Healthy eating: A natural approach to mild menopausal symptoms

Consuming lower amounts of poultry and skimmed dairy products while increasing vegetables and soy milk intake is beneficial to some women with mild menopausal symptoms, a study suggests.

In total, 172 women from the FLAMENCO project completed a food frequency questionnaire to evaluate dietary habits. Researchers measured adherence to the Mediterranean diet using the Mediterranean diet score. They also assessed menopausal symptoms with the Kupperman Menopausal Index and the Cervantes Menopause and Health Subscale from the validated Cervantes Scale.

Using the Kupperman Menopausal Index, poorer scores were associated with intake of poultry (βb: 0.17, p=0.03) and skimmed dairy products (β^b: 0.18, p=0.01), whereas better scores correlated with soy milk consumption (β^b: –0.17, p=0.02).

Likewise, when applying the Cervantes Menopause and Health Subscale from the validated Cervantes Scale, scores were worse among women who ate poultry (βb: 0.22, p≤0.01) and drank skimmed dairy (β^b: 0.19, p=0.01). On the contrary, good scores were observed among those who consumed soy milk (β^b: –0.20, p=0.01) and vegetables (β^b: –0.17, p=0.03).

Results for vasomotor symptoms showed similar patterns, such that greater consumption of poultry was associated with worse symptomatology (β^b: 0.18, p=0.02), and soy milk intake was associated with fewer vasomotor symptoms (β^b: –0.15, p=0.04).

Furthermore, women with numerous or severe vasomotor symptoms were consuming greater amounts of skimmed dairy products (p<0.05).