479: Stop Telling Women to Stop Running (Running Myths Ep. 2)

Stop Telling Women to Stop Running

There is a message spreading through the women's health space right now that is super confusing, and quite frankly, damaging.

It goes something like this: if you are a woman in perimenopause or menopause, sustained cardio, especially running, is working against you. It raises cortisol. It causes belly fat. It fights your hormones. You should lift weights and walk instead.

It sounds science-backed. It gives women permission to do less of something hard. There are even kernels of real physiology woven through it that make it feel credible.

But as a physical therapist, a running coach, and a woman who works with women runners every single day, I need to tell you that this advice, taken to its logical conclusion, is one of the most harmful things being circulated in the women's wellness space right now.

It is pulling women away from one of the most powerful health interventions available to them: cardio. Running. Doing hard things. All of it is good and this is well supported by the research.

This is not an anti-strength training article. Strength training is essential for women over 40 — for muscle mass, bone density, metabolism, hormonal health, and injury resilience. If you are not lifting weights, start. 

This conversation is not about strength training versus running. 

It is about the dangerous and unsupported idea that cardio, specifically sustained aerobic exercise like running, is working against you during the menopausal transition.

It’s not. The evidence says the opposite.

What Is Actually Happening in Your Body After Menopause

Estrogen is one of the most powerful cardiovascular protectants in the human body. It improves vascular function, supports healthy cholesterol profiles, reduces inflammation, and helps regulate blood pressure. Women are largely protected from cardiovascular disease during the first five decades of their lives because of estrogen. This protection is real and significant.

When estrogen declines during the menopausal transition, we lose that layer of protection. Cardiovascular disease risk rises rapidly — and at an older age, women have a similar or even slightly higher risk of cardiovascular events as men. Research shows that total cholesterol levels and LDL cholesterol levels increase after menopause. 

So let’s break it down: 

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women over 50.

Running improves cardiovascular health and decreases disease risk. The research shows this time and time again.

So when someone tells a woman in perimenopause that she should stop doing the exercise most strongly supported by evidence for cardiovascular protection — that’s not only a problem…it’s dangerous.

But I Don’t Want to Spike My Cortisol…That’s Bad, Right? 

Cortisol is not the boogeyman that social media influencers want you to believe. 

What is true: exercise temporarily raises cortisol. This is normal, expected, and part of the stress-adaptation cycle. Cortisol spikes during a workout to mobilize energy (aka it helps your body release glucose into the bloodstream to use as energy), and then drops during recovery as adaptation occurs. This is how exercise works. It is true of running. It is also true of strength training, HIIT, and brisk walking. Cortisol elevation is not unique to running.

What is also true: during perimenopause and menopause, declining estrogen and progesterone affect how the body regulates cortisol. Women in this hormonal transition may have a harder time controlling cortisol levels, leading to elevated baseline cortisol, which does contribute to increased visceral fat accumulation, disrupted sleep, and mood changes. These are real effects.

What is not true: that running is the cause of cortisol dysregulation. Or that stopping running will fix it.

The actual drivers of chronically elevated cortisol in this population are poor sleep, high life stress, chronic under-fueling, inadequate recovery between hard training sessions, and the hormonal transition itself. 

These are the variables that move the needle on chronic cortisol elevation. A running session is not.

Here is what the research actually found when it looked directly at aerobic exercise and cortisol in postmenopausal women: a 2024 study published in Endocrine Research examining cortisol and weight loss in postmenopausal women found that aerobic exercise training combined with weight loss was more effective than weight loss alone at improving cortisol suppression.

Meaning that aerobic exercise was helping the cortisol picture, not hurting it.

On the other hand, if a woman is chronically stressed, sleeping four hours a night, severely under-fueling, and training at high intensity six days a week — yes, her training load likely needs to be adjusted. But the answer is not to stop running. The answer is to manage total stress load, prioritize recovery, fuel adequately, and train with intention. Running is not the problem. The conditions surrounding the running may be.

Ok, So What Are The Benefits of Running in Peri/Post Menopause?

Number 1 — you live longer.

Your VO2 max, a clear measure of your cardiorespiratory fitness, is the single strongest modifiable predictor of how long you will live. That means you have control over it and are able to modify it. It’s more important for your longevity than blood pressure, cholesterol, and body weight. Cardiorespiratory fitness is your longevity hack.

The data on this is not subtle.

A meta-analysis of over 100,000 individuals found that each 1-MET increment in VO2 max is associated with a 13% reduction in overall mortality and a 15% reduction in cardiovascular mortality risk. 

A study of 122,007 people found that the least-fit individuals had a five times higher risk of death than the most fit. 

Each unit increase in VO2 max is associated with a 45-day increase in longevity — a dose-response relationship that holds at every level of fitness. 

An umbrella review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2024 representing over 20.9 million observations confirmed that cardiorespiratory fitness is a strong and consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality across populations.

The American Heart Association has formally called cardiorespiratory fitness a clinical vital sign — something that should be assessed and tracked alongside blood pressure and cholesterol.

And these are just a few. 

What builds cardiorespiratory fitness and VO2max? 

Aerobic exercise that elevates the heart rate into higher zones. Sustained effort. 

Running.

Not walking. Not light movement. 

Aerobic exercise.

2 — You Maintain Cognitive Function.

The cognitive case is equally compelling. Higher VO2 max correlates with greater cerebral myelination, better executive function, better memory, and better processing speed in older adults. 

In one landmark study, one year of aerobic training increased hippocampal volume by 2% in older adults — literally growing the memory center of the brain and reversing age-related atrophy. 

Higher cardiorespiratory fitness is now recognized as one of the strongest neuroprotective factors available to aging adults…and there are people telling women to stop doing the thing that builds all of this.

Um, no.

3 — Your Risk of Heart Disease Goes Down.

Like we already covered, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women over 50. Aerobic exercise (running) decreases that risk. The research is strong and clear here. It’s not up for debate.

What the Research Actually Recommends

A decade-long bibliometric analysis of exercise and menopause research covering more than 5,000 original articles identified aerobic exercise for symptom management as one of the primary evidence-supported interventions for perimenopausal and postmenopausal women — alongside resistance training.

Not instead of resistance training. Alongside it.

A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 61 randomized controlled trials covering 4,100 postmenopausal women found that aerobic exercise reduced systolic blood pressure by 4.5 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure by 2.4 mm Hg while increasing HDL cholesterol by 2.4 mg/dL. These are clinically meaningful cardiovascular improvements produced by aerobic exercise in the exact population being told to avoid it.

Research on high-intensity aerobic training in older postmenopausal women found that it effectively increased maximal oxygen uptake and improved the cardiovascular health profile — demonstrating that even women well past menopause respond meaningfully to aerobic training.

The research is not choosing between strength training and cardio. It is calling for both. They produce different adaptations. They protect different systems. They work together in ways that neither produces alone.

A Word About Walking

Walking is genuinely beneficial — it reduces stress, supports insulin sensitivity, contributes to bone density through impact loading, and is sustainable for most people across most life stages. Walking is not nothing.

But walking and running are not interchangeable when it comes to cardiovascular adaptation. 

As we discussed in a recent episode about short runs, even a slow easy run produces significantly more cardiovascular and aerobic stimulus than a walk of equal duration. Heart rate is higher, oxygen consumption is greater, the aerobic system is more engaged. 

Walking does not preserve the intensity needed to maintain or build the aerobic fitness that the longevity data is pointing to.

Walking is the floor. For women who can run, running is the ceiling. And the research says the ceiling matters enormously for how long and how well you live.

The prescription of "just walk" is often well-intentioned. It is sustainable, low injury risk, and accessible. But for women who have the capacity to run, it leaves significant cardiovascular and longevity benefit on the table at the exact moment in life when those benefits matter most.

What Actually Needs to Change in Midlife Running

None of this means that women in perimenopause and menopause should train exactly the way they did at 35. There are real and meaningful adjustments worth making — and these are worth an entire episode of their own.

Recovery takes longer. The window between hard sessions needs to be wider. 

Strength training needs to become a genuine priority alongside running, not an afterthought. 

Fueling — especially protein and carbohydrates around training — becomes more important, not less. 

Sleep is a training variable that cannot be negotiated away. 

And the total stress load of a woman's life needs to be factored into her training load in ways that may not have been necessary earlier.

These are the adjustments the evidence supports. Not stopping running. Adjusting how you run, how you recover, and what surrounds your running.

The women who will age the best are the ones who keep moving — not the ones who accept that their hormonal transition is a reason to retreat from the activities that protect their hearts, their brains, and their bodies.

The Question Worth Asking

If you have been told by a practitioner, an influencer, or a well-meaning friend that you should stop running because of your hormones — ask for the research. Ask specifically which studies support the recommendation to stop sustained aerobic exercise in perimenopausal or postmenopausal women. Ask how that recommendation weighs against the cardiovascular and longevity data on cardiorespiratory fitness.

Because the research we have — across millions of subjects, published in the most rigorous journals in exercise science and cardiovascular medicine — says that the most important thing a woman over 50 can do for how long she lives and how well she lives is build and maintain her cardiorespiratory fitness.

And the most effective way to do that is to keep running.

This is part of our Running Myths series on the Running Reconnected Podcast. Listen to the full conversation at realliferunners.com, and if you want to train in a way that is built around the evidence — not around social media trends — learn more about the Running Reconnected Team at realliferunners.com/team.

What running myth do you want us to tackle next? Find us on Instagram @dr.angiebrown and @realliferunners.