Are Hot Flushes Driving You Crazy?
The benefits of Wild Yam for women.
Wild yam is a plant that has been promoted as natural DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) which is a hormone produced by your body’s adrenal glands. These are glands just above your kidneys Wild Yam contains diosgenin, which can be used in the lab to create estrogen and DHEA.
Wild yam is a plant that people have used for centuries in alternative medicine. Potential medicinal uses for wild yam include the treatment of menopause symptoms, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and muscular cramps.
In this article, we investigate the potential medicinal uses of wild yam and the evidence supporting them. We also look at how to take it and its safety and side effects.
There are over 600 species of wild yams.
About 12 species are edible. Some people use wild yam as a source of steroids, but the body can’t make steroids such as estrogen and DHEA from eating wild yam. This conversion has to be done in a lab. There might be other chemicals in wild yam that act like estrogen in the body.
Menopause symptoms
Some traditional medicine practitioners suggest using wild yam as an alternative to estrogen replacement therapy for treating symptoms of menopause. The theory is that wild yam may increase or stabilize estrogen levels in the body to help relieve a person’s symptoms.
However, there is very little evidence to support these claims. One of the only studies available on the topic found that the 23 women who applied a wild yam cream over a 3-month period experienced no changes in their menopausal symptoms.
Rheumatoid arthritis
Some traditional medicine practitioners believe that wild yam has anti-inflammatory properties and use it to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic condition that causes inflammation of the joints. This can cause pain and stiffness that restricts mobility in people with the condition.
It is possible that wild yam might reduce this inflammation and have a positive effect on symptoms, but there is little evidence to support this.
Blood sugar regulation
Wild yam also contains a chemical called dioscoretine, which some people think helps with the regulation of blood sugar levels. Wild yam could be useful in regulating blood sugar levels in people with diabetes. However, the effect of dioscoretine on blood sugar has only been studied in animals so far. It is unclear whether it would have the same effect in humans.
Cramps and muscular pain
Other proponents of wild yam, believe that it has anti-spasmodic properties, which are substances that reduce muscle spasms. This anti-spasmodic property means that wild yam might be useful for reducing cramps and muscular pain related to premenstrual syndrome (PMS), for example. However, more research is needed to support this but many women have declared success using wild Yam cream to get rid of hot flushes, etc.
