Should menopausal characteristics be considered during cardiorespiratory exercise prescription in postmenopausal women?

Abstract

Objective Menopausal characteristics (i.e. the nature of menopause, hormone therapy, and time elapsed since menopause) are known to affect women's health-related quality of life. The purpose of this study was to determine whether menopausal characteristics affect the cardiorespiratory exercise response and which characteristics should be considered for exercise prescription.

Methods Fifty-eight postmenopausal women (60.21 ± 4.49 years of age; 66.26 ± 8.99 kg body weight; 157.09 ± 4.92 cm in height; 29.70 ± 4.79 ml·kg⁻¹·min⁻¹ maximal oxygen uptake) participated in this study. A graded 25-W/min² cycle ergometer exercise protocol was applied to assess aerobic power and ventilatory thresholds. Participants’ heart rates and gas-exchange variables were measured continuously using a COSMED K4b² portable gas analyzer system. The first and the second ventilatory thresholds were determined by the time-course curves of ventilation and oxygen and carbon dioxide ventilatory equivalents. Using age as a covariate, an analysis of covariance was performed to assess the effect of menopause characteristics upon the data.

Results Regardless of the nature of menopause, use of hormone therapy, time elapsed since menopause, and the interaction between these characteristics, the participants presented no differences in maximal oxygen uptake values, neither on submaximal variables often used in evaluations of exercise prescription, such as percent of maximal oxygen uptake, maximal heart rate, and heart rate reserve, nor in respiratory exchange ratio and gas exchange energy expenditure at aerobic and anaerobic ventilatory thresholds.

Conclusions These data suggest that a personalized cardiorespiratory target zone for this population should be set according to the published literature, and that consideration of the individual menopausal characteristics seems to be unnecessary.

Key words::

• EXERCISE PRESCRIPTION
• MENOPAUSAL CHARACTERISTICS
• VENTILATORY THRESHOLDS
• POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMEN

Conflict of interest The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper.

Source of funding Research was supported by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT), the Social European Fund (SEF), and by a doctoral grant endorsed to the first author (SFRH/BD/63984/2009) and the research project POCI/DES/59049/2004. The study was also sustained by the European Union Funds (FEDER/COMPETE: Operational Competitiveness Programme) and by national funds (FCT) under the project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-022692.