Are your joints aching in perimenopause?
- Andrea Marsh
- Jul 4
- 8 min read
How are your joints feeling? Do they ache? Are you in your 40s or 50s? One of the key symptoms of perimenopause that sneaks up on us is the achiness in our joints and muscles. You’ll be living with your body for many more years, so let’s address those creaks and pains. Understanding what’s happening and what you can do about it can alleviate joint problems. How can you tell if the discomfort is due to the bone quality of your joint, muscle tightness, ligament weakness, or a lack of fluid movement? As a therapist, I can determine this when you visit me and help resolve these issues. However, I thought I’d explain how you can support your joints in this month’s blog: Are your joints aching in perimenopause?
Are your joints aching in perimenopause?
A major concern regarding women's bone quality is the reduction in density due to declining oestrogen levels, which makes bones more susceptible to fractures. This occurs as menopause approaches and periods cease, with estrogen levels dropping by 75%. This decrease also impacts the body's ability to retain water, directly affecting joint fluid. Combined with the loss of collagen, which affects the quality of our skin, tendons, and ligaments that hold joints together, menopausal changes can significantly impact joint and bone health.
The good news is there are many steps we can take, from supplements to lifestyle adjustments, to prevent osteoporosis (loss of bone density) after menopause. It's crucial to make some changes, as this is one of the two major issues women face, and why HRT advocates emphasize the need for it. However, if you make changes to support your bone health, HRT becomes a personal choice rather than a necessity.
Taking care of our joints involves a comprehensive holistic approach, not just taking a glucosamine supplement and hoping it's sufficient. Regain control of your joint health by truly understanding the situation, and then do everything possible to prevent further deterioration. In fact, you can improve your joint health so that they become your allies again, assisting you out of bed in the morning, rather than hindering you!
Joint health starts with listening to your joints!
Truly paying attention to your joint(s) including the sounds they mae is a great starting point to self diagnose what the problem is. It could as you extend the joint or apply pressure. It could you hear clicjs or creajs or you're stiffer in the mornings when getting out of bed. The good news is that most joint problems are resolveable as you're too young to have arthritis. Your joints are designed to last until you're into your later decades so they don't start wearing out this young. You may just have tight muscles or a lacj of fluid flowing and more importantly in perimenopause it could be stress that is causing your joints (and muscle) problems.
Sensing what is happening, and understanding what does or doesn't alleviate the pain, ache, or soreness; whether you prefer applying heat or cold when it aches - these options help you relieve that current pain you're in whilst we get to the bottom of what is causing you the pain.
Joints can produce a variety of sensations, and pinpointing what is truly occurring is key to effectively addressing your pain and aiming for long-term joint health enhancement. Use these insights to help extend the health of your joints:
Lubricate Your Joints
Lack of lubrication in the joint will sound like clicks and crunches. You may feel stiff/cold (especially wrists!); better with movement. Massage the joints to get the blood and fluids moving around, keep them warm, and jiggle them to loosen muscles and tightness. You can prevent carpal tunnel syndrome this way too.
Tightness in the joint, like the knees, are they difficult to bend? Look to your muscle flexibility and include long, slow stretches, especially good to open the knee joint. Kneeling regularly is great for opening tight knee joints, and the pigeon yoga pose for hips.
Do you wake up with tight, aching joints in the morning?
If so, before you get out of bed - wriggle! Wriggle your ankles and wrists and your whole body, then do ankle and wrist rotations. This is a little bit of Chinese medicine insight. Once you tell your body that you're about to get up, it starts moving the blood around your body and warming you up, enabling you to feel more flexible quickly.
Strengthen weak muscles
Weak muscles can make joints feel unstable, causing your knee to sometimes "give way." Strengthening your quadriceps can help you gain better control over sitting and standing easily. Strong muscles not only protect your joints but also reduce the risk of injury from falls, which is beneficial for preventing broken bones after menopause.
Do you feel like one leg is longer than the other? Do you tend to lean on one leg more than the other, especially when standing and chatting? You likely have a pelvic imbalance. Misaligned hips not only affect the hips, knees, and ankles, putting pressure on the heel (leading to plantar fasciitis) or increasing stress on the big toe joint, but they also impact the alignment of your spine, cause opposite shoulder pain, and create tension in your neck as it supports your head. This issue should be addressed by professionals. I approach it with gentle muscle massage and release, avoiding bone manipulation, which can cause trauma. You’re in safe hands with me if you’d like to have your pain resolved gently :)
Feed Your Joints - Nutrition
During the menopause transition, you can't tolerate stress as well. This not only affects your adrenal health but can impact your bone and joint health, muscle quality, and cause symptoms like brain fog and anxiety too. Your bones don't receive enough nutrients as they are requisitioned by the stress hormone cortisol. Bones and blood fare better than tendons and ligaments, which have no direct blood supply. Stress releases cortisol, and each time you exercise for that 'high,' you're stressing your body further. Cortisol requires nutrition in order to de-stress you, and if it can't find enough, it leeches the nutrients we have in our diet at the cost of your musculoskeletal system. You may now feel extremely tired after exercise when you didn't used to be, and you take longer to recover; this is a sign that you are depleted of nutrition.
Supplements in menopause are a minefield as every company is now trying to market for your attention. I've spent the last 5 or more years finely tuning the supplements that women need to help them resolve their symptoms effectively. I treat your menopause as your health and not just a quick fix but get to the root of the problem so that you feel relief AND you're resolving the causes of your symptoms. I have my supplements guide here.
If you're entering menopause or beyond you can lose around 75% of your oestrogen and this will correlate with almost the same in collagen. This can appear as visibly sagging skin, but also it affects the quality of your tendons ligaments, and in extreme cases slows down wound healing. To combat this you need to repopulate collagen and stimulate growth, this can be done with taking a collagen supplement and taking very high doses of Vitamin C.
Feed your muscles
Muscles want the same nutrients as your joints, but they also crave magnesium - lots of it! If you suffer from restless leg syndrome, cramps, or just ache more after exercise, then you need more magnesium. You can take it as a supplement, apply it topically as a cream/butter, or have a foot bath soak - your muscles and joints will thank you for it!
Detox Your Blood
A highly acidic diet means the more toxins in your blood, the more corrosive this is to your cartilage, wearing it down before its time. This may be felt as grinding in the joint if it's advanced. However, if you have a lot of processed foods, stimulants, and sugars, this is the time to rethink what you are putting into your body. As Hippocrates said: you're either eating food or poison. We can't eat perfectly all of the time, but if a majority of your diet is fresh food with plenty of vegetables, then you're on the right path. I have my guide Eat for the Perimenopause and Beyond to help you.
Adding cloudy/cold-pressed Apple Cider Vinegar into your diet along with eating plenty of vegetables and berries, as these are antioxidants and combat toxins. Foods rich in Vitamin C and E in your diet are powerful antioxidants, and you can boost this with plant-based supplements. It is key that your supplements are derived from plants, as your body accepts them as food and utilizes them more effectively than anything synthetic.
Another key health hack to help your joint health greatly is to ensure that your liver can work to the best of its capacity. Your liver not only helps detox your blood, which in turn detoxes your whole body, it also helps regulate hormones and blood sugar levels, plus alleviate night sweats and reduce hot flushes; and much more. Good liver health is key to good menopause health - check out my Liver detox guide here.
Exercise that's right for your joints
As your body changes, your health with exercise requires changes to support the wear and tear on your joints. Plus, an increased loss in muscle mass means targeting your exercise effectively. The types of exercise you do can be altered for the better, cutting down on high impact and hard cardio and thoughtfully replacing them with moderate impact, increasing flexibility, strength, and balance.
I explain all of these in a lot more detail in my book, which navigates you through weekly steps to help you understand and reduce your symptoms naturally.
Resolve your menopause symptoms with natural remedies
It's confusing to know where to start isn't it especially with overwhelm at all the advice on the internet. You're here though so let me help you, I've spent over 8 years solely researching, observing and helping women resolve their menopause symptoms naturally and effectively; and I have a variety of ways in which I can help you. If overwhelm is a real problem for you and you'd like clarity on what to do next choose my complementary no-obligation phone chat.
If you're a self helper I have an extensive range of products to step you through and empower you to maje the changes your need to see the results you're after.Working with me will see around a 50% reduction in symptoms in 4 weeks.
About Andrea at Cotswold Menopause
Andrea is a shiatsu and chinese medicine practitioner who uses the principles of chinese medicine in a completely practical way to help you resolve your symptoms naturally and effectively. If you live locally you can book in for wonderfully relaxing Shiatsu for Menopause, otherwise Andrea does online indepth consultations where you'll leave with an simple steps actionable plan to follow.
Andrea was hit hard with perimenopause in 2016 and didn't realise it until bells starting ringing at a talk one day. She tried a menopause supplement and it gave her hot flushes! Realising that this wasn't straightforward she turned to her Chinese medicine books and pieced together the underlying health imbalances that cause your symptoms. She resolved hers and her clients quickly and is now in a position to help you too.
KNOWLEDGE . PAUSE . FLOURISH
