Hot Flashes: The Heat Is On
One of the most diagnostic and visible signs of menopause arrives with a royal flush.
You're sitting at the table, having dinner with your family or maybe a cup of tea with a friend, when it starts. First it feels as if your brain is being seared, heating up so much that you wonder if actual steam will escape from your ears. You sit still, hoping it will pass and that no one will notice, but slowly the skin on your upper body and face becomes flushed, and you can feel beads of sweat running down your temples and the back of your bra.
You are experiencing a very natural, but nonetheless dreaded, sign of the newest chapter in your reproductive cycle: the hot flash.
Hot flashes are a sign that things are changing, both in your body and in your life. A woman usually experiences hot flashes in the year or two leading up to menopause and anywhere from six months to five years thereafter. Hot flashes are thought to result from problems with the brain’s temperature-regulatory center. That sweat rolling down your face and the feeling that your head is an oven is the result of a loss of estrogen production registering in your brain.
Don’t sweat it — you’re in good company. It is estimated that 75 percent of menopausal women experience hot flashes.
All very interesting, you say, but how to make them go away?
The most important step is to initiate a discussion with your doctor. This includes a thorough review of your medical history and other important questions like: Do they affect your daily life? Your sleep? Are you walking around in shorts and a tank top in the middle of winter because you're preparing for the next attack?
A common first line of defense for hot flashes is vitamin E supplements in conjunction with healthy life choices. Yes, this means passing up that doughnut and trying to quit smoking once and for all if you haven’t already. Yoga and relaxation therapy can help, too — in a Mayo Clinic study, relaxation training was shown to reduce hot flashes by 30 to 100 percent.
For moderate to severe hot flashes, the most popular treatment is hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which replaces one or both of the hormones lost in menopause — estrogen and progesterone. HRT for the treatment of hot flashes is excellent (it cures up to 90 percent of symptoms). However, most HRT regimens use synthetic hormones, which are foreign to the body and have been found to pose certain health risks. Bioidentical hormones offer an excellent alternative. They are derived from a variety of plant or animal sources and are chemically identical to the hormones produced by a woman’s body. Since the hormones are natural, the body does not respond to them as a foreign substance. Side effects and risks may be reduced.
Remember, hot flashes do not signal an end but rather the beginning of a new phase in your life. You can still be a hot mama, now in more ways than one!
You are experiencing a very natural, but nonetheless dreaded, sign of the newest chapter in your reproductive cycle: the hot flash.
Hot flashes are a sign that things are changing, both in your body and in your life. A woman usually experiences hot flashes in the year or two leading up to menopause and anywhere from six months to five years thereafter. Hot flashes are thought to result from problems with the brain’s temperature-regulatory center. That sweat rolling down your face and the feeling that your head is an oven is the result of a loss of estrogen production registering in your brain.
Don’t sweat it — you’re in good company. It is estimated that 75 percent of menopausal women experience hot flashes.
All very interesting, you say, but how to make them go away?
The most important step is to initiate a discussion with your doctor. This includes a thorough review of your medical history and other important questions like: Do they affect your daily life? Your sleep? Are you walking around in shorts and a tank top in the middle of winter because you're preparing for the next attack?
A common first line of defense for hot flashes is vitamin E supplements in conjunction with healthy life choices. Yes, this means passing up that doughnut and trying to quit smoking once and for all if you haven’t already. Yoga and relaxation therapy can help, too — in a Mayo Clinic study, relaxation training was shown to reduce hot flashes by 30 to 100 percent.
For moderate to severe hot flashes, the most popular treatment is hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which replaces one or both of the hormones lost in menopause — estrogen and progesterone. HRT for the treatment of hot flashes is excellent (it cures up to 90 percent of symptoms). However, most HRT regimens use synthetic hormones, which are foreign to the body and have been found to pose certain health risks. Bioidentical hormones offer an excellent alternative. They are derived from a variety of plant or animal sources and are chemically identical to the hormones produced by a woman’s body. Since the hormones are natural, the body does not respond to them as a foreign substance. Side effects and risks may be reduced.
Remember, hot flashes do not signal an end but rather the beginning of a new phase in your life. You can still be a hot mama, now in more ways than one!
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