A pulse-based diet and the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes diet in combination with health counseling and exercise improve health-related quality of life in women with polycystic ovary syndrome: secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial

Abstract

Objective: A favorable dietary composition to increase health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in PCOS remains unclear. We compared changes in HRQoL of women with PCOS who participated in a low-glycemic-index pulse-based (lentils, beans, split peas, and chickpeas) or the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) diet intervention.

Methods: Thirty women in the pulse-based and 31 in the TLC groups (18–35 years) completed a 16-week intervention without energy-restriction. Groups participated in health counseling (monthly) and aerobic exercise (5 days/week; 45 minutes/day).

Results: Fifty-five (90.2%) women completed a PCOS-specific HRQoL survey. Greatest mean increases in time-effects occurred in the domains of healthy eating, PCOS knowledge, active living, healthcare satisfaction, feelings and experiences about intervention, and health concerns, respectively (p ≤ 0.02), without group-by-time interactions (p ≥ 0.13). Decreased weight (r = −0.35) and homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (r = −0.18) correlated with increased scores of PCOS knowledge; adherence to intervention correlated with increased scores of active living (r = 0.39) and healthy eating (r = 0.53; p ≤ 0.03).

Conclusions: Both interventions improved HRQoL scores in women with PCOS without prescribed energy-restriction. Our observations add novel insights into current evidence and elucidate the need for future psychological research to target lifestyle modifications for improving HRQoL and unique psychological complications of PCOS in this high-risk population (CinicalTrials.gov identifier:NCT01288638).

Keywords:

• PCOS
• life style
• behavior modification
• education
• diet

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor change. This change do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate their study participants. They credit Mr Stephen Parry and Dr Marla Lujan at Cornell University for their contributions to the statistical analyses and development of an earlier version of the HRQoL survey.

Author contributions

D.R.C., R.A.P., P.D.C., and G.A.Z., organized, designed, and resourced the study. M.K. performed the statistical analysis of the data, interpreted the results, and wrote the manuscript with contributions from all authors. M.K. and L.E.M coordinated the study. M.K., D.R.C., and S.B.S., and L.E.M. carried out the counseling sessions and clinical experiments. M.K., D.R.C., L.E.M., J.J.G., and S.B.S. assisted in data collection and recruitment. The authors are responsible for the study design and conception, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, and preparation of the manuscript. D.R.C. had primary responsibility for final content.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The present work was supported by the [Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada] under Grant [number G00011676]; [Saskatchewan Pulse Growers] under Grant [number G00014962 – SPCD – Effect of a Pulse-Based Diet]; and the [Canada Foundation for Innovation] under Grant [number 29638]. M.K. was supported by the Colleges of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and Pharmacy and Nutrition at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. The Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation funded L.E.M. The funders had no role in the design of the study, collection, analyses, interpretation of data, writing of the manuscript, and decision to publish.