the effect of fennel on different aspects of menopausal women's quality of life: a clinical trial

objective: menopause is a natural part of women´s life. according to our country's age pyramid that is toward the aging and elderly, every year large number of women inter this period. during this period, due to the wide fluctuations of the hormones, it is caused unpleasant physical, psychological and sexual symptoms that affect women's quality of life negatively. because of the side effects of hormone therapy, large proportions of women tend to use complementary and alternative medicine and in particular herbal therapy. this study had been done to determine the effect of fennel on postmenopausal women's quality of life. methods: this triple- blind, placebo-controlled study has been done on 90 post-menopause women aged 45 - 60 years in tehran. participants were randomly assigned to fennel and placebo groups. post-menopause women in fennel group received 8 weeks of treatment with two 100mg fennel capsules per day and in placebo group sunflower oil capsules. the outcome measured in this study was post-menopause women's quality of life (vasomotor, psychological, physical and sexual aspects) which obtained by menopause-specific quality of life (menqol) questionnaire. data was analyzed by spss-22 software. results: before intervention, the two groups haven’t statistical differences in the score of post-menopause women's quality of life and it's different aspects. after the intervention, significant decrease was observed in the score of quality of life in both fennel and placebo groups (p<0/05) but this reduction was more dramatic in the fennel group so that after 8 weeks of intervention, independent t-test showed significant difference between intervention and placebo groups (p<0.001). conclusion: this study showed that fennel has been effective in improvement of postmenopausal women's quality of life.