Around menopause

Every entry whose writeup carries a note for around menopause. The note is the entry’s own — follow it for the full context. See this in the planner →

Supplements

• Black CohoshThe most-used herbal for hot flushes, and the evidence is genuinely mixed — some trials show a modest reduction, others none, and trial quality is generally poor. Liver injury has been reported often enough that regulators require a warning label. Worth knowing before you buy it.
• CalciumBone loss accelerates sharply in the years around the final period, because oestrogen withdrawal removes a brake on bone resorption. This is the window where intake genuinely matters — but food first: dietary calcium has a better fracture record than supplemental calcium, and high-dose supplements carry a cardiovascular question that food does not.
• Cat’s ClawNo specific benefit; relevance is to inflammatory joint disease rather than menopausal symptoms.
• Collagen PeptidesMarketed hard at this age group for skin and bone. The skin trials are short, use surrogate measures and are mostly industry-funded; the bone data is thin. It is not the same evidence base as calcium, vitamin D and loading the skeleton.
• DIMOften marketed around menopause, but it can interfere with menopausal hormone therapy and has no proven menopausal benefit.
• IronThe mirror image of the years before it: once periods stop the requirement falls back to 8 mg, and continuing a supplement out of habit is how people accumulate too much. New iron deficiency after menopause warrants investigation rather than a supplement.
• Maca RootStudied for menopausal symptoms with limited, modestly positive results.
• SilicaInterest in a bone benefit is greatest around and after menopause, but the human trial evidence for reduced fracture risk is not there.
• Vitamin D3Works with calcium rather than instead of it — the fracture trials that show a benefit almost all used both. Low vitamin D also worsens the same bone loss, so it is worth not being deficient here specifically.

Movement

• Jump RopeA cheap and unusually well-studied source of the brief high-impact loading that bone responds to.
• PlyometricsImpact loading builds bone in a way that steady-state cardio does not — the signal bone responds to is a rapid, high-magnitude force. Worth easing into if bone density is already low, and worth discussing first if you have had a fracture.
• WalkingGood for almost everything else, and among the weakest of the exercise options for bone specifically — the loading is too low and too familiar to prompt much adaptation. Pair it with something that loads the skeleton harder.

Other situations