Red clover (Trifolium pratense) is a versatile herb with a wide range of potential health benefits, particularly for women's health, bone health, and cardiovascular support.
It has been used in traditional medicine systems around the world for centuries and is supported by scientific research. Incorporating red clover supplements or extracts into a balanced lifestyle may offer benefits for menopausal symptoms, bone health, and overall well-being.
What is Red Clover?
Red clover (Trifolium pratense) is a flowering plant that grows throughout Europe and North America, often in fields and along roadsides. The red clover plant produces bean-like pods, and it shares the same family as many bean plants.
It may technically be a bean plant, but the young plant is typically used as a rotational “cover” crop for farmers and sometimes as feed for animals.
Red clover is a perennial plant belonging to the Fabaceae family. It has trifoliate leaves, with each leaflet having a characteristic pale crescent marking. Red clover produces round, pink to reddish-purple flower heads.
Red clover is native to Europe, Western Asia, and Northwest Africa. It thrives in a variety of habitats, including grasslands, meadows, and along roadsides. Red clover prefers well-drained soil and can tolerate partial shade.
Primary Compounds in Red Clover
Isoflavones: Red clover contains isoflavones, particularly formononetin and biochanin A, which are phytoestrogens with estrogenic activity.
Coumarins: Compounds with potential anticoagulant and anti-inflammatory effects.
Flavonoids: Including flavones and flavonols, which have antioxidant properties.
Traditional Uses
Red clover has been used in traditional healing in European, Early American and Asian medicines (including Ayurveda) for various purposes:
1. Menopausal Support: Due to its phytoestrogen content, red clover has been traditionally used to alleviate symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes and night sweats.
2. Skin Health: Topical preparations of red clover have been used to soothe skin irritation, eczema, and psoriasis.
3. Respiratory Health: Red clover has been used as an expectorant to loosen mucus and relieve coughs associated with respiratory conditions.
4. Circulatory Support: Some traditional uses include red clover for improving circulation and reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Researched Health Benefits
Red clover offers several potential health benefits, supported by both traditional use and scientific research:
1. Menopausal Symptom Relief: Studies suggest that red clover supplements can reduce menopausal symptoms, such as hot flashes and vaginal dryness, by providing estrogenic effects.
For example, a study from Ecuador studied 60 postmenopausal women for 90 days. They gave them a red clover supplement (80 mg/day) or a placebo. Those taking the red clover had decreased menopausal symptoms significantly according to the researchers.
Another study investigated the effects of red clover-derived isoflavones on psychological well-being and cardiovascular risk factors in postmenopausal women. The study showed that red clover resulted in improvements in mood and lipid profiles.
2. Bone Health: Phytoestrogens in red clover may help maintain bone density and reduce the risk of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women.
3. Cardiovascular Support: Red clover isoflavones may have cardioprotective effects, including improving lipid profiles and reducing inflammation, which could lower the risk of cardiovascular disease.
4. Skin Health: Topical applications of red clover extracts or creams may help soothe skin irritation and improve conditions like eczema and psoriasis according to some research.
Bone loss in menopausal women
One of the central issues for menopausal women is a sometimes-debilitating loss of bone density and bone mass. This can take place as a result of a drastic reduction in estrogen production – which can take place as a woman’s reproductive hormone production slows dramatically.
Allopathic pharmaceutical medicine’s strategy to fight this is hormone replacement therapy – or HRT. This consists of spiking the body with synthetic or “bio identical” (typically derived from horse urine) estrogen and progesterone.
The concept is to artificially replace what a woman’s body naturally slows production of during the menopausal years: Hormones.
Nature versus allopathy on hormone replacement
Let’s step back and think about this carefully for a moment: Consider the smart design of the human body as it ages. It just so happens that as a woman’s reproductive organs begin to become less viable for motherhood, those hormones that stimulate the release of eggs and changes in the cervix are slowed down.
This effectively signals to each of those reproductive organs that the body’s reproductive time is over. A very smart process.
Yet allopathic medicine assumes that the body is stupid. That it must have messed up as it slows estrogen and progesterone production. So – in an honorable attempt to heal – allopathic medicine seeks to fix the body by replacing what it naturally slows down.
This effort requires an assumption that both the body and nature are stupid. It assumes that allopathy is smart and we need pharmaceuticals to fix the ill-designed body by replacing what it stopped doing for a reason.
Today we can see from the scientific evidence that the assumption that the natural body is stupid and it needs pharmaceutical medicine has created a mountain of new health issues. For example, the large 2002 Women’s Health Initiative Study found that hormone replacement therapy is associated with increased cancer risk and increased risk of heart disease.
The distinction of nature’s approach
How does traditional, natural medicine differ in approaches to this issue? First, traditional medicines assume that nature and the body are both smart. This means accepting that menopause and its related decrease in reproductive hormones are natural responses that are balanced by other natural inputs.
As a result, the natural traditional approach assumes that any negative symptoms of menopause are the result of unhealthy dietary and lifestyle choices.
Despite allopathy’s immediate dismissal of this notion, research is increasingly finding that certain plant-based foods do in fact act to balance the need for estrogen, progesterone and luteinizing hormone. We’ve discussed some of these in other articles (see links below).
These plant-based foods are called phytoestrogens, because they will attach to estrogen receptors fixed on the cells – and thus modulate and ameliorate issues related to menopause including hot flushes (or hot flashes), insomnia and bone loss. These include numerous types of beans, lentils, soybeans, seeds, nuts and whole grains. The most dramatic benefits have come from plant-based isoflavones such as genistein and daidzein from soybeans and other foods.
We can add to this another natural plant-based medicine – or food, depending upon how you look at it: A plant that can significantly and naturally slow the process of bone loss among menopausal women: Red clover.
In fact, the research finds that red clover actually results in completely halting bone mass associated with menopause. Let’s take a look at the study.
Red clover increases bone mass in menopausal women
Researchers from Denmark’s Aarhus University medical school and hospital conducted a study on 60 menopausal women. This randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled study was conducted over a three-month period. Half the women were given 150 milliliters of a red clover extract every day. The red clover plant extract was standardized to 37 milligrams of isoflavones, which included 34 milligrams of aglycones.
The other half of the women were given a placebo for the three-month period.
The researchers measured the women’s changes in bone mineral density (BMD), bone mineral content (BMC), and an index called the T-score. This is measured at the botton of the spine and at the femoral bone.
The researchers also measured what is called bone turnover along with markers for inflammation within the blood stream and blood pressure to test for side effects related to liver or heart health.
At the end of the three-month period, the researchers found that the women in the placebo group continued to lose bone mass and density, measured by bone mineral density and bone mineral content, along with bone turnover markers. Their T-scores also showed continued bone loss.
However, the group of women who took the red clover extract did not show any bone loss after three months. The red clover completely stopped their bone loss.
The red clover group also experienced no increase in inflammation or blood pressure.
How does red clover work?
As mentioned above, on every cell of the body lies some estrogen receptors. The main two types of estrogen receptors are called ER-alpha and ER-beta. These lie on the cell membranes and the most prevalent of these is the ER-beta receptor. This receptor is the predominant estrogen receptor on bone cells.
When estrogen attaches to an estrogen receptor it stimulates estrogen pathways – productive activities within the bone cells that regulate bone cell turnover. But when no estrogen attaches to the receptor, bone cell turnover increases, resulting in the loss of bone mass.
Phytoestrogens are also technically called selective estrogen receptor modulators or SERMs. This is because they also can attach to the estrogen receptors. They basically mimic estrogen. And because they mimic the effects of estrogen when they attach, they allow the bone cell to act responsibly. This results in less bone loss. Naturally.
Not only that, but these phytoestrogens also lack the kind of negative side effects that are seen in hormone replacement therapy.
In fact, bone loss has been actually shown to be reversed in some research with phytoestrogens. Technically, this is known as an enhancement of bone formation and a suppression of bone resorption.
This of course indicates that in fact, these estrogen receptors – at least the ER-beta receptors – are not just estrogen receptors. They are also SERM receptors.
Red clover contains several types of SERMs or phytoestrogens. These include the isoflavones genistein, and daidzein, as well as coumestrol, formononetin and biochanin A.
Each of these can act upon estrogen receptors on different cells and tissues, either in a major way or a weak manner. But when acting in a weak manner, they still keep the cell operating through the estrogen pathway that prevents the typical menopausal symptoms seen among modern women who may lack a good plant-based diet.
Note: Check with your doctor before taking herbal medicines or concentrated plant-extracts. Some herbal medicines may conflict with pharmaceutical medicines, and may not be indicated with other conditions.
REFERENCES
Anne Cathrine Thorup, Max Norman Lambert, Henriette Strøm Kahr, Mette Bjerre, and Per Bendix Jeppesen, Intake of Novel Red Clover Supplementation for 12 Weeks Improves Bone Status in Healthy Menopausal Women, Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, vol. 2015, Article ID 689138, 11 pages, 2015. doi:10.1155/2015/689138
Rossouw JE, Anderson GL, Prentice RL, LaCroix AZ, Kooperberg C, Stefanick ML, Jackson RD, Beresford SA, Howard BV, Johnson KC, Kotchen JM, Ockene J; Writing Group for the Women’s Health Initiative Investigators. Risks and benefits of estrogen plus progestin in healthy postmenopausal women: principal results From the Women’s Health Initiative randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 2002 Jul 17;288(3):321-33.
Das S, Crockett JC. Osteoporosis – a current view of pharmacological prevention and treatment. Drug Des Devel Ther. 2013 May 31;7:435-48. doi: 10.2147/DDDT.S31504.
MacLean C, Newberry S, Maglione M, McMahon M, Ranganath V, Suttorp M, Mojica W, Timmer M, Alexander A, McNamara M, Desai SB, Zhou A, Chen S, Carter J, Tringale C, Valentine D, Johnsen B, Grossman J. Systematic review: comparative effectiveness of treatments to prevent fractures in men and women with low bone density or osteoporosis. Ann Intern Med. 2008 Feb 5;148(3):197-213.
Lagari VS, Levis S. Phytoestrogens in the prevention of postmenopausal bone loss. J Clin Densitom. 2013 Oct-Dec;16(4):445-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jocd.2013.08.011.
Hidalgo LA, Chedraui PA, Morocho N, Ross S, San Miguel G. The effect of red clover isoflavones on menopausal symptoms, lipids and vaginal cytology in menopausal women: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Gynecol Endocrinol. 2005 Nov;21(5):257-64. doi: 10.1080/09513590500361192.
Kanadys W, Baranska A, Jedrych M, Religioni U, Janiszewska M. Effects of red clover (Trifolium pratense) isoflavones on the lipid profile of perimenopausal and postmenopausal women-A systematic review and meta-analysis. Maturitas. 2020 Feb;132:7-16. doi: 10.1016/j.maturitas.2019.11.001.
Clifton-Bligh PB, Nery ML, Clifton-Bligh RJ, Visvalingam S, Fulcher GR, Byth K, Baber R. Red clover isoflavones enriched with formononetin lower serum LDL cholesterol-a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2015 Jan;69(1):134-42. doi: 10.1038/ejcn.2014.207.
Mohsen A, Fatemeh K, Leila N, Mona P, Mohammad Z, Mozafar K. Pharmacological and therapeutic properties of the Red Clover (Trifolium pratense L.): an overview of the new finding. J Tradit Chin Med. 2021 Aug;41(4):642-649. doi: 10.19852/j.cnki.jtcm.20210324.001.
Ghazanfarpour M, Sadeghi R, Roudsari RL, Khorsand I, Khadivzadeh T, Muoio B. Red clover for treatment of hot flashes and menopausal symptoms: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Obstet Gynaecol. 2016;36(3):301-11. doi: 10.3109/01443615.2015.1049249.