In the authors' words
“These findings provide strong evidence that 12 weeks of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise do not alleviate VMS but may result in small improvements in sleep quality, insomnia, and depression in midlife sedentary women.”
What was measured
- Hot flushes No difference found
- Sleep Reported an improvement
- Mood Reported an improvement
About the study
- Type
- Randomised trial
- Who took part
- Midlife women, sedentary at entry
- How many
- 248
- How long
- 12 weeks
- Exercise
- Other aerobic exercise
- Cited
- 135 times, per Europe PMC
- PubMed ID
- 23899828
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.
Similar studies
- A meta-analysis of four trials totaling 660 middle-aged women found 12 to 16 weeks of programmed exercise improved sleep quality scores but did not significantly reduce insomnia severity.
- A meta-analysis of 21 trials in 2884 menopausal women found structured exercise slightly improved hot flush severity but not frequency, with very low certainty evidence.
- A meta-analysis of 26 RCTs in postmenopausal women found exercise reduced depression, with mind-body exercise ranked most effective, and also improved anxiety.
- A review of 6 studies including postmenopausal women found that yoga, tai chi, resistance and aerobic exercise improved subjective sleep quality and reduced insomnia severity.