In fact, women in the active weight loss group were twice as likely to see an improvement in their hot flashes after six months compared to women in the control group, according to senior author Deborah Grady, MD, of the UCSF Department of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco.

"This gives women who suffer from hot flashes an added option in controlling their symptoms, while also creating a healthier life for themselves," Grady said.

The study was ancillary to the Program to Reduce Incontinence by Diet and Exercise (PRIDE), a randomized, controlled trial of an intense behavioral weight loss intervention versus a structured education program to promote weight loss in overweight and obese women with urinary incontinence, coordinated by UCSF.

The researchers acknowledge that a possible limitation of the ancillary study is that participants also had urinary incontinence. However, they said that urinary incontinence, while more prevalent among older women, has not been shown to be associated with menopause, nor did they see a link between more severe incontinence and increased hot flashes.

"We don't see any reason why our findings aren't also applicable to women who are not incontinent," Huang said.

Source: University of California - San Francisco