According to a report in one of the JAMA journals an intensive weight loss intervention program may lead to improvements in flushing amongst overweight and obese women with bothersome hot flushes during menopause.
"Hot flushes are among the most common concerns of women during menopause and persist for five or more years past menopause in as many as one-third of women," the authors write as background to the article. "In multiple observational studies, women with a higher body mass index (BMI; calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared) have reported more frequent or severe hot flushes compared with women with a lower BMI."
In a six-month randomized controlled trial, Alison J. Huang, M.D., from the University of California, San Francisco and her collegues, used self-administered questionnaires to assess bothersome hot flushes. The authors studied 338 women with an average age of 53, who were overweight or obese.
What they found was that in the initial stages, decreases in weight, BMI and abdominal circumference decreased the hot flashes according to the women themselves.
What's more this reduction in hot flushes was not found to be caused by the change in lifestyle, ie exercise, calorie intake etc.
