Why You Need to Build More Muscle Now

We all know that muscle is important. There are more than 600 muscles in the body, each playing a crucial role. “Muscle supports our bones and keeps our back, hips, and necks aligned and pain free,” explains Michele Olson, PhD, CSCS, a senior clinical professor of sports science at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. “Muscle tissue also comprises all of our vital organs,” including the heart, liver, and kidneys, and exercise (along with proper eating) “helps keep these muscle-laden tissues strong and healthy.”

Building muscle becomes even more paramount as you age. Women lose roughly 10 to 15 percent of their strength every decade in middle age, according to a review in Sports Health. A likely contributing factor: perimenopause, the years when a woman transitions into menopause. During this time, a woman experiences a wealth of bodily changes including hot flashes, trouble sleeping, a slower metabolism and weight gain, particularly around the abdomen (hello middle age spread!). These changes are due to fluctuations in hormones, such as estrogen, which primarily comes from the ovaries.

A quick refresher: Women are born with about 1-2 million eggs. By puberty, that number decreases to 300-500,000. By age 51, the average age of menopause, that number is down to about 1,000. Why is this important? Well, “as the number of eggs remaining in the ovaries decreases, so does the amount of estrogen that is produced,” explains Brittany Robles, MD, MPH, an OBGYN, certified trainer and owner of PostpartumTrainer.com. “The decrease in estrogen negatively affects bone health and muscle mass, increasing the risk for osteopenia (bone loss) and sarcopenia (muscle loss).”

Yes, it sucks that at a time when your weight is likely to increase, your fat-burning furnace (AKA muscle) begins betraying you. What sucks even more is the amount in which it does. According to a study in the journal JCI Insight, which looked at the body composition of women over an 18-year period from before the onset of perimenopause until after their last period, and is based on the SWAN study, a multi-site longitudinal, epidemiologic study designed to examine the health of women during their middle years, women’s fat doubled during perimenopause as lean body mass decreased.

Inactivity, according to Olson, is one of the reasons behind the muscle loss. “The anabolic hormones that rise with exercise are lost if you let the lethargy of menopause slow you down and reduce your exercise efforts,” she says. “The calories burned for weight training and exercise in general keeps our weight intact and helps prevent fat gain,” Olson says.