Older women who are physically active have better heart health than those who are sedentary. This was the finding of a recent study from the University of Buffalo that used fitness trackers on a diverse sample of almost 6000 women aged 63-99.
Those who kept moving had a lower risk of heart failure and even light physical activity brought benefits. The risk of developing heart failure was highest in women who managed fewer than 2000 steps a day. The researchers concluded that 30 minutes of exercise and 3600 steps a day was a reasonable target for older women.
Perhaps what is most surprising about this study is how rare it is for exercise and sports experts to focus on women, particularly older ones. This problem has long dogged other areas of health science as everything from drug prescriptions to treatment protocols are based on research using male subjects. Even trials involving animals have tended not to use females.
Researcher Kelly McNulty is based at Northumbria University in the UK and her interest has been the effect of the menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptives on sportswomen. She says the lack of high-quality female-specific research means women train in a similar way to men despite their physical differences.
In 2021 McNulty was one of the authors of a study titled Invisible Sportswomen: The Sex Data Gap in Sport and Exercise Science Research. Results of this revealed that within 5261 studies in six popular sport and exercise science journals, females accounted for 34% of total participants. As little as 6% of research focused exclusively on females.
The study looked at all age groups but when McNulty began to focus on perimenopause, she delved back into it and found that women in midlife and beyond were particularly poorly served by science.
Many women will live a third of their lives postmenopause and this hormonal change puts them at heightened risk of osteoporosis, muscle loss and cardiovascular disease. Yet this demographic accounted for only 9% of total study participants. Even then, the quality of the work wasn’t great. Some studies failed to separate pre- and postmenopausal participants, or didn’t take the use of HRT (hormone replacement therapy) into account.
The challenge with women is that hormone levels fluctuate, which makes it more difficult and costly for researchers to study female subjects. “Men come in and we test them at one point but to navigate the hormonal changes of the menstrual cycle means we have to test women at three different points. Perimenopause poses a similar challenge,” says McNulty.
How hormones affect sporting performance and recovery is obviously of interest to female athletes, but McNulty says more research is needed across the board.
“If we look at perimenopause, that’s a time when women may experience a lot of symptoms. Potentially exercise and changes in lifestyle can improve symptom experience but we don’t have enough data right now to say what types of exercise might help and how we can best counteract some of the negative health effects for women postmenopause.”
Research by Women in Sport in the UK found that 30% of females became less active in midlife. Participants in that study said they were working, raising kids and looking after ageing relatives while dealing with their own health issues and the symptoms of menopause. They wanted to exercise but it wasn’t easy to find the time or the energy.
McNulty asks: “How can we keep women taking part in sports and exercise as they are navigating hormonal changes? What role might HRT play in that? We haven’t got the answers to those questions yet, but we need them.
“If we have a more equal ratio of men and women in the research, then that’s going to benefit everyone, from those taking part in sports for fun to those aiming for Olympic gold.”
