Association of Menopausal Symptoms with Different Constitutions in Climacteric Women

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the correlation between the body constitution and menopausal symptoms in climacteric women. Methods: This cross-sectional study recruited 427 women aged 40-60 years from the hospital and nearby community. In addition to filling out a questionnaire on menopause rating scale - Traditional Chinese version, the participants completed the body constitution questionnaire. This classifies a person to 1 or more of 3 imbalanced constitutional types, which are yin-xu, yang-xu and stasis-stagnation. We constructed logistic regression models to estimate probabilities of the menopausal symptoms among climacteric women presenting with various menopausal status and differing body constitutions. Results: The frequency and scores of the yin-xu, yang-xu, and stasis-stagnation constitutions were significantly higher in perimenopausal and postmenopausal than premenopausal women. Compared to the non-constitution women, the odds ratio of having hot flushes, sleeping disorders, sexual problems, irritability, and anxiety were significantly higher with the yin-xu constitution. The women with a yang-xu constitution had significantly higher odds ratios for having bladder problems, muscle and joint problems, depressive mood, and heart discomfort. Symptoms of heart discomfort, physical and mental exhaustion, and sleeping disorders were correlated to the stasis-stagnation constitution. Conclusion: With the additional key symptoms related to the 3 constitutional types, physicians performing traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are able to diagnose the menopausal syndrome more accurately. Integrating menopausal symptoms with TCM constitutional theory will contribute to a more rapid diagnosis and treatment of menopausal syndrome.

Constitutions of Deficiency and Stasis of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Related Factors among Middle‐Aged Women in Taiwan

“…We found that middle-aged women with current menstruation had deteriorating yang-deficiency constitution, whereas women younger than 56 years experienced worse yin-deficiency and stasis constitutions. This result is consistent with a previous study, which indicated the yin-deficiency, yang-deficiency, and stasis constitutions were significantly worse in perimenopausal and postmenopausal than premenopausal women with climacteric syndrome [ 7 ]. More than 21% of the climacteric women had ever visited TCM doctors [ 38 ].…”

“…Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and airway obstruction were also related to bone mineral density in postmenopausal women [ 20 ]. Those symptoms were consistent with the performance of constitutions in deficiency and stasis [ 7 , 21 ]. No study has examined the relationship between health indicators and constitutions.…”

“…The latter implies that a person has insufficient yin fluid [ 4 – 6 ]. A stasis indicates that the dynamic yin and yang interactions are slowed or deficient, which usually happens in patients with a disease because their qi and blood are obstructed by the lesion site, which is prevalent among postmenopausal women [ 4 – 7 ]. It is believed that a patient may experience different constitutions at the same time, and the constitution is dynamically changing with pathological, physiological, and psychological states [ 8 , 9 ].…”

The Association between Self-reported Osteoporosis and Chinese Medicine-Constitution Questionnaire – A Cross-Sectional Taiwan Biobank Study

“…There is a growing literature that recognizes the importance of the Chinese Medicine constitution study [1][2][3]. Studies of the Chinese Medicine constitution showed the importance of various chronic diseases in the clinic [4][5][6][7], and it played a pivotal role in various phenotypes of the classi cation of Chinese Medicine [1,8]. It is now well established that the Chinese Medicine constitution can promote disease classi cation [9].…”

Pattern identification of lung cancer patients based on body constitution questionnaires (BCQ) and glycoproteomics for precision medicine

“…[10] Also, traditionally diagnoses of pattern identification relied on patients’ subjective descriptions and doctors’ subjective judgments [11–13] , many studies on questionnaires such as body constitution questionnaire (BCQ) have been developed. [14–17] This BCQ has been utilized to the clinical studies including breast cancer [18] , liver cancer [19] , diabetes [20–22] , schizophrenia [23] , and menopausal symptoms [24] , as well as healthy control groups [25] . BCQ enables us to assess patients’ pattern identification types according to their body constitutions using 19 to 23 simple-to-answer (survey) questions.…”