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Email a friendYams--Anti-Menopause Food
Newspaper Columns, Herb & Home Remedy Q&A May 5, 2008
Q. I am 52. At age 49 I began to have menopausal symptoms--irregular periods, hot flashes, night sweats, depression (not wanting to get out of bed in the morning), vaginal dryness that made for painful intercourse and fuzzy thinking.I have a very healthy lifestyle including a vegan diet, daily exercise, no smoking, and almost no alcohol. I've always believed that the right nutrition allows the body to handle anything. But menopause really threw me for a loop.
Somewhere I’d heard that yams could help support hormones. So I began baking yams and eating some every day. I was certainly a skeptic.
However, after only five days of eating yams (one half per day, depending on size), I stopped having hot flashes and night sweats altogether! Within a few days I realized that the vaginal dryness problem was gone. My thinking had cleared up and my depression began to lift.
In addition, my breasts have increased in size and feel full instead of saggy and droopy. My normal menstrual periods have also returned. What surprising results I've gotten from a simple (and delicious) food. The key is to eat them daily.
A. A search of the medical literature revealed that there does appear to be an estrogenic effect from regular yam consumption (Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Aug. 2005).
Taiwanese investigators fed postmenopausal women yams (Dioscorea alata) for 30 days. There were improvements in hormone and cholesterol levels. Control subjects were fed sweet potatoes and did not experience similar benefits.
The investigators concluded that the changes brought about by the consumption of yams “might reduce the risk of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease in postmenopausal women.”
In the U.S., sweet potatoes and yams are often confused, but they are completely different plants.
Tags: Estrogen, Hormones, Menopause, Yams
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Joe Graedon is a pharmacologist. Teresa Graedon holds a doctorate in medical anthropology and is a nutrition expert. Their syndicated radio show can be heard on public radio. In their column, Joe and Teresa Graedon answer letters from readers. Write to them in care of this newspaper or e-mail them via their Web site: www.PeoplesPharmacy.com.
© 2008 King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Reader Comments
Do canned yams produce the same effect? I've tried 5 stores in the area and none of them have any fresh yams...of course they all say "Oh, yeah we have them...they are the same as sweet potatoes " !!!
Posted by: EJ | May 5, 2008 2:42 PM
Can you please tell me the difference in the yam and the sweet potato...or where to get the yam and how I can tell the difference. I apparently have been eating sweet potatoes and didn't know there was a difference! (No one I talk to knows the difference, either!)
Posted by: lhs | May 6, 2008 8:09 AM
After reading this article, I phoned several specialty stores, and one claimed they carried both yams and sweet potatoes. But when I checked their web site on line, the 'yams' are from California, and from what I've read, true yams aren't even grown in the US.... So be wary because even produce departments seem to be confused.
Posted by: jennieg | May 7, 2008 12:27 PM
In response to the question of where to get yams. You can only find them in ethnic grocery stores. They will have the fresh yams, and they may come from Mexico or Jamaica. From all that I've read so far, the discussion has been on the yams from Mexico. I don't know if that makes a difference, though. I just brought the jam from Jamaica, I'll try it to see if it works.
Posted by: SM | May 13, 2008 5:58 PM