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According to a new study, team sports effectively counteract reduced vascular function in postmenopausal women with hypertension, even several years after the onset of menopause.
The loss of estrogen associated with the transition to menopause increases a woman’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease and reduces the ability to benefit from training. However, the new findings show that postmenopausal women benefit from exercise – in this case, playing small-sized floorballs twice a week.
For the study, a group of postmenopausal women with high blood pressure and a control group with normal blood pressure participated in a bi-weekly floorball workout for 10 weeks.
For women with high blood pressure, floorball training reduced vascular stiffness and led to a decrease in blood pressure of 15 (systolic) and 9 (diastolic) mmHg in hypertensive women. This is significant and corresponds to a 40% lower risk of death from heart attack and a 30% reduction for coronary heart disease, which is characterized by a reduced oxygen supply to the heart.
The group of women with normal blood pressure had slightly elevated blood pressure at the start of the study, which is common among inactive postmenopausal women. They too experienced a noticeable 10mmHg decrease in systolic blood pressure during floorball training.
“The study shows that team sport among postmenopausal women is such an effective form of exercise that, with just two workouts per week, significant improvements in blood pressure, vascular function and body composition are achieved,” says Thomas P Gunnarsson of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports at the University of Copenhagen.
The study also shows that postmenopausal women experienced a dramatic 10% reduction in visceral fat mass (the “dangerous” fat found between internal organs). Additionally, total fat mass decreased by half a kilogram (just over 1 pound).
It is particularly noteworthy that these findings emerge from a group of women with no previous experience with floorball, says Jens Bangsbo, associate professor and head of the Copenhagen Center for Team Sports and Health.
“The study supports the numerous health benefits of participating in team sports and provides us with a deeper understanding of the training adaptations associated with team sports, which creates high motivation among postmenopausal women,” says Bangsbo .
“Furthermore, the lack of floorball experience was not a limitation in women’s ability to achieve excellent health results in a relatively short time.”
The results are promising mainly because it is believed that vascular smooth muscle in postmenopausal women cannot change with exercise. The study contradicts this notion.
The new findings contribute to a growing body of knowledge on the mechanisms involved in hypertension in postmenopausal women, as well as the types of exercise that can effectively counteract the negative consequences of estrogen loss over time in the postmenopausal state.
The study appears in American Journal of Physiology – Normative, Integrative, and Comparative Physiology.
Source: University of Copenhagen
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