A review of the effective herbal medicines on hot flashes in menopausal women

Vasomotor symptoms occur in approximately 75% of menopausal women. Hot flash is the main reason of women's referring to receive menopausal care. Estrogen therapy is the most effective way to treat symptoms; given the known risks of hormone therapy, many women are interested to use herbal medicines for treatment of menopausal symptoms including hot flushes. Therefore, this study was performed with aim to evaluate the clinical trials conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of herbal medicines for treatment of hot flashes.

In this review study, to find the related articles, the databases of SID, Pubmed, Scopus and Web of Science were searched using the keywords of Menopause, Herbal medicine, medicine and Hot flash from 2002-2019. The articles which were performed as clinical trial were selected.

31 randomized clinical trials were identified. These studies had investigated Vitagnus (2), soybean (4), Black cohosh (3), Ginkgo biloba (2), sage (4), Valerian (2), Flaxseed (2), red clover (5), Hypericum perforatum (1), evening primrose (2), fenugreek (1) and passion flower (1), and one study was also done as combination. It seems that phytoestrogens and lignans found in these plants can reduce the severity and duration of hot flashes with minimal side effects.

Overall, the findings of this study showed that herbal medicine which belongs to phytoestrogens or lignans like as Vitagnus, licorice, soy, red clover, flax seeds, sage, passion flower, valerian, Hypericum and evening primrose can lead to improvement of hot flashes, but further studies in larger populations are needed.