BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Metabolic syndrome is the grouping of interrelated metabolic risk factors in individuals. Metabolic syndrome significantly increases the risk of developing type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Since physical activity decreases the cardiovascular diseases, this study aimed at investigating the effect of eight-week walking program on metabolic syndrome indexes in non-athlete menopausal women.

METHODS: This study was conducted on 32 healthy menopause 50-55-year-old women without any specific disorder. The subjects were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. Waist circumference, Waist-to-Hip ratio (WHR), CRP, TG, HDL-C, LDL-C, TC, glucose and blood pressure were measured before exercise. Control group did their habitual activities without doing any exercise. The experimental group started to do exercise consisted of 30 minutes walking with %60- %75 of maximum heart rate, 3 sessions a week for 8 weeks. Two groups were evaluated using the same pretest parameters after 8 weeks and the data were compared.

FINDINGS: So, there were significant decreases of serum TG (133.3±48.7 mlg/dl), TC (207.5±28.9), LDL-c (138.8±32.3), glucose (78.8±3.9), waist circumference (87.5±8.3 cm) and the increase of HDL-c (53.7±10.5) in experimental group, while there were no significant differences in control group. TC (experimental group 207.5±28.9 control group 244.1±40.5) and systolic blood pressure (experimental group 123.6±8.4 control group 131.8±7.2) in post-test were significantly improved in experimental group as compared with control group.

CONCLUSION: The results revealed that a regular physical activity program like walking could improve the metabolic syndrome indexes in menopausal women. It seems that this type of exercise can be an efficient, safe and inexpensive way to reduce and prevent the metabolic syndrome.