Is your body inflamed at menopause? What is true

Name: Is your body inflamed at menopause? What is true
Uploaded: 2026-08-27
Duration: 14 min
Description: Low-grade chronic inflammation does rise around the final period, but not in every woman, and it does not explain hot flashes. What food really changes for bones, weight and mood. In French with English subtitles.

14:27 · Published August 27, 2026 · 15 PubMed studies cited · nutrition · menopause · inflammation

Low-grade chronic inflammation does rise around the final period, but not in every woman, and it does not explain hot flashes. What food really changes for bones, weight and mood. In French with English subtitles.

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What you will understand

The ring that will not go on in the morning, the top button of your trousers undone in the evening, the ribbing of your sock printed on your ankle: in photos, you do not find yourself bigger, you find yourself swollen, and that is not the same word. Before going any further, an important limit. Swelling that settles in slowly, on both sides, at the end of the day, and that goes down overnight, is the subject of this video. Sudden swelling, on one leg only, with breathlessness, calf pain, or rapid weight gain over a few days, is not a matter for your plate: it means seeing a doctor without delay, because it can come from the heart, the kidneys, the thyroid or a vein.

The word "inflammation" is used for everything, so the video begins by defining it. It is neither the red, hot ankle after a sprain, which repairs and then stops, nor an autoimmune disease. It is a background level, quiet, permanent, that you do not feel and that shows up only on a blood test: low-grade chronic inflammation, which a review published in Nature Medicine in 2019 makes one of the common denominators of the diseases of aging (PMID 31806905). It is not a symptom, it is a terrain. And that terrain changes at menopause, not only because you are a year older.

That is the question an American team asked in 2025 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, using the SWAN cohort: twenty-one years of follow-up, fifteen visits, with the date of the final period pinpointed precisely. One thousand four hundred and seventy women had at least three C-reactive protein measurements, seven hundred and seventy-nine had interleukin 6 measurements. Rather than a general average, the authors looked for trajectories, and found three for each marker. In the groups that entered the transition with a low to medium level, inflammation rises significantly, in a window running from one year before the final period to three years after (PMID 40123296). Two things matter just as much as each other: this rise is real and tracks menopause rather than age, but the other trajectories show no rise, some are stable, some decline. There is therefore no single curve that would be yours. As for the mechanism, it is not the amount of fat that changes first, it is its address: in a 2009 study following sixty-nine healthy women from the premenopausal state to the postmenopausal state, the rise in intra-abdominal fat, the deep fat around the organs, is correlated with the rise in C-reactive protein, with a correlation of 0.56 (PMID 19126626).

Then comes the part that is uncomfortable. Since inflammation rises at menopause and hot flashes turn up there too, it was tempting to link the two, and many people will sell you an anti-inflammatory program while promising fewer hot flashes. This has been tested seriously: in a study published in 2022 in the journal Menopause, again using SWAN, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-two women who did not yet have hot flashes had a measurement of C-reactive protein and interleukin 6, then follow-up over thirteen visits. No significant association, and the authors write that treatments aimed at reducing inflammation are unlikely to reduce the onset of hot flashes (PMID 35905469). And yet an Australian study from 2013 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, in six thousand and forty women followed for nine years, does find a link with the plate: the most Mediterranean profile had a reduced risk of hot flashes and night sweats, with an odds ratio of 0.80, the profile rich in fruit 0.81, while the profile high in fat and sugar went the other way, at 1.23 (PMID 23553160). The reconciliation is simple: the dietary pattern is associated with hot flashes, but the markers of inflammation do not predict them. If eating Mediterranean helps, it is probably not by switching off inflammation. And that study is observational: it observes, it does not prove a cause.

So what, on a plate, has actually moved a marker of inflammation? The best documented answer comes down to one word: fiber. A 2006 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition followed five hundred and twenty-four people with measurements of their diet and their C-reactive protein every three months: the participants in the quarter richest in fiber had a sixty-three percent lower risk of having a raised C-reactive protein, compared with the poorest quarter (PMID 16600925), and the same author found this link again in nearly two thousand postmenopausal women of the Women's Health Initiative (PMID 18562168). The best yield is not in bran or breakfast cereals, but in pulses, lentils, chickpeas, white and red beans, then in vegetables in quantity, whole fruit rather than juice, nuts and truly wholegrain cereals. A benchmark: the average in that study was sixteen grams of fiber a day, when the recommendations sit around twenty-five to thirty. Second lever, the Mediterranean pattern and olive oil in particular, and here we leave the observational behind: in a substudy of the Spanish PREDIMED trial published in 2006 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, seven hundred and seventy-two people were randomly assigned between a low-fat diet, a Mediterranean diet with one liter of virgin olive oil a week, and a Mediterranean diet with thirty grams of nuts a day. After only three months, the olive oil group had a C-reactive protein 0.54 milligram per liter lower than the low-fat group (PMID 16818923), and the trial's main publication, in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed a reduction in major cardiovascular events (PMID 29897866). In fairness, those participants were aged fifty-five to eighty and at high cardiovascular risk. Third lever, one of removal rather than addition: ultra-processed foods, which an umbrella review published in 2024 in the British Medical Journal, bringing together forty-five pooled analyses covering nearly ten million people, links to a higher risk for thirty-two health parameters out of forty-five (PMID 38418082).

That leaves what all of this really changes, with the real figures, including when they are modest. Bones first: in 2017, in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, one hundred and sixty thousand women of the Women's Health Initiative whose diet was scored for its inflammatory potential, those whose diet was the least inflammatory lost less bone density at the hip after six years, but for fractures the association was found in only one subgroup (PMID 28019686). In 2016, in JAMA Internal Medicine, ninety thousand postmenopausal women followed for nearly sixteen years: those who followed a Mediterranean pattern most closely had a twenty percent lower risk of hip fracture, but the absolute risk reduction was 0.29 percent, which means it would take three hundred and forty-two women eating that way for sixteen years to prevent a single hip fracture, and across all fractures there was no difference at all (PMID 27019044). That is not nothing, and it is not a treatment for osteoporosis either. Weight next: a study published in 2026 in JAMA Network Open followed thirty-eight thousand women around menopause, with an average weight gain of 0.8 kilo a year, and the most favorable dietary profile was associated with a weight gain reduced by 0.28 kilo a year (PMID 42160056). It is not weight loss, it is a slope that flattens: none of these women lost weight because she ate better, and it is the opposite promise, made everywhere, that makes people give up after six weeks. Mood finally: the Australian SMILES trial of 2017 randomly assigned sixty-seven adults with depression between Mediterranean dietary counseling and simple social support, and at twelve weeks thirty-two percent of the diet group were in remission, against eight percent of the control group (PMID 28137247). That is strong, but the trial is small, it was not about women in menopause, and most of the participants were on treatment in parallel: it is not an alternative, it is a support.

The key points to remember

The inflammation being talked about here is neither a sprain nor an autoimmune disease: it is a background level, permanent, that shows up only on a blood test.
In SWAN, inflammation does rise from one year before the final period to three years after, but only in certain trajectories: the others are stable or declining, and there is no single curve that would be yours.
What changes first is not the amount of fat but its address: intra-abdominal fat manufactures signals, and its rise is correlated with the rise in C-reactive protein.
Inflammation does not explain hot flashes: in one thousand nine hundred and twenty-two women followed in SWAN, no significant association was found between the inflammatory markers and the onset of hot flashes.
The best documented lever on a marker of inflammation is fiber, and the everyday foods densest in fiber are pulses.
For bones and weight, the effects are real but modest: 0.29 percent absolute reduction in the risk of hip fracture, and 0.28 kilo less weight gain per year, which is a slope that flattens, not weight loss.
Five steps to remember: pulses two to three times a week, olive oil as your default fat, whole fruit rather than juice, a handful of unsalted nuts instead of a sugary snack, and one ultra-processed product replaced each week.

Video chapters

The scientific sources cited

Every claim in this video rests on a verified reference. Here is the complete list, with the PubMed links.

El Khoudary SR, et al. The relation between systemic inflammation and the menopause transition (SWAN). J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2025. PubMed 40123296
Lee CG, et al. Adipokines, inflammation, and visceral adiposity across the menopausal transition. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2009. PubMed 19126626
Furman D, et al. Chronic inflammation in the etiology of disease across the life span. Nat Med. 2019. PubMed 31806905
Gold EB, et al. The longitudinal relation of inflammation to incidence of vasomotor symptoms. Menopause. 2022. PubMed 35905469
Herber-Gast GC, Mishra GD. Fruit, Mediterranean-style, and high-fat and -sugar diets and risk of night sweats and hot flushes. Am J Clin Nutr. 2013. PubMed 23553160
Ma Y, et al. Association between dietary fiber and serum C-reactive protein. Am J Clin Nutr. 2006. PubMed 16600925
Ma Y, et al. Dietary fiber and markers of systemic inflammation in the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study. Nutrition. 2008. PubMed 18562168
Estruch R, et al. Effects of a Mediterranean-style diet on cardiovascular risk factors (PREDIMED substudy). Ann Intern Med. 2006. PubMed 16818923
Estruch R, et al. Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease with a Mediterranean diet (PREDIMED). N Engl J Med. 2018. PubMed 29897866
Lane MM, et al. Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review. BMJ. 2024. PubMed 38418082
Orchard T, et al. Dietary Inflammatory Index, bone mineral density, and risk of fracture in postmenopausal women (WHI). J Bone Miner Res. 2017. PubMed 28019686
Haring B, et al. Dietary patterns and fractures in postmenopausal women (WHI). JAMA Intern Med. 2016. PubMed 27019044
Xia T, et al. Optimal dietary patterns for lower weight gain and risk of obesity surrounding menopause. JAMA Netw Open. 2026. PubMed 42160056
Jacka FN, et al. A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (SMILES). BMC Med. 2017. PubMed 28137247
Shivappa N, et al. Designing and developing a literature-derived, population-based dietary inflammatory index. Public Health Nutr. 2014. PubMed 23941862

Frequently asked questions

This evening swelling, is it necessarily food?

No, and that is the first thing to sort out. Swelling that settles in slowly, on both sides, at the end of the day, and that goes down overnight, corresponds to the topic covered here. Sudden swelling, on the other hand, on one leg only, with breathlessness, calf pain, or rapid weight gain over a few days, is not a matter for your plate: it means seeing a doctor without delay, because it can come from the heart, the kidneys, the thyroid or a vein.

Will an anti-inflammatory diet reduce my hot flashes?

That is the promise repeated everywhere, and it is false. It has been tested seriously: in SWAN, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-two women who did not yet have hot flashes had a measurement of C-reactive protein and interleukin 6, then follow-up over thirteen visits, with no significant association at all. The authors write that treatments aimed at reducing inflammation are unlikely to reduce the onset of hot flashes. An Australian study does find a link between a Mediterranean profile and fewer hot flashes, with an odds ratio of 0.80, but it is observational, and if this way of eating helps, it is probably not by switching off inflammation.

Where should I start if I can change only one thing?

With pulses. They are the everyday foods densest in fiber, lentils, chickpeas, white beans, red beans, and one portion often provides as much as a big plate of vegetables. The average observed in the study cited was sixteen grams of fiber a day, when the recommendations sit around twenty-five to thirty. It is not about changing everything: add a portion of pulses two to three times a week, and eat the fruit instead of drinking it. If your stomach protests at first, that is normal: you increase gradually, over three or four weeks.

Does eating better make you lose weight at menopause?

We have to be honest on this point. In a study published in 2026 following thirty-eight thousand women around menopause, the average weight gain was 0.8 kilo a year, and the most favorable dietary profile, low in red and processed meats, in salt and in fried potatoes, rich in nuts, pulses, fruit, vegetables and wholegrains, was associated with a weight gain reduced by 0.28 kilo a year. That is not weight loss, it is a slope that flattens. None of these women lost weight because she ate better, and it is the opposite promise that makes people give up after six weeks.

How do you recognize an ultra-processed food?

Ultra-processed means neither cooked nor frozen. The simplest guide is to turn the packet over and read the list: if you find ingredients you would never have in your kitchen, glucose-fructose syrup, fractionated oils, emulsifiers, flavorings, colorings, you are in it. The 2024 umbrella review links a higher exposure to a higher risk for thirty-two health parameters out of forty-five, the most convincing evidence concerning cardiovascular mortality and type two diabetes, anxiety disorders also being among the most solid associations. These are associations, not proof of cause, but when thirty-two results out of forty-five point in the same direction, it deserves to be taken into account.

Does this way of eating really protect my bones?

A little, and it has to be said with the real figures. In one hundred and sixty thousand women of the Women's Health Initiative, those whose diet was the least inflammatory lost less bone density at the hip after six years, but the association with fractures was found in only one subgroup. In ninety thousand postmenopausal women followed for nearly sixteen years, the Mediterranean pattern was associated with a twenty percent lower risk of hip fracture, but the absolute reduction was only 0.29 percent: it would take three hundred and forty-two women eating that way for sixteen years to prevent a single hip fracture, and across all fractures there was no difference. That is not nothing, and it is not a treatment for osteoporosis either.

Should I take anti-inflammatory capsules or work out my inflammation score online?

No. None of the studies mentioned rests on a single isolated food, so the lists of superfoods do not follow what has been demonstrated. The anti-inflammatory capsules sold online are not what was tested. As for the dietary inflammation scores to be calculated on the internet, the tool does exist, published in 2014, but it is a research instrument made for comparing populations, not a mark to give yourself in the evening.