Diet guru Professor Tim Spector today launched a new feature on his popular app Zoe, aimed at helping women ease the debilitating symptoms of menopause.
Announcing the tool at X, the scientist said it would give middle-aged women “a voice in discussing their health,” as it was “often overlooked.”
The MenoScale, the first symptom tracker of its kind, aims to help women eat to combat hot flashes through dietary changes.
It includes a nutritional guide that breaks down the types of foods that are beneficial for people with severe symptoms, and which are not.
According to Zoe’s preliminary studies, Professor Spector told MailOnline the new specialist function can reduce menopausal symptoms by 44 per cent and perimenopausal symptoms by 35 per cent.
Diet guru Tim Spector (pictured) today launched a new health app aimed at helping women improve the debilitating symptoms of menopause
The study tracked the symptoms of 4,000 women who followed the ZOE diet for 200 days.
The data showed a significant reduction in the most common and troublesome symptoms of menopause, including a decrease in depression and anxiety.
It had the greatest effect on mood swings: in menopausal women, the number of complaints decreased by 44 percent, compared to the period before they started the diet.
In women in perimenopause, the early stages of menopause, there was a 35 percent reduction in mood swings.
The severity of fatigue and sleep problems experienced by postmenopausal participants decreased by about 38 percent.
In perimenopausal women, the intensity of these symptoms decreased by 32 percent.
Postmenopausal women who followed the ZOE diet also reported a reduction in night sweats, hot flashes and chills by more than a third.
‘Becoming a member of ZOE and following the ZOE dietary advice has been shown to reduce the ZOE MenoScale score (menopausal symptoms) both in perimenopause and after menopause,’ Professor Spector told MailOnline.
“I’m particularly excited about the reduction in scores in the psychological symptoms group. There’s a 35 percent reduction in perimenopausal and a 44.2 percent reduction in postmenopausal scores.”
The new menopause features will be included as part of the existing £25-a-month ZOE diet subscription, and will help women get medically-based advice on how dietary changes can manage both perimenopause and menopause.
As with the main ZOE program, users who sign up are sent a blood glucose monitor, which they wear for up to two weeks to see how their body responds to carbohydrates in their diet.
There is also a DIY fingerstick blood test and stool sample kit that users send to a lab for analysis. The results are used to measure their gut health and metabolism.
Based on these results, ZOE scientists will create a personalized nutritional guide. This could involve, for example, eating less meat and more oily fish or more legumes, vegetables and nuts.
For the new menopause feature, users answer 20 questions about their symptoms and the menopause scale calculator provides a numerical score out of 100. This is used to understand the frequency and impact of your symptoms.
Postmenopausal women who followed the ZOE diet plan also claimed that the number of night sweats, hot flashes and chills they experienced decreased by more than a third
The NHS advises eating a calcium-rich diet, full of foods such as milk, yoghurt and kale to keep bones healthy. This is because the menopause increases the risk of the brittle bone disease osteoporosis.
Professor Spector wrote the following about the new column on X: ‘When women speak out about the challenges of midlife, they are largely overlooked.
‘Thanks to this new tool, developed by our female scientists, women can once again make their own decisions about their health.’
For most women, menopause begins between the ages of 45 and 55. This causes menstruation to stop and levels of the female sex hormones estrogen and progesterone to drop.
While some women experience only a few symptoms, or none at all, others experience hot flashes, sleep problems, mood swings, and brain fog. These symptoms can last for months or years and change over time.
To combat this problem, around two million women are prescribed hormone replacement therapy through the NHS, which contains hormones that are identical to those their bodies produce.
HRT is usually administered in the form of patches, gel, spray or tablets and has been shown to be safe and effective.
But the NHS also recommends regular exercise and a healthy diet to help manage symptoms.
The NHS advises eating a calcium-rich diet, full of foods such as milk, yoghurt and kale to keep bones healthy. This is because the menopause increases the risk of the brittle bone disease osteoporosis.
It is also recommended to add exercises such as walking, running and dancing and strength training such as weightlifting to help prevent weak bones.