Following a low-fat vegan diet, including eating about 86 grams of soybeans daily, reduces hot flushes in postmenopausal women.
Previous research has suggested that dietary changes may help relieve these symptoms. To investigate this further, at The George Washington University in Washington DC and his colleagues recruited 71 postmenopausal women who experienced two or more moderate-to-severe hot flushes a day.
For 12 weeks, 38 participants followed a vegan diet where roughly 10 per cent of their calories came from fat. They also ate 86 grams of soybeans daily and discussed dietary challenges and tips with a registered dietician in weekly meetings. The other 33 women made no dietary changes and participated in four meetings to discuss symptoms. Everyone used a mobile app to record the frequency, duration and intensity of hot flushes for a week before and after the trial.
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The group eating the vegan diet reported, on average, a 78 per cent decrease in the frequency of their hot flushes compared with a 39 per cent reduction in the control group. Moderate-to-severe hot flushes decreased by 88 per cent for people in the vegan group, and half of this group experienced no hot flushes of this severity. For the control group, moderate-to-severe hot flushes decreased by 34 per cent and one person reported none.
The people on a vegan diet also lost an average of 3.6 kilograms in body weight compared with 0.2 kilograms for the control group. The reason this diet reduced hot flushes is unclear, says Barnard, but previous research has shown that weight loss can help 鈥� although the correlation was only modest for this trial. Other research has shown small improvements in menopausal symptoms when following a diet low in fat and high in fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Soybeans may also play a role as they contain compounds called isoflavones, which bind to and activate oestrogen receptors.
鈥淪omehow, it鈥檚 about putting all three together,鈥� says Barnard, who presented the findings on 19 August in Washington DC at a meeting of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a non-profit organisation advocating for plant-based diets and animal welfare.
One limitation is the study鈥檚 small sample size, says at the Mayo Clinic in Florida. 鈥淣o diet has been proven to be beneficial for [hot flushes], and I would say that鈥檚 still true,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut this is intriguing. It鈥檚 always important for women to have more options to minimise symptoms.鈥�
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