Lifting weights may cool inflammation after menopause

Menopause is a biological stage associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, driven by changes in sex hormone levels. That makes any accessible intervention that could improve cardiovascular risk markers in menopausal and postmenopausal women worth examining carefully. Resistance training is widely available and already recommended for muscle and bone, but its effects on inflammatory and lipid markers in this group had not been systematically pooled. This review set out to weigh both the benefits and the potential harms of resistance training programmes against control conditions.

The authors searched PubMed, Embase, CENTRAL, Scopus, Web of Science and clinical trial registries from inception to 2021 for randomised controlled trials comparing resistance training with a control group in menopausal and postmenopausal women. The primary outcomes were C-reactive protein and adverse events; secondary outcomes were lipid profile and waist circumference. Two reviewers independently selected studies, extracted data and graded the certainty of evidence using the GRADE approach. Twelve trials published between 2012 and 2020, totalling 482 women, met the criteria, with four follow-up periods assessed.

Resistance training reduced C-reactive protein compared with control across short- to long-term follow-up, with a mean difference of 0.47 mg/dL in favour of training. Reductions also appeared at both moderate and moderate-to-high training intensities. Lipid profiles showed similar improvements over the same follow-up windows. Waist circumference, by contrast, showed little to no change, and safety data were scarce. Crucially, the certainty of the evidence was assessed as very low, downgraded for serious study limitations, inconsistency, imprecision and publication bias.

The direction of the finding fits the broader idea that regular strength work has anti-inflammatory effects, and it extends that picture to menopausal and postmenopausal women specifically. But the very low GRADE rating means the finding is fragile: the reviewers state they have little confidence in the results and that the true effect is likely to be substantially different. The lack of adverse event reporting is another gap, since harms were a primary outcome the trials barely addressed. Better-conducted and better-reported trials are needed before this can be considered established.

For women in or past menopause, this is a reason to think resistance training might do more than build strength, potentially nudging inflammatory and lipid markers in a favourable direction. It is not a result to bank on: the underlying trials were flawed enough that the reviewers themselves distrust the pooled number. The absence of any effect on waist circumference is also a useful corrective, since lifting alone did not shrink waistlines in these studies.