Hot Flashes in Women: 4 Strategies to Help

What are Hot Flashes in Women?

Hot flashes are an uncomfortable and irritating symptom of hormone imbalance. They most often affect women and typically strike during perimenopause and menopause, though they may also affect women of all ages due to other factors like chronic medical conditions and certain medications.

Hot flashes in women can be very interruptive and detrimental, striking at inconvenient times and interrupting important moments. Read on to learn more about what hot flashes are, why they happen, and some strategies to help manage them.

A hot flash is a phase of intense and unusual warmth, which often feels like it’s radiating from the face, neck, and chest. They can last anywhere from 30 seconds to ten minutes, and longer on rare occasions.

Hot flashes can be intensely uncomfortable and can keep you from living life normally, including waking you up throughout the night as hot flashes come and go.

Symptoms of hot flashes in women include:

• A feeling of heat in the cheeks, neck, and chest
• Flushed skin in the same areas
• Excessive sweating
• Increased heartbeat and heart palpitations
• Anxiety or a sense of panic
• Chills once the hot flash recedes as the sweat evaporates from the skin

The amount of hot flash episodes in women can vary, but they may occur as often as daily for up ten years leading into menopause. If hot flashes occur during sleep, they are called night sweats.

Night sweats can interrupt your sleeping patterns, make it difficult to return to sleep, and cause long-term sleep deprivation.

How to Manage Hot Flashes in Women

Hot flashes in women are easy to identify – but they are harder to manage. Here are some tips you can employ to ease your hot flash episodes and even avoid them altogether.

Strategy 1: Cool Down Your Environment.

This step is especially important in the summer months when the weather warms up, since changes to internal body temperature are more likely to trigger hot flashes during these times.

Because hot flashes are overreactions to slight increases in your core temperature, cooling down your environment can help you avoid these reactions. If you’re in control of the thermostat, you can keep it a few degrees cooler than normal to ensure you avoid overheating. You can also set up a fan to blow cool air on your face and neck, since this area is often impacted by hot flashes.

Some women who struggle with night sweats say it helps to add a window air conditioner in the bedroom to keep it extra cool at night, as a way to improve their sleep.

If you’re in a shared office space and cannot control the temperature, you can keep ice packs and cool drinks on hand to help maintain your temperature. You can also bring a small desk fan or handheld fan, either battery-powered or folded paper, to help you cool down.

You can get in the habit of wearing layers, as well – for example, a regular top and cardigan or blazer – so that you can comfortably remove layers throughout the day as needed. Breathable fabrics like cotton should be chosen over fabrics that trap heat, like polyester.

Strategy 2: Lifestyle changes.

While hot flashes are caused by hormone imbalance, certain lifestyle factors can increase their frequency and severity.

Eating spicy foods, for example, can trigger your body’s cool-down response, which can lead to hot flashes. Caffeinated beverages increase your heart rate and can have a similar effect, as can salty, fatty, and sweet foods. There is evidence to suggest that a Mediterranean diet of whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables may help curb hot flashes in women.

Nicotine is a stimulant and may also contribute to increased hot flashes, so it is recommended that women quit smoking to manage hot flash symptoms (as well as for overall good health). Similarly, alcohol can have a detrimental effect on those who experience hot flashes.

Certain heart and blood pressure medications may contribute to hot flash symptoms, but it is very important that you speak to your doctor prior to changing or stopping any of your prescription medications.

Strategy 3: Comprehensive testing to identify the issue.

While hot flashes are a key sign of hormone imbalance, comprehensive blood testing is the only way to understand what’s happening within your body and take steps to rebalance.   For most women, there are steps you can take to reduce or eliminate hot flashes through hormone restoration.

Hormone balance in complex, because hormones interact with and affect each other. Decreases in certain hormone levels can cause corresponding changes in other hormone levels. There are also precursor hormones, like DHEA, that can impact the body’s ability to create Estrogen and Progesterone (the two most common types of female hormones). Thyroid hormone imbalance can lead to hormone deficiency symptoms, as well, which is why it’s important to check your thyroid health as part of a thorough hormone assessment.

We recommend the following tests to understand your hormone balance, as well as your overall wellness and thyroid health, so we can diagnose your deficiencies accurately:

• Testosterone Free and Total
• Estradiol
• DHEA-S
• Thyroid Stimulating Hormone
• Follicle Stimulating Hormone
• Progesterone
• IGF-1
• Comprehensive Metabolic Panel
• CBC Panel
• Lipid Panel

Some medical providers only recommend one or a few hormone tests to diagnose hormone deficiencies. Unfortunately, these tests often don’t provide enough information to truly understand the complex balance of hormones in the body and may lead to inadequate treatment.

It’s always best to comprehensively evaluate hormone levels and health.

Strategy 4: Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy.

Aside from strategies to help keep you comfortable, Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT) is one of the only ways to fully ease hot flash symptoms. This is because BHRT replenishes hormone levels, which stops the hypothalamus from overreacting and triggering hot flash attacks.

BHRT is an ongoing treatment that supplements key female hormones including Estrogen (often in the form of Estradiol) and Progesterone. An HRT protocol may also include DHEA, Pregnenolone, and Testosterone. Women’s bodies produce Testosterone at lower amounts than men, but it’s a very important hormone for maintaining sexual health, body composition, and more.

If hot flashes and night sweats are interrupting your life and daily activities, it is likely your body’s way of communicating that you have a hormone imbalance.  You may be experiencing other symptoms of a hormone deficiency, including:

• Fatigue
• Anxiety or depression
• Mood swings or difficulty regulating emotion
• Fat gain, particularly around the middle
• Changes in body composition and difficulty building muscle
• A lack of enthusiasm for life
• Difficulty sleeping
• Loss of libido
• Vaginal dryness and/or pain during intercourse

BHRT can address this imbalance to help ease hot flash symptoms, as well as the symptoms listed above.

There are many types of BHRT options available, including injections, capsules, implantable pellets, topical creams and gels, sublingual tablets, and more.