Research
Hormonal
Post-menopausal women exhibit 'anabolic resistance' to bone-loading exercise due to estrogen depletion, resulting in negligible increases in bone mass, although exercise can still preserve bone strength and mitigate loss.
If you are post-menopausal, do not expect exercise to significantly increase your bone density due to hormonal changes. However, continue weight-bearing and resistance exercise to maintain bone strength, improve balance, and reduce fracture risk. Focus on preservation and strength rather than mass gain.
GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
The inability of post-menopausal women to accrue bone mass after high impact training was later confirmed by a 12-month randomised controlled trial... Exercise alone or in combination with alendronate had no effect on bone mass at the femoral neck or lumbar spine... The “anabolic resistance” to exercise shown in post-menopausal women likely results, at least in part, from depleted oestrogen levels
Why this rating
Supported by RCTs and meta-analyses cited in the text.
Source
Exercise and bone health across the lifespan
Lívia Santos et al. · Biogerontology · 2017
DOI 10.1007/s10522-017-9732-6
narrative_reviewCited 238×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Weight-bearing exercise during childhood and adolescence maximizes peak bone mass, which delays the onset of osteoporosis by approximately 13 years and reduces fracture risk by up to 50% in post-menopausal women.Good
- Exercise provides an anti-ageing effect by preventing telomere shortening and modifying DNA methylation patterns, which may mitigate age-related bone loss and osteoporosis.Moderate
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