While not all people experience major symptoms with menopause, many can agree that the transition brings numerous challenges, such as hot flashes and night sweats. Other common symptoms of menopause include mood swings, weight gain, and muscle loss, and your doctor may also mention high blood pressure, insulin resistance, and reduced bone health. The good news is that with thoughtful and consistent dietary changes, you can find some relief from these uncomfortable symptoms.

Introduction to Menopausal Hot Flashes

If you’re currently going through perimenopause, you may already know what hot flashes are. They’re sometimes called “hot flushes” or, if you ask your doctor, “vasomotor symptoms.” 

Hot flashes are characterized by a sudden sensation of heat, sweating, and flushing, often accompanied by a spike in heart rate and blood flow. These symptoms often lead to your whole body being so hot and uncomfortable that you want to do whatever you can to cool yourself down. 

Modern medicine typically doesn’t offer a cure for hot flashes or the inevitable hormonal changes of menopause. But it can help reduce them, which is helpful for many women since they can also lead to insomnia and irritability.

Some women go through menopause without experiencing many negative symptoms, but three in four women will likely experience hot flashes at some point.

Dietary Changes Can Help 

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) program and other studies have demonstrated that modifying your diet can help reduce hot flashes. The first step is to familiarize yourself with hot flashes and the foods that help alleviate them—and we’re here to help. 

Estrogen plays a huge role in regulating your body temperature. As it decreases during menopause, your likelihood of hot flashes rises. This risk is increased by things like:

• Stress
• Caffeine
• Alcohol
• Smoking
• Tight clothing
• Certain foods (we’ll cover these later)
  

In addition to severe hot flashes and night sweats, other common symptoms of menopause include mood swings, weight gain, and muscle loss. Your doctor may also mention high blood pressure, insulin resistance, and reduced bone health.

How Can Food Manage Hot Flashes?

We can often manage menopause symptoms like hot flashes better by using a holistic approach. This means reducing stress levels, getting sufficient sleep, exercising regularly, staying hydrated, and eating a healthy diet.

In this article, we’ll talk about the dietary changes associated with what doctors often refer to as the menopause diet. The basis of this diet is similar to much nutrition advice you’ve probably heard before: more whole grains, lean proteins, and fresh produce, and less processed foods, sugars, and caffeine. 

When dietitians prescribe nutrition plans, they often include these exact dietary changes. Postmenopausal and perimenopausal women who follow these guidelines can have much success in effectively managing hot flashes. 

There are also certain supplements your dietitian or doctor may recommend that may be beneficial for hot flashes.

What Are the Best Foods for Hot Flashes?

Entire books have been written on the best foods for hot flashes. We’re not here to rewrite those; however, this section includes several foods to focus on, and you can find more further down the article.

Some of the highest-priority foods are those rich in healthy fats, vitamin E, fiber, and protein. Focus on adding more of the following to your daily diet:  

• Soy products: Try to add more tofu, soy milk, edamame, whole soybeans, and tempeh to your diet. (Organic, non-GMO sources will provide the most benefit)
• Healthy fats: Cook with extra virgin olive oil and use avocado to top your favorite salads
• Legumes: Try recipes that use lentils, chickpeas, and other types of beans
• Berries: Snack on fresh or frozen strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries
• Nuts and seeds: Add a daily serving of almonds, flaxseeds, sesame seeds, or nut butters to your diet 
• Healthy proteins: Focus on proteins from fatty fish, lean meats, eggs, poultry, and plant-based or vegan proteins
• Fresh produce: Make sure you’re eating plenty of leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, cucumbers, apples, and any other fruits and vegetables you enjoy and have access to 

Whole grains: Regularly consume whole grains such as oats, barley, wheat, or brown rice

The Mediterranean Diet for Hot Flash Relief

The Mediterranean Diet has been popular for decades. It has also been ranked #1 with a score of 4.8/5 on U.S. News & World Report’s Best Diets list for six years and counting. It’s a well-studied, balanced diet that reduces the chance of heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, cognitive decline, and other health risks. 

Doctors have been recommending the Mediterranean diet to women experiencing hot flashes for over a decade because women who follow it are 20% less likely to experience hot flashes and night sweats.

To start this diet, focus on whole, unprocessed foods. Avoid eating foods with lots of added sugars, refined grains, and red meat. Instead, add more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, olive oil, and fish to your plate. (Similar to the list from earlier.)

The Official Menopause Diet vs. The Mediterranean Diet

There’s also an official Menopause diet. It’s ranked 7th on the U.S. News & World Report’s Best Diets list, with a score of 3.7/5. It has several similarities to the Mediterranean diet, so we’ll just outline the primary differences below: 

• Focus: The Menopause Diet is designed with hormonal changes and hot flashes in mind. 
• Macronutrients: It emphasizes more plant-based proteins and restricts carbohydrates. 
• Hormone Support: This diet emphasizes foods rich in phytoestrogens (e.g., soy, flaxseed, and lentils) to help alleviate hot flashes.
• Flexibility: It’s more restrictive, limiting foods such as caffeine, spicy foods, sugars, and alcohol that are known to trigger hot flashes.

The decision between these two diets is one that you should make in consultation with your doctor or dietitian. Both diets have the potential to reduce hot flashes and night sweats in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women. Both also include plenty of whole grains, vitamin E, vitamin D, healthy fats, lean proteins, and fresh fruits and vegetables.

Can Cooling Foods Help With Hot Flashes?

If you’ve spent quite a bit of time doing research, you may have heard of cooling foods. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), cooling foods can also help alleviate hot flashes. Examples of these foods include:

• Cucumber
• Radish
• Carrots
• Bananas
• Oranges
• Watermelon
• Apples
• Pears
• Fish
• Soy beans
• Berries
• Whole grains

Many people have reported that cooling foods from TCM can reduce perspiration, thirst, body temperature, and even hot flashes. If you’re wondering whether these foods can help you, the good news is that almost all of them are compatible with both the Mediterranean and menopause diets. However, please note that this is based on traditional dietary principles rather than clinical trials.

Does Soy Help Alleviate Hot Flashes?

Soy frequently comes up when discussing dietary changes for treating and reducing hot flashes. While it was once an obscure recommendation, research has shown that the isoflavones (an estrogen-like constituent of soy) contained in soy products may help ease hot flashes in many women.

If you’d like to incorporate soy into your diet changes, here are some convenient ways to start:

• Edamame
• Cooked soybeans
• Tofu
• Tempeh
• Soy isoflavone supplements

Ideally, choose organic, non-GMO sources of soy to receive the most benefit.  

Like cooling foods, soy products complement both the Mediterranean and menopause diets well. That said, it’s always important to speak with your doctor about significant dietary changes, especially if you’re currently taking other supplements or treatments to manage fluctuating estrogen levels.

Foods That Can Worsen Hot Flashes

Limiting certain foods can help reduce hot flashes, weight gain, sleep problems, and other menopause symptoms. Some of the most important foods and drinks to avoid include:

• Caffeine: Excessive caffeine intake is linked to mood problems, hot flashes, and menopause symptom severity. It’s a natural stimulant known to impact the central nervous system, increasing circulation, dilating blood vessels, and elevating body temperature, all of which can trigger hot flashes.
• Sugar: Another common trigger food is sugar. Your body becomes more sensitive to sugar during menopause, and changes in blood sugar levels worsen symptoms like hot flashes. Consuming excessive sugar can lead to fluctuating blood sugar levels and increased inflammation, which also makes it more difficult for your body to regulate its internal temperature.
• Ultra-processed foods: This is another category that’s often discouraged in most healthy diets. Ultra-processed foods include items such as sugary cereals, pre-packaged snacks, highly processed meats, and most fast food. These things are high in unhealthy fats, sodium, and artificial additives, while being low in whole grains, fiber, and nutrients. This means increased inflammation, destabilized blood sugar, changing hormones, and decreased metabolic health, which can increase the frequency and severity of hot flashes.
• Other foods to avoid: Hot flashes and night sweats can be worsened by several foods that spike your body temperature, including hot drinks, spicy foods, alcohol, and high-sodium foods.

Keep in mind that your dietary needs may change as your estrogen levels decrease over time. Things that may not impact you now could begin triggering hot flashes later.

If you’re unsure whether these foods are worsening your menopause symptoms, consider keeping a hot flash diary to track what you eat each day and how severe your symptoms are after eating.

What’s a Hot Flash Diary?

A hot flash diary is a simple tool for tracking the frequency and severity of hot flash symptoms. When combined with a food journal, it’s a helpful tool for your healthcare providers when they assess how your hormone levels fluctuate with your diet and whether what you’re eating may be aggravating vasomotor symptoms.

We also suggest recording the times you eat so you can see whether your meal timing may be associated with worse hot flashes as well.

Putting It All Together: Diet Changes, Hormones, and Hot Flash Relief

To manage and reduce hot flashes, lifestyle and dietary changes are essential. You need to manage stress, get more sleep, stay hydrated, and maintain a healthy diet and exercise. While further research is required to fully understand the relationship between hot flash relief, dietary intake, and overall women’s health, these changes have helped thousands of women.