Foods That Prevent Hot Flashes

Garlic, peppers, mushrooms, pasta, strawberries, and red wine. These foods might heat up a romantic dinner—and new evidence suggests they cool you down during menopause, too.

The menopausal women who most closely followed a Mediterranean diet rich in vegetables, noodles, and red wine were about 20 percent less likely to report hot flashes and night sweats than those who didn't stick to the diet, according to a new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Women who regularly ate certain fruits, including strawberries, pineapple, melon, and mango, were also less likely to report these symptoms.

On the flip side, women whose diets were high in fat and sugar were 20 percent more likely to develop hot flashes and night sweats, collectively called vasomotor symptoms. The results come from a group of more than 6,000 women followed for about nine years.

Hot flashes and night sweats occur when fluctuating estrogen levels interfere with your body's ability to maintain a steady temperature. Eating the right diet can stabilize your shifting hormones, reducing your flushing and excess perspiration, says Carmella Sebastian, M.D., M.S., internist and author of Sex and Spaghetti Sauce: My Italian Mother's Recipe For Getting Healthy and Getting Busy In Your 50s And Beyond.

Scientists aren't yet sure exactly why the Mediterranean way of dining (or the extra fruit, for that matter) specifically offers relief, but the study authors offer several hypotheses. For one thing, the fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in these eating patterns provide ample fiber. This nutrient has been linked to lower estrogen levels, perhaps through stabilizing blood levels of the hormones insulin and cortisol, says Dr. Sebastian, who wasn't involved with the study. "You won't have that variability in estrogen and thus you're not going to have as many symptoms," she says.

Similarly, these diets feature carbohydrates lower on the glycemic index, a measure of how quickly a food causes your blood glucose to spike. And other recent research found women with more stable blood sugar have fewer vasomotor symptoms.

Although women eating a healthy diet in the study also drank red wine, there's little evidence of an individual link between vino and hot flashes, Dr. Sebastian says. However, moderate drinking in general and red wine in particular have been linked to better heart health, offering a good reason to drink up—within reason. Stick with no more than a glass a day at most.

Read more: http://www.prevention.com/health/health-concerns/eat-ease-menopause-symptoms