Why Am I Sore in Menopause and What to Do About It

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What are you waiting for? Good night.

All right, in this episode you're going

to hear me respond to one of

our flipping 50 members asking a question

about being sore and she's in menopause for no apparent reason. If you are sore, you're stiff, or

you're even just listening to a little

nagle or a catch, this is for you. If you've passed this kind of thing off for arthritis or just getting old, stick around. If not you, a girlfriend or sister probably needs to hear this. So don't go away my friend.

I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions and about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew

to ask them the goal to help

accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman and it's not just about you, but the three generations that you influence.

My unique 40 year career, including being

a University Senior Lecturer in Kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert and an international speaker to founder of the first and the only exclusively made for Menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone balancing, fitness and longevity and share answers

to our community's questions so you can

have the vitality and the energy that you want, need and deserve.

This is a question asked by Paulette and it is such a juicy one that I've heard more than once and now we've got a name for it. So in case you haven't heard the details, I'll be the first to share them with you in this episode. Paulette asked this I'm looking for suggestions about what helps with muscle stiffness and soreness unrelated to injury. Unrelated to injury. There is none. I've noticed in my transition to menopause that I have much more muscle stiffness and less flexibility despite being quite active doing yoga several times a week. It's mostly in my legs and hips and lower back. Well, probably every muscle group, she said. Dot dot dot. Lol. I wake up stiff and it generally improves within a few minutes of movement, but I notice it through throughout the day when I bend down or try to get down on the floor or up from there. I'm sure this is a common complaint among 50 plus women. What helps with this? End of question from Paulette. So Paulette, first of all, thank you for asking on behalf of everybody else and I'm going to dive right into this. There are multiple things and resources I'm going to give you here. I hope you will find them all very helpful if you so Reasons for Soreness in menopause Some women do find that this occurs more frequently during midlife and menopause. I don't like to assume that this must be common in women over 50, so I want to be really careful with our language there for any of you and not to assume it's just an age thing that of course this happens. We will be, I hope, the last generation that ever makes these assumptions again. We'll see. Some women do find it occur, others don't. It can be due though to a lot of things that they begin to notice due to changes in estrogen causing changes in collagen, muscle, bone, connective tissue which beyond collagen includes ligaments and tendons. Simply punching that ticket for midlife and being in more of an estrogen deficit can cause a snowball of symptoms. By the way, it doesn't have to. But some of the habits that we thought were good are actually not. And some that were good then matching the hormones that we had then are not good for the hormone status that we have now. So the influence of certain habits on our muscle, bone, connective tissue, gut health, sleep, sex and every cell in our body, estrogen has that kind of an impact. We used to think, oh, estrogen for reproductivity, don't need that anymore, no big deal. And then we realize significant impact on bone. We've known that since the 90s readily. But now the last 10 to 15 years, now we all know it also has a huge impact on muscle and so much other right. Injuries. And a lot of times I would say that women don't necessarily share this injury status. More so now I think because we are more collectively in groups, be it a group you're working with live or it's a Facebook group where you can have open conversations kind of still hiding behind the curtain, nobody really knows you. Talking to strangers sometimes is easier to be more open about what's going on in your personal life than actually talking to friends that you are going to see every day, including at church or the grocery store. Am I right or am I right? But thank goodness we have any venue or platform where we can be more open. And it's always going to be there's a good and there's a bad to it. But I want you to imagine this. Imagine a puppeteer, imagine it's estrogen changes that are pulling the strings for you. And what I've anecdotally noticed is that clients with a low inflammatory diet and who are supplementing with anti inflammatory foods, meaning lots of foods rich in omega 3s, not so much overdoing omega 6 rich foods and that are supplementing with omega 3, which is with vitamin C, things that will help to decrease inflammation tend to do far better. Less incidents of this stiffness challenge, increase in injury, not seen so much in them. So I'll add here that women are finally getting more savvy. A decade ago there was research, but few would listen to that research when. When I first shared it. Right. Because it's first a new idea. What happens historically with new ideas is the person who's the messenger is ridiculed. Because nobody's saying that, nobody else is saying that. Why wouldn't anybody say that if it were true? And that's so true. I think with some supplements we're also seeing it's doing so much good. And yet why doesn't everybody know about this because people are quicker to eat orange colored Cheetos and red M M's than they are to take a health supplement. I mean really, wouldn't you say that's true in your lifetime? We have learned to trust maybe in the wrong ways and now we're reluctant to because may have been burned a time or two and there's a little of all of that involved in this whole why don't we more readily accept that it could happen differently and better if we just learned to plug in this science and really vet our science and know that it's not just chat GPT making things up. All right, we're having conversations or at least we're able to listen to others conversations in online or elsewhere. Realizing that you're not alone. It isn't just getting old. It's not just normal and acceptable as we find more women less willing to accept weight gain, belly fat, frequent injury, stiffness, or in this podcast, soreness as normal processes of aging and instead as clues that we need to pivot from our prior habits or beliefs will start making aging better instead of dreaded Couple ideas so these things I would just suggest to any woman who is yes, we know the stimulus for increased soreness, maybe aches, pains. For you, it might be greater injury. I'm hoping not. Is reduced estrogen the only answer or the answer is not only. Well, if you don't want to do hormone replacement, then there's nothing you could do. That's not the answer and the answer here is not a persuasive argument on estrogen. But there are other lifestyle things that you can do and here's what they would be. I would suggest a reduction or elimination. If it were me going through this or any of my family members, I would suggest reduce or eliminate dairy and gluten and wheat. And those are the top two. I said I put gluten and wheat together because wheat of course has gluten but other foods and have gluten in it as well. So you need to just be aware of that. If you eliminate those two things, you will eliminate a lot of the culprit of inflammation and you need to live there for a while. It's not going to immediately tomorrow feel better. It might, but if that made up a huge chunk of your diet, certainly might. But if you eliminate for say three weeks, you're going to probably feel better already by then. But also there's eggs, soy and soy by the way is hiding in salad dressings and any processed foods you want to read the ingredients List peanuts and peanut butter products with peanut in it. Corn and I know I'm from Iowa, so sorry. Nuts are also on that list. They're, they're down low. And if you done an elimination diet before, you know, nuts are not always there. But for this purpose I would insert them almonds and almond flour, almond milk. You may find it's a little bit more difficult to use an alternative milk if you're removing this, but you might find that too is very beneficial. And if you really wanted to get to the bottom of it fast, I would eliminate all of these and then I would reintroduce them one at a time in three weeks. Not accidentally just letting them creep into your diet, but introduce by challenging yourself. What about this food? Eat it two or three times in full servings for three days and see what happens. That's how you test it. Oxalate consumption can also be a problem due to damage that it does. So mitochondrial damage. You've heard the word mitochondria so much more in the last decade probably than ever before in your life, unless you are a kinesiology or physiology major. So I've been hearing that since 1984 religiously. And it's been related to the manufacturer, the production of ATP, which is energy for exercise, for muscular contractions. But it's also related to the reason aging people tend to get breathless going upstairs find that activities they used to do and didn't even think twice about now get them breathless, you know. But there's more to that because those are the visible physical activity or exercise exertion kinds of things. But at the cellular level, your little body is exercising a lot too. We just can't see that. I don't have to see you walking upstairs to know at the cellular level, your mitochondria need a little boost. And so when doctors who have zero medical school, exercise physiology or kinesiology background, unless they were say a pre sports med major, they don't have much to, to fly on there. But they do know about mitochondrial damage and increased inflammation that will cause oxalates are responsible. So I know you're thinking right now, some of you, what are oxalates? The body makes oxalate acid and that can contribute to muscle pain or soreness as well as gut issues. And you can ingest it and eat it and certain foods will cause greater oxalate acid. The more foods you eat containing it, you may find that no longer do you handle it quite as well as you're aging. So middle age and beyond, you might find you to do really well with this anymore. You don't handle it so well and can't do it. So if you also have high consumption of green smoothies and green veggies, try swapping your spinach and kale in smoothies for cucumber and cauliflower rice. So you're still getting in veggies, but you're cutting down on the spinach and the kale for a while. Other things like sweet potatoes, legumes, quinoa, contain oxalates too. If you're somebody who falls into this trap of putting the same foods in your diet on repeat, and you're eating a lot of sweet potatoes and quinoa and legumes and spinach and kale, thinking these are very healthy foods, they are in fact micronutrient dense foods. However, that one little thing, that caveat of oxalate could be actually messing with you. It's wreaking havoc. It's causing potentially some leaky gut, which means you're not absorbing the micronutrients from those foods anyway, and it's causing you problems probably in absorption of calcium and other micronutrients that you might be consuming. So challenge yourself to remove these things for a while and see how you do, especially if you have any other signs of leaky gut. Now, I want you to realize this. The sneaky thing about leaky gut is you might not have constipation, gas, diarrhea, or bloating. Yeah, wouldn't it be nice? I mean, I know, not nice. If you had these signs, you at least know immediately. You know, I mean, you know, you have the stomach flu if you're throwing up, you know, otherwise you just kind of feel lousy. You don't know what's going on, you know, and so at least you get a slap in the face like, hey, you know, something's problematic, but you can. The only sign you could have from a food sensitivity could be weight loss resistance. You're trying to lose weight. You think you're doing all the things right. And may in fact be that you're not losing weight because there's an issue with your gut. It's not functioning well. And if you're not absorbing things, you know, at one point in your life as a 20 something, you might have thought, well, that's good, I'm gonna lose weight. That's not good. Because now you're also not going to create muscle or bone, and that's a risk we can't take anymore. So hopefully you're listening to this. You're not thinking weight loss, skinny at all costs anymore. We've wisened up a bit. So as a side note, I want you to know this on gut health and food tolerances. You know, I love roasted vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, carrots. Used to make a medley fresh veggies. Cut them up, toss them in olive oil, season them, bake them for 40 minutes, you know, and I would eat them just like that right out of the oven. I would have them as a side for dinner. I would pair them with hummus. I'd throw them the rest of the week into salads. Well, at some point along the way, starting probably seven, seven, eight years ago, occasionally I would make them and even like pull them out of the oven. And I've had to piece this together in my memory because one time it happened, it was an anomaly. I didn't think anything of it. Another time, something slightly different but also odd happened. Same. But as I started to put these together and now, no, at this point, if I roasted broccoli, put it in the oven and pulled it out and had a few pieces right away, I might actually get so nauseous that I would throw up. Even just a few bites of it would do that for me. There have been instances where I couldn't make it to the bathroom or the wastebasket. I had to go to the sink and it was just like immediate, like my body was clearly telling me, I don't want this. I can't tolerate this something in it. So go to find out. That broccoli, cauliflower, other things too, but have sulfur in them. And if I have not been eating eggs very frequently. So I've been having them only infrequently, irregularly, not huge doses, but just, you know, might put it in something. Might have a couple egg whites for breakfast with some veggies for a change. I can be okay, but having too many eggs maybe a couple days in a row, they also contain sulfur and I will be sick almost immediately. Now, I don't throw them up. Something else happens. I'll let you use your imagination, but I, I share this with you as an illustration of how much our guts can change as we go through menopause into post menopause. You may still be evolving and changing. Based on gut health. I can go to True Foods, have a kale salad for lunch and be just fine. However, I can't anymore make a big batch of kale Brussels sprout salad, which I love, and, and eat it kind of for lunch and for dinner. The next and several meals in a row or it runs right through me. And so all of these things are clues that you're not handling something in it. So oxalates, sulfur in these two cases. I share this with you, not to gross you out, which I may have and I'm so sorry. But to be aware that some of the healthiest foods on the planet known for micronutrient density still could be problematic. Plants have this oxalate to protect them from ever being eaten by animals. So things to consider and to test if you're not doing well. But also if you have inflammation, if it's doing that to your gut, it's also doing things to other cells in your body and causing potentially aches and pain. So when you remove those foods, you may find that you do far better. Lack of gut issues doesn't mean you won't be sore, by the way, in menopause. So they're not necessarily one and one and the same or related. There are some suggestions here for increasing anti inflammatory response, your antioxidants, your level and anti inflammatory foods and or supplements. Increase your intake of salmon or other fatty fishes. Tuna halibut can be fatty. Omega 3 supplement. So literally just taking the gel pills and I tend to take two or three times what's listed on the bottle. If I'm really in a flare, number one, I already am achy or in pain. And I would say that really doesn't describe me unless I'm training significantly for something just before going to the Grand Canyon. You know, increase volume of training. Right. And increase workload on that one single day. So a little bit higher omega 3 is going into it to help the inflammatory response afterward and during and to kind of head it off at the pass. Also magnesium, vitamin D. And both of those are things that somewhere between 60 and 80% of us already have existing insufficiency. So I'll say insufficiency versus are deficient. You just don't have optimal levels. So you may have some existing. But remember, if you've taken a normal lab test with a normal doc who isn't aware of optimal levels and doesn't know that and isn't advising you on optimal levels just on norms. All you're doing is being compared with norms to a whole lot of people who test and don't feel very good. We don't want norms. That's like here you can be average too. Most of us want optimal. And there are some things that you don't want to get higher than a certain number but optimal range is generally higher than norms for several different things, several different micronutrients. So you might want to take a good look there. Sit down with a health coach like myself, go over your labs that you've done in the last three months to look at that if you, if you want to do that. I do have a discovery call option if you want to meet for 30 minutes. That can be one of the things that we go over if you'd like to. Antioxidant, rich, brightly colored vegetables. Now, that could be problematic if you think back to what I just said, right? So having broccoli, if. Or were spinach or kale for that matter, if they're full of oxalates, and that's really not a good idea for you. You want variety and diversity. That's one of the most important things. So if you're getting it, you're going to be less likely to have major problems because you're overeating certain things. But I will tell you that having worked with women, you know, for 40 years, really primarily as my largest market of, of anybody that I was working with, but in the last 11 years exclusively, that women are creatures of habit, whether they're cooking for themselves, as I am, or at home. You know, I remember when I was cooking for my stepson and my husband and myself before my son was even born. You know, we would buy many times the same things over and over because we'd buy like carrots and broccoli, cauliflower. So we had raw vegetables for dip, you know, because that's how we, you know, encouraged eating vegetables prior to a meal, is we put those things out while everybody's hungry. You know, even if we knew there probably weren't many vegetables that were going to be eaten where the mushrooms were going to be separated off of the pizza, Right? Remember those days when those were your biggest problems? Gosh, wouldn't you like that problem? Just like, one day that could be your problem. Oh, goodness. So going back to that, just diversity in your diet, don't overdo it with any one thing and you'll probably be better off. And you may avoid any of these problems if you're not already there. But if you're aching, I would make sure you're doing some of these. I will throw in. Also, Masha T M A T C H By the way, that's different than maca, which is an adaptogen unrelated to the conversation today. Masha is, and I think most of you probably are aware, green tea has been high in antioxidants which kind of prevent or unplug the role of free radicals which do damage in our bodies. And yet Masha is like drinking nine or ten cups of green tea all at once. So it does have a little caffeine in it, but it's also got something called L theanine, which helps you relax. It's like you get a little caffeine stimulant, but you also get this chill pill so that you're able to focus and concentrate. It's wonderful. I love it. I love it. Better than coffee in the morning. It's so good for me for work time. And it's got what we call one of the highest oric values, O, R, A C, which means it's got more antioxidants than many things that you could ingest. So if you're familiar with peak tea, which is my favorite place to go and get Masha, then you know that they kind of bundle it up with some other things. But they sell it as a. An awesome skin supplement because it is so good for the skin. Your habits also can support soreness, decreasing it if you've got it. Epsom salt bass so we talked just briefly about increasing or watching your so your magnesium levels. Epsom salt contains magnesium, so your skin is the biggest organ you have. And magnesium will absorb across that spicy barrier if your body needs it. It's almost like it just will say, oh yeah, come on in, we need that. We're a little low today, let's go. But you're also just gonna sit and soak in it. And the warm water itself can help relax muscles and make things feel better as well. Longer warmups and cool downs while you're exercising may help decrease some of the muscle soreness if that muscle soreness is also residual to exercise and. And you may notice that it is. But a longer warmup and cool down could help you dissipate some of that. Infrared sauna is another one of my secret weapons. It's excell for recovery from exercise for also so many things that happen detoxing through the body. It heats your body up from the inside out. Unlike so you go into a steam and you just get hot all over. And infrared sauna is kind of inside out and so you're sweating out toxins and sweat of any kind helps you to do that. But here you're not actually exercising, but you are getting some circulatory and respiratory benefits. Your body thinks your body having a mini workout and no, that's not a get out of jail pass by the way you can do both. I will share my sauna in the show notes with you. The one I love is by Sunlighten. I happen to have a solo sauna. It's it looks like an mri, like you actually lay down. I thought that was a bad idea at first. I wanted one that was all big and wood and built in. But I was renting a house in the mountains and that just didn't seem like a good idea. And it wasn't. Thankfully, I had to move. And actually while I was mitigating the mold that was in my house or so I thought, I was able just to carry this upstairs. And so I was using it almost daily while it was being exposed to the mold unknowingly. So that probably helped my case. I wouldn't have been able to do that with a built in one, but I say that because it's also far more affordable. And if you think you're in an apartment and you might be moving or you're renting a house as I was and you might be moving soon, it's just probably easier and smarter than to redo electrical where you're living temporarily. You also may want to pay a little bit more attention to your mobility work. Just do it more regularly. One of the reasons we are stiff early in the morning and I will do this in a follow up podcast about lower back pain and discs, but I want to right now talk about just you've been stationary, you haven't been moving overnight and that's what we need and want. By the way, we don't want you walking or sleepwalking. But the body is meant to move. So let that be a reminder to you that during the day you don't feel it as much because you're moving and we are supposed to be moving. And there are a couple of stretches that if you begged I would share with you that can help release hip and lower back soreness. And those tend to be the areas that get sore the most, partially because of sitting and then partially when we do go to move, we've been sitting so much that they're already a little sore and stiff. As a side note, if you are somebody who tends to get sore or doesn't tend to get sore, whether this is in menopause and now it's changed or not. Genetics play a big part in whether you do tend to get sore from workouts or not. There are two specific genes that are identified related to will you or won't you get sore? So whether they are expressed or they're not expressed. That's the difference. Certainly with conditioning, the better shape you're in, the less likely you're going to get sore from doing the same repetition or load. But there's also any unique workout, no matter how fit you are, you go, you're used to doing triathlons and, or long distance and strength and power workouts at CrossFit. And you go to a Pilates class, you could die the next day. And yes, I'm an Aries, I can be dramatic. But what I mean is you're going to use small muscles you've never used. We call them global stabilizers. And you haven't been turning them on. We can make football players cry on that Pilates reformer. And we, you know, some of us get, get a kick out of that. But you know, it's important to know none of us is above getting sore. But if you're used to moving a lot and yet you're moving the same muscles a lot, your quadriceps and your glutes, it's hard sometimes to get them sore, to feel sore in your glutes. Does anybody. I struggle with that. And it's not necessarily that we're not using them, it's just they're so used to a lot of activity that it's difficult to get them sore. So when you do side lunges and you haven't done those for a very long time, there's a good chance you'll be a little bit sore from that in the inner thigh, facilitus, those muscles that you haven't used. So realize there's a lot of things at play there. Genetics, your conditioning status, your regular workout versus an anomaly or an activity that you're not quite used to. Okay, in the show notes we'll put the references, the resources that I mentioned today, and you will also get a couple other episodes that might interest you if this one did. And you'll find the show notes@flipping50.com soar in menopause. What are you waiting for? Let's start flipping 50 today.

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