Disease Proof

Pay attention ladies. Some new research has determined that exercise may ease the symptoms of menopause. Reuters is on it:

Researchers found that middle-aged women who exercised regularly had lower levels of stress, anxiety and depression around the time of menopause than those who did not exercise regularly.


The findings, published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Medicine, add to evidence that physical activity can benefit mental, as well as physical, health.

"With the aging population, physical activity represents one way for women to stay mentally healthy," Dr. Deborah B. Nelson, the lead researcher on the study, said in a statement. "Physical activity can help throughout the menopausal transition and afterwards," added Nelson, a public health researcher at Temple University in Philadelphia.

The findings are based on data from 380 Philadelphia women who were 42 years old, on average, and premenopausal at the beginning of the study. Eight years later, 20 percent were menopausal and another 18 percent were in the late transitional phase.

Now, for fellow gym rats like me, Julie from Julie’s Health Club talks about why exercise is her favorite drug. Take a look:

I almost always come back from my workouts slightly high but also more focused, confident, alert and social. Two groundbreaking new books that view exercise as medicine explain why: Physical activity enhances the mind by balancing the brain's neurotransmitters along with other chemicals. Weight loss, muscle strength and cardiovascular fitness are simply welcome side effects that come from breaking into a sweat.

"I tell people that going for a run is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin because, like the drugs, exercise elevates those neurotransmitters," Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey writes in "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain" (Little, Brown, $24.95). "Keeping your brain in balance can change your life."

It certainly did for world-class endurance athlete Christopher Bergland, an ultrarunner who holds the Guinness World Record for running farther and faster on a treadmill than any other human (153.76 miles in 24 hours).

The runner’s high is cool, but sometimes instead of a high, I get a “oh my god, I’m going to drop dead!”