Hot Flushes & Night Sweats

71% of women surveyed suffer with Hot Flushes and/or Night Sweats

There are very many Peri-Menopausal/Menopausal women that haven’t at some stage or another uttered the words “is it me or is it hot in here?”

They are often the bane of many Menopausal women’s lives, when all of a sudden they break out into an uncontrollable sweat, looking like they have just finished a high impact aerobics class and they’ve barely moved an inch! Just imagine if you could burn off the equivalent calories when suffering these highly embarrassing, inconvenient, disconcerting episodes.
So what is actually happening to our bodies when we’re having a hot flush/night sweat and why does it happen?

Well I will try to simplify this as it would be very easy to go off on a tangent. Basically the Hypothalamus is a part of the brain that maintains your body’s internal balance and links the endocrine and nervous systems. Its responsibility is to either inhibit or stimulate quite a lot of your body’s main processes including body temperature, sleep cycle, heart rate and blood pressure, appetite and body weight to name just a few. It works in synergy with your Pituitary Gland (Master Gland) to release hormones. So when the balance is upset, due to a decline in Oestrogen it senses the body is overheating and tries to do its job by sending out a message to turn on your internal sprinkler system to cool down as quickly as possible regardless of where you are or what you’re doing!

When this happens in the middle of the night and you’re in a lovely deep sleep to be woken suddenly with the feeling of being in the tropics and drenched in sweat can be very exhausting, as it’s no fun having to change bed linen at 2 or 3am especially if you have to wake your partner. Or maybe you have to sleep in a separate bedroom, can eventually have a detrimental effect on your relationship.

So what can we do?

• Because of the loss of fluid during the flushing/sweats, make sure you top up your intake of water.
• Reduce your caffeine intake – and don’t just think of Tea and Coffee! Headache remedies can contain up to 65mg of caffeine, as can other medication. Then there’s chocolate, Ice-cream & frozen yoghurt especially coffee and chocolate flavours, cereals, hot chocolate and even de-caffeinated coffee can contain between 2-12mg of the stuff.
• Reduce alcohol intake – yes sorry ladies that nightly glass of wine that you think helps you to wind down is just an illusion. You would be better off doing some thoracic breathing (that’s breathing in through the nose for the count of 4, holding your breath for the count of 4, and breathing out through your mouth for the count of 4) or perhaps meditating. Wine is particularly bad for inducing hot flushes, if you really can’t go without that nightly tipple perhaps try a vodka/gin as the clear spirits are purer.
• If you smoke you are twice as likely to suffer with hot flushes & night-sweats – No need for me to tell you what you need to do!
• If the night sweats are upsetting your partners nightly slumber there are some practical things you can do. Maybe buy 2 single duvets and you could even get 2 different tog ratings. Ensure you’re your bedding is made of natural fibres – linen/cotton as it is more breathable and make nightwear cotton/silk.
• An electric fan in the bedroom and a nice bottle with a spray and maybe some lavender essential oils works wonders if you spray yourself and then turn on the fan!

So these are just a few of the practical things you can try out to make your Menopause more magical and less miserable.

You can contact me via my website for more information about my Hypnosis programmes, and you can also book yourself a discovery call completely free of charge.
Just go to www.sueleehypnotherapy.co.uk/contact