JJ Virgin explains why joint pain spikes during menopause: dropping estrogen reduces collagen, weakening joint cushioning, while hormonal shifts trigger muscle loss, visceral fat gain, and elevated cortisol. This combination fuels inflammation and can damage gut health, amplifying joint pain. Collagen supplements and avoiding gluten may help.
All right, let's talk about what is really going on with your joints during menopause. So first of all, as we know, estrogen's going down. Well, when estrogen declines, collagen synthesis also declines. So that's going to now impact collagen, it's going to impact your connective tissue, it's going to impact all your joint cushioning. So all that stuff starts to get impacted as estrogen goes down. Next thing that happens— this doesn't have to happen, but if we are not really focusing on it and working against it— your body composition starts to shift. You start to lose muscle because estrogen's anabolic. It helps you build muscle, right? And so estrogen's going down, testosterone's going down, you're losing muscle and you're gaining fat. You might not notice much of a weight change, but your body composition is shifting and having more fat, less muscle means more stress and strain on your joints. Plus muscle is anti-inflammatory. When your muscles contract, they reduce inflammation. Fat is pro-inflammatory, especially if it's that visceral adipose tissue, the belly fat, which is what we tend to gain as we are going through menopause because we've got more insulin resistance, we've got higher cortisol, and we've got those receptors, cortisol receptors, in our belly. So that's why we tend to gain more of that. As estrogen's going down and progesterone's going down, cortisol is going up, and cortisol then impacts your sleep, impacts your stress, creates more inflammation. So poor sleep is just going to make things worse. Now you're not going to be as active, so That just adds to it. And then of course, there's your gut health. One of the things that happens, we know, is you've got more cortisol and poor sleep and poor stress is you tend to get more leaky gut, more gut dysbiosis. If you've got gut issues, quite often that could create the inflammation that will create joint problems as well. When I wrote The Virgin Diet, the stories I got back from people is how much it had helped their osteoarthritis. And so one of the reasons I love collagen supplementation so much is not only does it help joint health, it also helps heal and seal the gut. So it's a two-for-one. But think about things like gluten, and we talked about the, the dietary issues. As you are going through menopause, you will tend to have more of a tendency towards leaky gut, and then these things can create more of a problem for your joints. Just looking at collagen, we tend to lose 70% of our collagen in the first 5 years postmenopausal. We know your, your bone health goes on a huge decline, and so does your collagen. And the other thing that I have to mention here, along with leaky gut, is that when you have leaky gut, remember, you've got your immune system right below your guts. You got one layer of gut, and then you've got your immune system, and you've got antigens going through your gut lining and then hitting that immune system and activating it. And that activation can then cause joint pain as well. So all of this to say, what's going on with your joints during menopause is that you are getting more inflammation, less collagen, double whammy for joint pain.
