Post-menopausal Hearts Benefit from Lifestyle Changes

Menopause threatens the heart of women in a big way; now a new study finds that women can fight this threat by making certain positive changes in their lifestyle. According to the study, losing weight, exercising more and eating better may be particularly beneficial to those women who have stopped hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Heart disease risk increases in women after menopause on account of increase in cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. HRT boosts the level of the “good cholesterol” HDL and cuts down the levels of the “bad cholesterol” LDL and so is widely prescribed to protect the heart of post-menopausal women. It also works at easing menopausal symptoms.

A large clinical trial – the Women’s Health Initiative – however found that HRT might actually increase heart disease risk and so many doctors have been advising their women patients to stop the treatment. At the time of publication of the above study, Dr. Kelley K. Pettee and her colleagues at the Arizona State University in Mesa were already into their five-year long study to examine whether changes in lifestyle could bring down heart disease risk in post-menopausal women.

For their investigation, the researchers studied 240 women who were on HRT at the beginning of the study. 130 of these women stopped taking hormones after 18 months into the study. Hypothesizing that lifestyle changes would help counteract the adverse heart affects of stopping HRT, the researchers compared the outcomes of both groups of women.

All participants were randomly divided into two groups – a lifestyle intervention group and a control group. The lifestyle intervention group had to go through 150 minutes of moderately physical exercise a week; take a 1300 to 1500 calorie diet every day; and reduce their total and saturated fat levels. The control group women just attended a series of lectures on health.

The researchers found significant reductions in weight, BMI, waist circumference, total cholesterol levels as well as LDL levels among the women in the lifestyle intervention group. On the other hand, an increase was seen in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels among the women who stopped taking HRT.

A direct comparison found that while total and LDL cholesterol levels in the control group women who stopped HRT increased by 22-mg/dL, those in the lifestyle intervention group women increased by less than 4-mg/dL.

“These results have important public health implications and suggest that a non-pharmacologic lifestyle approach is both safe and effective for cardiovascular risk factor reduction in postmenopausal women, especially those who discontinue HRT use,” Dr. Pettee and her team note in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“Based on the findings of the current investigation, special attention should be paid to encouraging lifestyle strategies that are likely to impart more benefit and less risk than drug therapies,” the researchers conclude.

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