To send a link and summary of this article to a friend, click here . In fact, if you're a woman, exercise may be extra-important to you. Women tend to have more problems than men with some chronic conditions like obesity, heart disease, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, and depression, says Doralie Denenberg Segal, a physiologist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. A lot of these problems begin after menopause. As women get older, they are much more compromised by these diseases than men.
Osteoporosis is a disease that hits women three times as frequently as men.
One of the dreaded signs of aging in women is that rounded upper back known as dowager's hump. This signature of advanced osteoporosis results from bone loss that actually begins in women around age 35. Eventually, the reduced bone mass becomes less dense and progressively more prone to fractures. Premenopausal women lose an average of 0.25 percent to 1 percent of the bone mass per year. Bone loss can reach 2 to 3 percent or more for up to seven years after menopause.