1. Loss of muscle mass
Firstly, loss of muscle mass. This is also known as sarcopenia.
When oestrogen falls, your muscle mass and muscle strength can weaken more quickly. Strong muscles, especially your leg muscles and your core, are really important for keeping you steady when you walk, keeping yourself upright and maintaining your balance.
So, when your muscles get weaker, you can have less stability when walking, going up the stairs or even just balancing on one leg.
2. Changes in the inner ear
Secondly, changes in the inner ear.
Inside the ear, there is something called the vestibular system, and this helps the brain to understand where you are in space – whether you’re standing upright, leaning to one side, turning around or bending down.
This system helps to keep you balanced during all these different types of movement.
It’s quite interesting because emerging research is showing that falling oestrogen may affect the vestibular system. [1] This can affect the way you feel when it comes to your balance.
It may cause things like dizziness, light-headedness or even feeling a little bit faint.
3. Changes in your vision
The third change is vision.
Believe it or not, our vision plays an important part in how we stand and maintain our balance as well.
As we get older, and especially during perimenopause and menopause, changes can affect our vision. We might have dry eyes, our vision might be a little bit blurred, we can get those little floaters that move around in our eyes, and our depth perception can be affected.
Your eyes work with your ears and your muscles to help you stand and keep your balance. So, if there are changes in your vision, that can mean you end up feeling less steady when you’re moving or trying to keep your balance.
So, what can you do to help yourself?
Here are a few things I usually recommend for women who are experiencing this issue:
Build up your strength
Really, one of the most important things is to build your strength up.
Strength training, especially for the legs and your core, is important for keeping you stable and strong.
It’s not about going to the gym, and it’s not about doing loads of exercises and really, really pushing yourself. There are things you can do daily that you can simply incorporate into your routine.
For your legs, it can be things like running up and down the stairs. I do it at work.
You can do squats. I’ll do those when I’m waiting for the water in my shower to heat up – 10 squats up and down. They’re great for the leg muscles.
Brisk walking is another good one. Ten minutes of walking a day can really help to keep your legs strong and stable.
For your core, it can be simple things too. A great one is the plank. Time yourself. You might only be able to do five seconds to start with, but after a little while, you’ll find you can do it for longer.
The plank is great for your arms, your core and your legs.
Lunges are another good one, and holding the lunge can work your core. Things like the yoga post, the bridge can be another really good exercise for your core as well.
These are simple things. You don’t need to work flat out, but just doing them regularly can make a lot of difference to your core and muscle strength.
Practise your balance
Practising your balance is really important too.
One of the things that happens, especially for women over 65 and 70 here in the UK, is that a huge number lose their balance, fall over and end up with things like hip fractures, which can be really difficult to bounce back from.
So, again, it’s about simple things.
If you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, stand on one leg for a little bit and then change legs.
I do it if I’m at the printer in the office waiting for things to be printed. You can do it standing with your trolley in the supermarket queue or if you’re waiting for the bus.
Balance exercises such as tai chi and yoga can be absolutely fabulous for this as well.
Really simple things like this just teach your body how to balance properly and coordinate your eyes, ears and muscles on a regular basis.
Keep yourself hydrated
The other thing that’s really important, and something I’m always going on about, is keeping yourself hydrated.
If you’re dehydrated, you can get dizzy, lightheaded or feel faint. These symptoms are all going to affect your balance as well. So, you want to try to avoid these things by drinking plenty of plain water regularly and especially remember to increase your fluid intake in hot weather. Also, if you’re getting lots of hot flushes and night sweats, remember that you may need to pay even more attention to your hydration.
Look after your eyes
It’s really important to get regular eye checks. Once you’re in perimenopause, you should make this a regular thing. Tell them you’re in perimenopause, menopause or post-menopause, because they can then take that into account. Sometimes they might do extra tests for you, just to make sure that everything is okay.
Support your bones and muscles through nutrition
Another important part of looking after your strength and balance is making sure you’re giving your body the nutrients it needs to support your bones and muscles. Protein is particularly important for maintaining muscle strength. If you’re exercising but not getting enough protein, your body may not have what it needs to support muscle repair and maintenance. So, try to include a good source of protein with every meal.
It’s also important to make sure you’re getting enough vitamin D, which is important for bone health, as well as including plenty of calcium-rich foods in your diet.
For muscle strength, you could also look at creatine. It’s something I’ve been adding to my daily routine for about the last year, and I’ve certainly found it helpful. Creatine has been widely researched for its role in supporting muscle strength and function, particularly alongside resistance exercise. There’s also growing research looking at creatine and brain function and memory, so there may be additional benefits too.
A helpful herb
Another option you could look at is the herb Ginkgo biloba, which has traditionally been used to support circulation, including blood flow to the brain.
Because our eyes, ears and brain all work together to help us maintain our balance, supporting these systems is important too. Ginkgo biloba has also traditionally been used to support memory, so there may be other potential benefits to consider alongside its traditional use for circulation.
When should you see your doctor?
If you’re getting persistent dizziness, if you’re losing your balance, bumping into things, falling, feeling faint all the time, getting spinning sensations, noticing changes in your hearing, or experiencing muscle weakness or numbness, it’s very important to see your doctor.
While the menopause can contribute to problems with balance, there can be other causes too.
It could be due to low blood pressure, inner-ear issues, hearing loss or things like vitamin deficiencies.
Don’t just put it down to getting older
Remember as well that, as we get older, a lot of things that happen to us can make us think, “Oh well, it’s to do with getting old. I’ll just have to put up with it.”
Please don’t put up with these things.
There are lots of things I’ve mentioned today that are very easy to incorporate into your daily life, and they can make a huge amount of difference to your strength, stability and overall wellbeing.
So, did you have this problem? Did you find that you were starting to lose your balance? What happened? What did you do to help yourself?
Please let me know. I love to hear your stories, and your little hint or tip could be helping someone else as well.
Source:
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41650804/
