When Sarah Askwith began to develop hot flushes in her mid-40s, she knew what to do. The physiotherapist and pilates instructor had heard about the wondrous effects of hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, a common and effective treatment for menopause<\/a> symptoms.<\/p>\n So the mother of two visited her GP, who immediately wrote her a prescription.<\/p>\n The drugs worked \u2013 but within two years, Sarah\u2019s hot flushes returned. And despite trying multiple types of HRT at varying doses, they would not abate.<\/p>\n \u2018I was really suffering,\u2019 says Sarah, who lives in Wimbledon<\/a>, south-west London<\/a>, with her husband Rob and their children Lauren and Dylan.<\/p>\n \u2018I\u2019d get flushes throughout the day, but they would get worse after I ate or had a hot drink. At night I was tossing and turning because I felt so hot all the time.\u2019<\/p>\n Sarah also says that her menopause triggered intense anxiety and fatigue.<\/p>\n Desperate for a solution, she signed up for a experiment called the Gut Health Challenge. Run by nutrition firm Zoe, it involved a gut health test and then a tailored diet for six weeks.<\/p>\n Sarah, sceptical at first, was told the diet may improve her symptoms. Remarkably, it did. By the end of the experiment, Sarah\u2019s hot flushes \u2013 along with her fatigue and anxiety \u2013 had all but disappeared.<\/p>\n Experts say other women could experience the same improvements through diet changes. And, crucially, they say they do not necessarily need to sign up for diet programmes such as Zoe\u2019s.<\/p>\n Sarah says that her menopause triggered intense anxiety and fatigue…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n … but despite being sceptical about a dietary solution to the problem, her\u00a0hot flushes \u2013 along with her fatigue and anxiety \u2013 have all but disappeared<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018What we eat absolutely affects menopause symptoms, from energy levels to hot flushes,\u2019 says Professor Joyce Harper, an expert in reproductive science at University College London.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s not complicated either. If you eat rubbish food, you will feel worse. It\u2019s important that, as women reach the menopause, they think about making fundamental changes to their diet.\u2019<\/p>\n Alcohol and being overweight can also worsen menopause symptoms.<\/p>\n The need for better menopause treatments is clear. Most women will begin the menopause between the ages of 45 and 55. Periods stop and levels of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone fall.<\/p>\n Only 16 per cent of menopausal Japanese women get hot flushes, compared with 40 per cent in the UK, largely due to diet.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Studies show that around a quarter of women will suffer with severe issues, including hot flushes as well as difficulty sleeping, reduced sex drive, and mood swings. This is why the NHS prescribes HRT to two million women a year. But for patients like Sarah, HRT alone can sometimes fail to help. It was for this reason that, earlier this year, she signed up for Zoe\u2019s challenge.<\/p>\n The first step was a stool test to analyse the levels of so-called friendly bacteria in her gut. Research shows that this bacteria \u2013 also known as the microbiome \u2013 is connected to a wide array of physical and mental conditions.<\/p>\n Dr Federica Amati, lead nutritionist at Zoe, says Sarah\u2019s gut health was found to be relatively good, but levels of certain friendly bacteria were low.<\/p>\n \u2018We assessed that Sarah wasn\u2019t getting enough fruit, vegetables, seeds and pulses,\u2019 she says. \u2018Essentially, she was lacking variety and fibre.\u2019<\/p>\n Fibre is a crucial nutrient found in fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and whole grains. In 2025, a study in the journal BMC Women\u2019s Health found that women who follow a high-fibre diet have fewer menopause symptoms.<\/p>\n Looking back, Sarah says: \u2018Breakfast was usually Marmite on toast. Lunch was a baguette with an egg or some sort of meat, and dinner was meat again.\u2019 She insists she was \u2018never much of a snacker\u2019, but reached for easy food such as frozen pizza on busy days.<\/p>\n On the advice of Dr Amati and Zoe\u2019s app, Sarah changed her diet.<\/p>\n \u2018I ditched the toast and swapped to yogurt with chia seeds and fresh fruit,\u2019 she says. \u2018Lunch became a salad or soup with fruit. I\u2019d also bring snacks to work, like celery and cucumber sticks, to keep my energy up. I also cut back on meat.<\/p>\n \u2018If anything, I was eating more food than before \u2013 the difference is what I was eating was healthy.\u2019<\/p>\n Within weeks Sarah began to see her symptoms improve. By week six her hot flushes had reduced by 95 per cent and her anxiety levels had fallen significantly. A test showed the friendly bacteria in her gut had markedly risen.<\/p>\n \u2018While my menopause symptoms haven\u2019t disappeared completely, they\u2019ve definitely eased,\u2019 she says. \u2018I\u2019m sleeping better, my mood has improved and my energy is more consistent throughout the day.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Sarah Askwith began to develop hot flushes in her mid-40s, she knew what to do. The physiotherapist and pilates instructor had heard about the wondrous effects of hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, a common and effective treatment for menopause symptoms. So the mother of two visited her GP, who immediately wrote her a prescription.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[520],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2026\/04\/19\/15\/108001955-15746165-image-m-39_1776608469431.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"...](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2026\/04\/19\/20\/108001949-15746165-_but_despite_being_sceptical_about_a_dietary_solution_to_the_pro-a-1_1776626877720.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\nIt’s a fact\u00a0<\/h3>\n