Diet for menopause

From vitamin supplements, medicinal creams to complicated hormonal therapies, different treatments are touted as the cure-all for menopause now-a-days. While many of these treatments do offer relief from menopause symptoms, but women tend the find themselves trapped in the side-effects’ net.

Interestingly, by just following a simple, well-balanced diet, one can go a long way in reducing menopause symptoms and also the chances for developing many of the complications that go along with menopause.

The key to having manageable menopause is to keep your diet as balanced as you can. Diet alterations to deal with common menopausal symptoms are:

• For Hot Flushes:
Reduce the intake of coffee, tea, alcohol, colas, and spicy foods, as these trigger hot flashes. Also, avoid corn syrup and other sugars found in highly-processed foods. Refined sugars also tend to increase the number of hot flashes women suffer. To fight a menopause hot flash, increase the amount of water you drink to at least 8 glasses a day.

• Handling Mood Swings:
Hormonal changes in the body often tend to result in mood swings during menopause, which can also take form of menopausal depressiondefine. Diet alterations can help alleviate a poor mood.

Eating foods rich in carbohydrates helps to raise the levels of serotonin, a chemical in the brain, often associated with depression. Eat whole grain breads and cereals.

• Watching Weight Gain:
Weight gain is often associated with menopause. As estrogen levels in the body fall low, fat distributes itself around the stomach, hips and breasts. Muscle mass decreases, slowing your metabolism, often ending up in unwanted weight gain.

Reduce fat intake and focus on eating healthier, unsaturated fats, instead of saturated fats. Shift to olive oil, canola oil, or flaxseed oil. Try baked or grilled foods, instead of fried foods.

Basic Healthy Menopause Diet:

• Eat a potassium rich diet, as potassium rich foods help balance sodium and water retention. Choose fruits like melons, bananas and citrus fruits like oranges and lemons, typically rich in potassium.
• Increase the daily intake of vegetables.
• Introduce soy foods (eg. soybeans, calcium-fortified soy milk, soy yogurt and tofu.) into your daily eating.
• Eat regular amounts of fiber, especially soluble fiber.
• Add oily fish like salmon, mackerel (rich in omega-3 essential fatty acids) as a regular feature of your diet.
• Dump the iron supplements, as now the body’s need for iron falls because the body no longer loses blood through menstruation. Instead, add calcium in your diet to slow down lose of bone mass. Menopausal women need at least 1000mg of calcium per day. Avoid eating raw bran, which inhibits calcium absorption, and cut down on tea, which promotes the excretion of calcium.