The effect of eight weeks combined resistance - endurance exercise training on serum levels of serotonin and sleep quality in menopausal women

Menopause, an expected event in a woman’s life, is associated with multiple symptoms. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of combined resistance-endurance exercise training on body composition, cardiorespiratory endurance, serum levels serotonin and sleep quality in menopausal women.
22 sedentary postmenopausal women voluntarily participated in this study who were randomly assigned to two groups: experimental group (n=12) and control group (n=10). Written consent was obtained from the research samples. The experimental group performed endurance and resistance exercise training for 8 weeks (3 sessions a week). Body composition variables, cardiorespiratory endurance, serum levels of serotonin and Pittsburgh Sleep questionnaire were measured at the beginning and end of exercise period. These data were analyzed by SPSS (version 22) software. p The results showed a significant reduction in body composition variables (p=0.01) and the overall quality of sleep (p=0.001) as well as a significantly increase in cardiorespiratory endurance (p=0.01) and serum serotonin level (p=0.01) in the experimental group. During the study, no significant change was observed in the control group (p>0.05).
The results indicated that a combined resistance - endurance training would probably improve the body composition, sleep quality, and serum serotonin levels in postmenopausal women.