Footbath as a safe, simple, and non-pharmacological method to improve sleep quality of menopausal women

Due to the adverse effects of medication we decided to provide a safe, economic, and easy intervention to decrease sleep problems in menopausal women. This trial aimed to determine the effect of footbath on sleep disturbance in postmenopausal women. One hundred menopausal women were randomly stratified using a permuted block randomization procedure by Random Allocation Software, and assigned to one of two study groups: control (without intervention, n = 50) and intervention (footbath, n = 50). The footbath group was asked to lie their feet into the warm water for 20 min in a container with a depth of 10 cm one hour before the usual sleeping time for 6 weeks. To assess sleep quality, we used the Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI). To evaluate severity of menopause symptoms, the Greene scale was applied. Before the intervention, 96% of the subjects in the footbath group and 94% in the control group were poor sleepers. The results of analysis of covariance showed significant improvement in sleep quality and decrease in severity of menopause signs in the footbath group compared to the control group. At the baseline, there was a statistically significant correlation between the severity of menopause signs and the global score of PSQI in all study individuals (p ≤ .001, r = .464). The present study findings showed that footbath intervention enhanced sleep quality in menopausal women. Thus, footbath as a safe, simple, and non-pharmacological application can improve quality of life in postmenopausal women and inhibit problems due to inadequate sleep quality.