A pulse-based diet and the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes diet in combination with health counseling and exercise improve health-related quality of life in women with polycystic ovary syndrome: secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial.

A favorable dietary composition to increase health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in PCOS remains unclear. We compared changes in HRQoL of women with PCOS who participated in a low-glycemic-index pulse-based (lentils, beans, split peas, and chickpeas) or the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) diet intervention. Thirty women in the pulse-based and 31 in the TLC groups (18-35 years) completed a 16-week intervention without energy-restriction. Groups participated in health counseling (monthly) and aerobic exercise (5 days/week; 45 minutes/day). Fifty-five (90.2%) women completed a PCOS-specific HRQoL survey. Greatest mean increases in time-effects occurred in the domains of healthy eating, PCOS knowledge, active living, healthcare satisfaction, feelings and experiences about intervention, and health concerns, respectively ( ≤ 0.02), without group-by-time interactions ( ≥ 0.13). Decreased weight ( = -0.35) and homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance ( = -0.18) correlated with increased scores of PCOS knowledge; adherence to intervention correlated with increased scores of active living ( = 0.39) and healthy eating ( = 0.53;  ≤ 0.03). Both interventions improved HRQoL scores in women with PCOS without prescribed energy-restriction. Our observations add novel insights into current evidence and elucidate the need for future psychological research to target lifestyle modifications for improving HRQoL and unique psychological complications of PCOS in this high-risk population (CinicalTrials.gov identifier:NCT01288638).