This information is based on personal experiences and general knowledge. It is not professional medical advice. Always consult a healthcare provider before making changes to your diet, lifestyle, or treatment plans. This content was created with the assistance of AI tools to ensure thorough research and readability.
Plant-based diets may help relieve various menstrual symptoms, including cramping, bloating, and breast pain (cyclical mastalgia).
In the 1970s, pre-menstrual mastalgia (breast pain before a period) was wrongly dismissed as a psychological issue. Some even claimed women were just frustrated because they hadn’t had children yet.
Now, we know what women always knew: breast pain is common and can be severe enough to interfere with daily life. Despite this, its effect on quality of life is often underestimated. Around 60-70% of women experience breast pain at some point, and in 10-20% of cases, it is severe. Some breast tenderness during a cycle is normal, but persistent or intense breast pain is not.
In the past, surgery was sometimes recommended, but by 1999, the medical field moved towards evidence-based surgery, meaning procedures needed to be justified. As a result, doctors stopped performing unnecessary mastectomies for breast pain.
A key factor in breast pain appears to be prolactin, a hormone involved in milk production. Women with cyclical breast pain tend to have elevated prolactin levels. A prolactin-inhibitor drug was found effective, but its side effects were so severe that many women couldn’t finish the study.
Diet and Breast Pain: The Connection
While up to two-thirds of Western women suffer from breast pain, only about 5% of women in some Asian cultures report it. This suggests diet may play a role. Women in traditional, plant-based cultures—like rural Bantu African women—have lower prolactin levels.
To test whether genetics or diet was responsible, researchers fed these women a Western diet (meat, butter, milk, eggs, bread, and sugar) for a few weeks. Their prolactin levels significantly increased, similar to women with menstrual irregularities. This suggests their hormonal balance was disrupted by the Western diet.
To isolate which part of the diet was responsible, researchers put some New Yorkers on a vegetarian diet for two weeks. Their prolactin levels dropped, suggesting that removing meat and animal products may reduce prolactin levels.
Studies on Diet and Breast Pain
A pilot study of ten women with severe cyclical mastalgia put them on a low-fat, mostly vegetarian diet for three months. All ten women reported improvement.
However, since there was no control group, some of this improvement could have been a placebo effect. To test further, researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial on women with precancerous breast changes. They found that reducing dietary fat led to significant relief from breast pain.
Other research shows vegetarian women experience fewer menstrual disturbances than non-vegetarians. Only 5% of their cycles were anovulatory (when no egg is released), compared to 15% of non-vegetarians. Women on low-fat, plant-based diets also reported less bloating and significantly reduced menstrual cramps.
A crossover study tested this by putting meat-eating women on a plant-based diet for two cycles, then switching them back to their regular diet with a placebo supplement. This allowed researchers to compare symptoms before, during, and after the diet change. However, some participants felt so much better on the plant-based diet that they refused to go back to their regular diet, affecting the study results.
Conclusion
A plant-based diet may help reduce breast pain, along with menstrual pain, bloating, and other premenstrual symptoms like difficulty concentrating, mood changes, and water retention.
