BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:

• Some evidence that dietary patterns impacts menopausal symptoms, data is still limited
• Soleymani et al. (Menopause, 2019) investigated the associations between dietary patterns and physical, mental, and genitourinary menopausal symptoms

METHODS:

• Cross-sectional study
• Participants
  • Postmenopausal women (minimum one year) attending routine medical follow-up
  • Otherwise healthy and BMI <40 kg/m2
• Data collection
  • Menopause Rating Scale (MRS) questionnaire to assess menopause symptoms
  • General and detailed food questionnaire: 147-item, semi-quantitative to collect dietary information
  • Waist circumference | BMI | International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) with physical activity score determined as metabolic equivalent (MET)/h/wk
• Analysis
  • Linear regression to evaluate the relationship between menopausal symptoms and dietary patterns
  • Confounders for adjustment included: Age | Activity | BMI, Years of menopause | Energy intake | General health (e.g., comorbidities, medications etc.) | Supplements | Occupations of participants and their family heads | Education of participants and their family heads | Marital status, | Parity | Economic status
  • Due to large number of items, items were grouped to determine dietary patterns

RESULTS:

• 400 women participated in the study
• 3 major dietary patterns identified
  • Vegetables and fruits (VF): Fruits | Vegetables | Dairy products | Legumes | Seeds Nuts
  • Mayonnaise, liquid oils, sweets and desserts (MLSD): Mayonnaise and liquid oils | Sweets and desserts | Red meat and organ meat | Fish | Poultry | Eggs | Tea and coffee | Potatoes | Refined grains
  • Solid fats and snacks (SFS): Solid fats | Snacks | Sugars | Processed meat
• The VF dietary pattern was associated with reduced scores for the following  
  • General symptoms (P for trend <0.001)
  • Physical symptoms (P for trend <0.001)
  • Mental symptoms (P for trend <0.001)
• The MLSD dietary pattern was associated with increased scores for the following
  • General symptoms (P for trend <0.001)
  • Genitourinary symptoms (P for trend <0.001)
• The SFS dietary pattern was associated with increased scores for the following
  • General symptoms (P for trend = 0.01)
  • Physical symptoms (P for trend = 0.04)
  • Mental symptoms (P for trend < 0.001)
• Finding remained unchanged following adjustment for confounding

CONCLUSION:

• A dietary pattern including fruits and vegetables was inversely associated with symptoms of menopause
• Authors acknowledge that due to cross-sectional design, associations but not causation can be derived from these results
• Underlying mechanism still unknown but authors suggest that based on previous research
  • A diet with increased fat may raise inflammatory markers (associated with menopausal symptoms)
  • Glucose stability may lower risk for vasomotor symptoms

Learn More – Primary Sources:

Dietary patterns and their association with menopausal symptoms: a cross-sectional study

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