Ever wonder why menopause seems to affect just about everything — your sleep, your mood, your joints, your memory, your skin, your heart? Here's the answer, and it's oddly reassuring. Oestrogen isn't only a reproductive hormone. Receptors for it are dotted all through your body — your brain, your bones, your blood vessels, your skin, your bladder. So oestrogen has quietly been helping to run all of those systems in the background, for decades. When it starts to fall away in menopause, all of those systems feel the change at once. That's why the symptoms can seem so scattered and random — hot flushes and forgetfulness and aching hips, somehow all at the same time. But they're not random at all. They're connected, they make sense, and understanding that can take away a lot of the fear. Your body isn't malfunctioning. It's adjusting to life with less of a hormone it leaned on everywhere.
This is general information, not personal medical advice. If you have a health condition, or aren't sure whether an exercise is right for you, talk to your own doctor.