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5 Surprising Reasons Women Should Lift Weights

It’s not just your muscles that benefit. Resistance training can help make your bones, your heart and even your brain stronger


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Photo Collage: AARP; (Source: Getty Images (4))

“Do you lift weights?”

I was getting my annual mammogram when the breast technologist’s question caught me off-guard.

“I do. What made you ask?”

“I can tell by your scans,” she says.

After we finished, she pointed to the screen displaying a digital image of my breast and explained that the muscle beneath was lifting the tissue. She said it made my breast tissue easier to see.

What counts as “strength training”?

Strength training, also called resistance training, is any exercise that uses added resistance to make the muscles work harder, thereby helping preserve and increase muscle mass. Though we naturally lose lean muscle mass as we get older, our bodies will respond to strength training at any age. Strength training can be done at home or in the gym using free weights (like dumbbells or kettlebells), resistance bands, weight machines, or your own body weight (e.g., pushups, planks, or squats). Yoga and pilates also qualify, as does rucking —  walking with a weighted backpack to increase resistance.

I’m not what you’d call a bodybuilder. Twice a week, I work my upper body at home by lifting eight-pound dumbbells and exercising on my ancient Total Gym, a machine with pulleys and a repositionable, angled bench that uses my own body weight for resistance.

After my mammogram, I felt lifted (pun intended) for the rest of that day. At 56, discovering that my modest efforts to firm up were actually noticeable stroked my ego and motivated me to continue. I was also curious. I’d never heard of a connection between weightlifting and better mammograms. Was this for real?

Laurie Margolies, M.D., vice chair for breast imaging at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, says if your pectoralis muscle (the large muscle beneath the breast tissue) is a little bit more developed, “it just might make the mammogram easier for a technologist to position.”

“It definitely helps with visibility,” says Shaundell Cyntje, MPH, RT(R)(M), associate director of Mount Sinai West Breast Center. A built-up pec muscle not only pushes the breast tissue forward, says Cyntie, but it also allows the technologist to image more of the chest and muscle at the base of the breast, where some cancers can hide.

Margolies is quick to emphasize that women who never lift weights “can get a perfectly good mammogram.” But my workout simply may have helped the technologist more easily gather and position my breast tissue. Still a win, right?

My experience made me wonder what other unexpected health benefits women over 50 could gain from strength training. Here are five more reasons to pursue getting stronger:

1. You’ll cut your risk of broken bones

Menopause puts women at risk for osteoporosis, a disease characterized by a decrease in bone mineral density. As women age (men, too), we lose bone mass more quickly while new bone growth slows. This weakens our bone structure and increases the chance of fractures, even from minor falls or movements.

It helps to remember that your bones are living tissue, and they respond when you put force on them, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. As with weightlifting, the impact is site-specific — walking will strengthen your lower body, but not your wrists. To make your bones denser and stronger throughout your body, aim for a combination of regular weight-bearing activity and twice-weekly (at minimum) strength training. “Weight-bearing activities” means anything that makes your body work against gravity, such as hiking, dancing, or even pickleball. Calcium and vitamin D are also key to bone growth.

2. You’ll boost your brain health

Less stress and anxiety, a brighter mood, reduced risk of depression, and even enhanced cognitive function: They’re all potential results of strength training and other forms of exercise, according to the National Institute on Aging. Indeed, the institute encourages older adults to include all four kinds of exercise: endurance (aerobic), strength, balance and flexibility.

And you don’t need a complex workout plan or a bodybuilder physique to get the benefits, according to an array of research. One study found that older adults improved their emotional health through strength training even if they didn’t actually improve their strength. Others specifically examined the effects of resistance training on cognition and executive function in older adults, including postmenopausal women.

3. You’ll help prevent — and control — diabetes

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More than 1 in 3 American adults is prediabetic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As we age, our risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D) increases. Changes in skeletal muscle associated with age can decrease muscle mass, which leads to decreased insulin sensitivity (how effectively cells respond to insulin to use and stabilize blood sugar).

Studies have shown that strength training improves glycemic control (regulation of blood sugars) and blood lipid profiles in adults at risk for T2D and may help prevent or delay its onset. In one study, moderate muscular strength was linked to a 32 percent reduction in the risk for T2D.

For adults already diagnosed with T2D, regular strength training to maintain or increase muscle mass was shown to decrease insulin resistance and reduce A1C levels — the average of blood sugar measurements over a three-month period.

4. You’ll make your heart stronger

The No. 1 cause of death for women in the U.S. is cardiovascular disease (CVD). Though heart disease can affect women at any age, our risk increases from ages 55 to 64, likely due to hormonal changes after menopause.

In fact, your heart can benefit significantly from weight training, whether or not you have heart disease, according to a 2023 update from the American Heart Association (AHA). Resistance training can lower your blood pressure and blood glucose levels; improve your lipid profile; and benefit your heart by reducing fat and increasing muscle. These changes may especially benefit older adults and those with higher cardiometabolic (CVD and diabetes) risk.

Resistance training was also shown to improve endothelial function—essentially, the health of your blood vessels — which helps control blood flow and blood pressure, and helps to prevent blood clots. The AHA recommends strength training at least twice a week.

5. You’ll sleep better

Uninterrupted sleep, seven to nine hours a night, helps our brains learn and strengthens long-term memories, and reduces our risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and stroke. But a good night’s sleep is an elusive goal for many women, particularly after menopause. In fact, nearly one in two women ages 40-59 wake up feeling tired at least three days a week, according to a study on sleep duration and quality published by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Postmenopausal women were more likely to experience sleep disruptions than premenopausal women in the same age group.

Here’s where weightlifting can help. Preliminary findings by researchers at Iowa State University point to resistance training as superior to aerobic exercise for getting better sleep. Study participants were inactive, overweight adults with high blood pressure who were randomly assigned to an exercise program: supervised resistance or aerobic exercise only, combined resistance/aerobic exercise, or a control group with no supervised exercise.

Overall, sleep improved for all groups. However, among the 42 percent who reported poor quality of sleep at the start of the study, those who did resistance training fell asleep faster and slept longer.

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