Massaging your feet before bed can help ease common menopausal symptoms, study finds - Telegrafi

[mnews]

Menopause is a time synonymous with hormone changes, as a woman's declining estrogen levels wreak havoc with her sleep habits.

Estrogen deficiency contributes to disrupted sleep causing menopausal symptoms from hot flashes and sweats to anxiety and depressed mood. Anxiety also leads to difficulty sleeping with depression leading to non-restorative sleep and early morning awakening.

Not getting enough sleep can affect all areas of life. "Lack of sleep can make you feel irritable or depressed, can make you forget more than normal, and can lead to more falls or accidents," says the National Institute on Aging.

The health body added: "And research now suggests that waking up from sleep can itself trigger hot flashes, rather than the other way around." Hot flashes, especially night sweats and mood swings can affect a person's sleep.

Unfortunately, the less sleep you get, the worse your symptoms become and it becomes a vicious cycle. Finding methods to help manage these issues can help women manage sleep symptoms as well.

This is where researchers believe a simple foot massage may be the key. A new research study published in Menopause has found that foot massages can help alleviate disruptive symptoms related to sleep and menopause.

In addition to reducing sleep problems, a foot massage before bed has also been shown to help with anxiety and fatigue. The research was conducted among 70 postmenopausal women in northern Turkey. The participants were divided into two groups - the experimental group and the control group.

In the experimental group, women were given a 20-minute foot massage, 10 minutes per foot. The researchers found that the foot massage group showed a reduction in fatigue and anxiety and reported an improvement of up to an extra hour of sleep compared to the control group.

This improvement was visible in just seven days. Improving sleep and reducing fatigue, anxiety and depression "Sleep disturbances, fatigue and anxiety symptoms are common during menopause," said Dr. Stephanie Faubion.

"This small study in Turkish women shows how a simple and inexpensive intervention, such as foot massage, can improve these distressing symptoms in postmenopausal women:

"Although additional studies are needed to confirm these findings in other populations of postmenopausal women, there is little downside to recommending foot massage as a non-hormonal option to help relieve symptoms." /Telegraph/