics, zinc and vitamins C

Manage your weight

All of the above points will help you with this. As you can imagine, the more weight you are carrying on your joints, the greater the pain you will experience due to the added pressure. Reducing your weight will reduce pressure on your joints.

Manage your stress levels

I talk about stress A LOT! Stress is one of the biggest contributors to weight gain, feeling miserable and feeling constantly sore. Managing your stress levels will help with fat loss, improve gut health, help you feel better, and reduce your aches and pains. Here are a few ways you can manage your stress levels:

• Eat enough food throughout the day without skipping meals. Avoid drastically reducing your calories on these crazy restrictive diets. On the flip side, avoid over-eating! You need a good balance of food intake to manage your stress. If you need help with this, contact us, as we can help you establish a good calorie intake for your body.
• Get enough sleep. Insufficient sleep can make you feel tired and irritable and increases the stress response in your body.
• Drink enough water. Lack of hydration is one of the biggest contributors to stress! Take your body weight in kilos, multiply it by 37 and that’s how many milliliters you should be drinking per day. Add 500ml if you are training as you will be perspiring and add 500 ml if it is a hot day because you are also perspiring more here.
• Do activities that increase your parasympathetic nervous system, the system that notifies your body to relax. Things such as meditation, infrared sauna, breathing exercises, going for a walk, sitting in the sunshine, walking on grass, sand or soil in bare feet, crafts, gardening, warm bath, reading, anything that relaxes you.

Exercise

Exercise and all activity, reduces the free radicals in your gut and throughout your body, by increasing your anti-oxidants. These free radicals speed up the aging process and destroy gut health!

Exercise is also fantastic for keeping your joints and muscles mobile and agile, as long as you do it safely.

Exercise. the safe way, to improve joint aches and pains:

It is imperative you train in a way that keeps you safe, reducing the risk of further damage to your joints, cartilage and connective tissue.

Training in a gym where you get no guidance and where there is no coach watching you for safety, is dangerous if you are not 100% confident in the best way to move, at this stage of your life.

Training in a gym where high impact, high intensity and a ‘one size fits all’ approach is taken, is only going to increase your joint pains, and decrease your quality of life, or worse, injure you long term.

Exercises need to be carefully selected for you, so they are personally tailored to your needs, with a coach watching and guiding you to ensure your movement is safe and you suitable.

That’s why at Terrific Fitness every single person undertakes a complete bio-feedback assessment upon joining and a structure balance assessment and posture analysis. We use this complete data to identify what aches and pains you have, if any, what your gut health is like, your sleep, stress levels etc. as well as any movement restrictions, injuries etc.

This data is then used to formulate an action plan for all coaches so that when they train you in one-on-one personal training or group fitness classes, you will have exercises specifically tailored to your needs.

This data is also used to create an action plan for you, to you know how to improve your lifestyle factors; sleep, stress, gut health etc.

Your assessing coach will also formulate a mobility plan for you, which is a collection of mobility exercise you can do before you train to open up your joints, warm and stretch your muscles, activate your muscles and prepare your body for exercise. They will also teach you what to do to help your recovery post training.

Failure to properly prepare for and recover from exercise can not only increase your risk of injury but can increase your chronic pain levels and decrease the benefits of exercise altogether, and further reduce your quality of live.

In group fitness classes, if the prescribed drill is not suitable for you, the coach will adapt or swap the exercise to ensure it is suitable for you. This could be via progression or regression, a change in intensity, a change in impact or a change in the exercise choice altogether.

We specialize in movement reconstruction, especially for women over 40, so you can be confident you can train safely, with people that understand what you are going through, to help you improve your quality of life, improve your mood, boost your energy, and all as pain free as possible.

Menopause is NOT a dirty word!

Not enough people talk about menopause and how it can change and impact your life. Often women suffer in silence, feel alone, feel misunderstood and feel like there is something wrong with them. If you ever feel like this, comment ‘me’ below.

• Coach Terri