Long-term exercise training and soy isoflavones to improve quality of life and climacteric symptoms

Abstract

Objective: To verify the efficacy of phytoestrogen supplementation combined with aerobic and resistance training on the improvement of climacteric symptoms and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in postmenopausal women.

Methods: From a pool of women who had participated in a 1-year intervention study and were randomly assigned to either exercise + phytoestrogen (EX + PHY) or exercise + placebo (EX + PL), a total of 31 healthy but overweight women (mean age 59.2 ± 4.8 years, body mass index 29.1 ± 3.5 kg/m²) finished the study (EX + PHY, n = 15; EX + PL, n = 16). All the following variables were measured before, after 6 months and after 12 months of intervention: body composition (fat and lean body mass, DXA), HRQoL (SF-36 questionnaire: physical and mental component summaries and subscales; and the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale questionnaire), climacteric symptoms (Kupperman Index questionnaire).

Results: After 1 year of intervention, physical functioning (p = 0.003), role-emotional (p = 0.031), vitality (p = 0.007), and global health (p < 0.001) were significantly and similarly increased in both groups. Regarding climacteric symptoms, an improvement in the Kupperman index total score (p = 0.015) was observed.

Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that adding phytoestrogens to exercise training does not provide the additive effect for HRQoL in postmenopausal and overweight women. Moreover, exercise and phytoestrogen may interfere in the improvement of climacteric symptoms in the long term.

Keywords:

• Phytoestrogens
• soy isoflavones
• aerobic training
• resistance training
• quality of life
• menopause

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Martine Fisch for her professional work and all the kinesiologists who supervised the exercise training protocol for their professional assistance. We are also grateful to all women who participated in this study.

Dr Riesco is the guarantor of this work, had full access to all data, and takes the full responsibility for the integrity of data and the accuracy of data analysis.

Adeline Fontvieille analyzed the data, wrote and revised the manuscript. Eleonor Riesco contributed to the study design, data collection and research. Isabelle J. Dionne did the study design and was the PI for this study.

Conflict of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Source of funding

This work was supported by The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). CIHR funding number: MOP86553.