Effectiveness of Different Exercises for Relieving Menstrual Symptoms: A Narrative Review

Menstrual problems such as dysmenorrhea and premenstrual syndrome affect a significant proportion of women during their reproductive years and often cause problems in mood, productivity, and day-to-day activities. A safe and non-invasive alternative to pharmacological treatments, which may be associated with adverse effects, is exercise.

This narrative review aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of different exercise interventions in reducing menstrual symptoms.

This narrative review summarised studies published between January 2000 and December 2023 from the following databases: PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane CENTRAL, PEDro, CINAHL, SPORTDiscus and Google Scholar. A total of 86 studies were included with women aged 18-35 years with dysmenorrhea or PMS. Studies that evaluated aerobic, resistance, stretching, yoga or multimodal exercise interventions for ≥ 4 weeks were included. Non-English studies, case reports and studies that used a pharmacological intervention were excluded. Extracted data included study design, intervention, outcome and adherence.

The narrative synthesis approach was followed. The risk of bias of the included studies was extracted using the ROBINS-I approach. Meta-analysis was not successful due to the variation in study methods and findings.

The results indicate that yoga and aerobic therapy interventions demonstrated consistent improvements in overall health and a reduction in the severity of pain. Stretching and resistance training interventions also offer benefits, but the consequences are much less clear. Multimodal interventions have the potential to address both physical and psychological issues. There were no major adverse effects reported overall, and compliance was high.

Exercise interventions appear to be effective, safe, and clinically applicable for managing menstrual discomfort, that is, aerobic and yoga interventions. More high-quality randomised controlled trials are needed to support clinical recommendations. This review uniquely provides a comparative synthesis across multiple therapeutic exercise modalities and highlights clinically relevant dose-response patterns.