Effectiveness of soy on selected menopausal problems among women in selected rural areas of District, Faridkot

Menopause is accompanied by a bunch of like somato-vegetative, urogenital and psychological that prove to be intolerable to certain women. For years Complementary and Alternate medicine has proved to be a boon to address these problems as shown by various studies done on effecivenesss of soya, black cohosh etc. A number of studies have highlighted the effect of soy on hot flashes, memory, vaginal dryness etc.

Study aimed to assess the effectiveness of soy on reduction of selected menopausal problems among women in selected rural areas of district, Faridkot.

The research design was experimental and was conducted from 31 Dec 2012 to 10 Feb 2013 enrolling 60 subjects (30 for experimental and 30 for control group) of rural areas Bajakhana and Machaki, Faridkot, Punjab. Intervention in experimental group was administration of soya 42g (1.5 oz) for 42 days (6 weeks) and sample subjects in control group were not administered anything. The socio-demographic sheet which was semistructured interview schedule was filled by investigator. Menopausal problems of the women were assessed by using Menopausal Rating Scale. Pre-intervention and post-intervention assessment (at 0 and 43 days) was done for both the groups.

The results of the study revealed that the subjects in the experimental group had a slightly higher score in somato-vegetative and psychological domain. The difference in urogenital, somato-vegetative, psychological domain and total score of experimental group was found to be statistically highly significant at p value <0.05. The difference in the postintervention scores of 60 post menopausal women in experimental and control group has been found to be significant at p value <0.05.

It is concluded that the administration of 1.5 oz soy for 6 weeks was sufficient to mitigate the menopausal problems of the experimental group.