Impact of soya-based health food on climacteric symptoms of post-menopausal women

The study was undertaken with an objective to assess the impact of soya-based health food on climacteric symptoms of post-menopausal women. Thirty eight post-menopausal women experiencing climacteric symptoms were purposively selected for the study and assessed for anthropometric profile, symptoms scores, knowledge level and biochemical parameters. Presence of climacteric symptoms and knowledge level were recorded by using pre-tested questionnaire. Out of these 12 women were randomly assigned to the experimental group and were provided with 40 g soya health food for a period of 90 days and equal number of them were age-matched and considered as control group. At the end of intervention reduction in mean menopausal symptom scores (19.84 to 18.61%) was observed in food intervention group when compared to control group (17.69 to 17.07%). Significant improvement was observed in food intervention group for total cholesterol (213.5 to 194.14 mg/dl), HDL-C (44.45 to 46.05mg/dl), LDL-C (136.96 to 119.37 mg/dl) and VLDL-C (32.08 to 29.10 mg/dl). Thus soya-based health food is useful in reducing menopausal symptom scores and improvement in lipid profile of post-menopausal women.