Women undergoing menopause may benefit from sports therapy, which has been shown to improve somatic and urogenital symptoms as well as lift depressive moods, according to a study.
A total of 33 perimenopausal women were assigned to groups who underwent sports therapy first and then telephone intervention (n=17) or telephone intervention first and then sports therapy (n=16).
All participants completed a clinical symptom survey before and after the exercise and control periods using the following measures: the Menopause Rating Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire 9, and Patient Health Questionnaire 15.
Results favoured sports therapy over the telephone intervention, with significant effects on the Menopause Rating Scale total (exercise phase: from 17.8 at baseline to 13.5 at follow-up; control phase: from 15.9 at baseline to 15.4 at follow-up; p<0.01), somatic symptoms (exercise phase: from 9.5 at baseline to 6.6 at follow-up; control phase: from 8.5 at baseline to 8.0 at follow-up; p<0.01), and urogenital symptoms (exercise phase: from 4.9 at baseline to 4.1 at follow-up; control phase: from 4.3 at baseline to 4.4 at follow-up; p<0.01).
Sports therapy also had greater effects on the scores for PHQ-9 (exercise phase: from 4.6 at baseline to 3.6 at follow-up; control phase: from 4.5 at baseline to 5.5 at follow-up; p=0.008) and PHQ-15 (exercise phase: from 7.2 at baseline to 5.5 at follow-up; control phase: from 6.8 at baseline to 7.2 at follow-up; p=0.009).