Evidence library · Cholesterol and lipids

Does exercise with hormone therapy affect cholesterol and lipids in menopause? What 9 studies found

Studies of exercise with hormone therapy in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women that measured cholesterol and lipids. 8 reported an improvement and 0 found no difference against the comparison group.

  1. Postmenopausal women aged 49 to 55 took hormone therapy or placebo, each with or without exercise, and researchers found exercise improved bone density mainly in the placebo group, with no added effect when combined with estrogen.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 78 women · 104 weeks · 1997PostmenopausalCited 83 timesPubMed

  2. Postmenopausal women did a moderate exercise program with or without estrogen for 6 months, and exercise alone reduced cholesterol and LDL and increased fitness.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 101 women · 26 weeks · 1994PostmenopausalCited 60 timesPubMed

  3. Postmenopausal women aged 60 to 72 did 11 months of endurance exercise, hormone therapy, both, or neither, and exercise lowered total and LDL cholesterol while HRT raised HDL cholesterol.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 71 women · 44 weeks · 1996PostmenopausalCited 57 timesPubMed

  4. Postmenopausal women underwent a 6-month mainly exercise-based weight loss program with estrogen, raloxifene, or placebo; hormone therapy did not increase abdominal fat loss but improved some lipid and glucose measures.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 119 women · 26 weeks · 2014PostmenopausalCited 11 timesPubMed

  5. Early postmenopausal women did 12 weeks of resistance training with placebo or transdermal estrogen; placebo group lost more fat mass, while estrogen group improved cholesterol and glucose markers.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 31 women · 12 weeks · 2021Early postmenopausalCited 11 timesPubMed

  6. Postmenopausal women with prediabetes did an intensive lifestyle program including 150 minutes of weekly exercise, which lowered LDL and raised HDL cholesterol after one year, mainly among hormone therapy users.

    Mixed resultsRandomised trial · 724 women · 52 weeks · 2013PostmenopausalCited 6 timesPubMed

  7. In 23 postmenopausal women aged 44 to 75, 4 weeks of estrogen therapy lowered LDL and raised HDL cholesterol but did not change heart rate or blood pressure responses during treadmill exercise overall.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 23 women · 4 weeks · 1999PostmenopausalCited 1 timesPubMed

  8. In 485 postmenopausal women, higher physical activity was linked to more favorable cholesterol and lipoprotein levels, with some associations differing by hormone therapy use.

    Reported an improvementCross-sectional study · 485 women · 2007PostmenopausalCited 8 timesPubMed

  9. This review reported that regular aerobic exercise in postmenopausal women was linked to improved cholesterol and fibrinogen profiles, similar to benefits seen with hormone replacement therapy.

    Reported an improvementOther · 2000PostmenopausalCited 22 timesPubMed

How to read this. Each line is one study, summarised in plain language from its PubMed abstract, with the authors' own sentence underneath on the study page. A count of studies is not a verdict: trials differ in size, length and quality, and a result in one group of women may not hold in another. Nothing here is medical advice.

Summaries are generated, then checked by machine against the abstract they came from; any summary that could not be matched word for word was left out. Our clinical lead is reviewing the summaries topic by topic, and this note will change when that is done. Corpus last refreshed 2026-11-03. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will fix the summary or remove the study.

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