Sleeping:
I have always slept nude, and to me that is the coolest way to sleep especially now.  I sleep on cotton sheets with cotton everything else.  I have a hand towel (about 12" by 24") handy, so when I start to sweat, I put it beneath me from my face to my waist (or so).  That way my sheets and pillowcase stay dry.  It's white, so I can see it in the dark to lay it out.  Then I lie back down, and sweat away.  When I cool off, I use it to wipe myself with.  I have a remote-control floor fan (thanks to my sharp-eyed husband who saw it and bought it -made by Holmes), so I can switch it on/off w/o leaving the bed (which would awaken me too much).  I highly recommend one of those.  I also have a hand fan (the foldable paper type that is) for the smaller flashes.  When I awake hot, I just do whichever I want at the time.  In winter the room is cold so I just throw off covers and wait.  Summertime, I need the fans.  But the best thing I have just discovered from some reading somewhere, is to start deep breathing to a count of 10.  10 in and 10 out.  Just slow enough to get a complete deep breath both ways.  I don't know why, but this really helps me fall asleep after I cool down.    This does not work as well if I just "deep breathe" like I do for Yoga, I really have to count to 10 mentally.  Either there is some truly physiological reaction to the breathing and/or it merely occupies my brain enough so that it does not kick into high gear and keep me from falling asleep.  Whatever the reason, I have felt much better just in the few days I have been doing it, and have been getting more sleep.

Clothing:
Fortunately I do not have to dress up for work.  I wear white cotton T-shirts every day.  I have a long-sleeve cotton knit over-shirt that I put on and take off, oh, maybe 50 times a day (OK, maybe 20).  I wear sandals with cotton socks (in winter) and jeans.  I roll the socks up and down, depending on my heat status, and I find that just exposing some ankle can be cooling, and vice-versa.  I know most working women do not have all this freedom, but some do, and homebodies would probably also.  Around the house I wear "sport bras" so I can just take my shirt off and still be more-or-less presentable, at least to family.

Food:
My best source book is Nina Shandler's "Estrogen the Natural Way".  From it I adapted my usual breakfast now-a-days: a flax shake -but be careful, it packs a lotta calories.  I buy the flax already ground in a health-food store, and store it in my freezer (it degrades quickly).  Into the blender put about 2 teaspoons red jam, several frozen strawberries, 1 cup of apple juice.  Blend thoroughly.  Add a little milk to cut the acidity of the fruit, blend very slightly (otherwise it foams too much with the milk).  Into a large glass put the ground flax.  I use almost 1/3 cup, but start with less, it might be a shock to your digestive system.  Add 1/2 the blender stuff, mix thoroughly, add rest of blender stuff, stir a little more, drink with a straw.  Naturally, this is open to a lot of major modifications, do whatever you like so long as you get that flax in.  I think the key is the jam; the flax is a little bitter otherwise.  I found this to help quite a bit, and eat it more or less often depending on my feelings.  I don't put the flax in the blender, because it makes it hard to clean.  This leaves the mess only in the glass.  Straws help stuff go down easier, though this is not at all unpleasant tasting, really.  Before I started on this flax regime, my flashes left me extremely red, panting, and really sopping wet.  Now I just get a little pink and somewhat sweaty, but not nearly as bad as before.

Air:
I have a wonderful collection of electric fans everywhere.  I have one at my desk at work, one for my place at my dining table, the remote one in the bedroom, and others just for general house air flow, not to cool only me.  I keep folding paper fans in my purse, tote bag, knapsack, and briefcase so I always have one near me.  I bought them for less than $1 each at a local cheap import shop.

I try to keep my husband's usual words of wisdom in mind "this is just another chapter in life, and pretty soon I'll be in another chapter".  My mother died realtively early of breast cancer,  so I consider myself lucky to be growing old enough to go through this, and hopefully come out on the other side.  I hope to be an eccentric old lady, I'm already an eccentric middle-aged one! [Betsy] 

1. Buy some piece of clothing through the mail. Doesn't much matter what it is  -- your name will get traded around and eventually you'll get on the lists of sellers of lovely loose natural fiber stuff. I live in Philadelphia and I see a lot of business women in outfits that are put together around loose, flowing  slacks and tunics.  Long skirts are popular, too, and these can be worn with knee-highs instead of pantyhose. Both looks work well with low-heeled shoes, and there are more and more in the stores with 1" or 1-1/2" heels.  I work in a university library so I can get away with a decidedly eccentric look, but I see many women in other industries who are obviously in positions of some  power and who are equally obviously dressing with comfort in mind as well as fashion. These kinds of clothing are sometimes difficult to find in the malls,  but they proliferate in the better mail order catalogs. (And in some of the cheap ones, too...) 

2. Find yourself a fan. I mean the old fashioned flip-it-open-and-bat-your-eyes kind. Carry it in your purse and whip it out when the going gets hot. I used to feel pretty self-conscious when I did it, but now I just do it without thinking. If you're fanning your face, for some reason your whole self feels cooler. 

3. Carry hankies and/or kleenex so that you can dab away the sweat on your  upper lip and chin. 

4. Exercise enough to sweat as often as you can. Exercise makes you feel better anyhow, and if you exercise till you sweat you get used to feeling sweaty and it's not as bad when you overheat. 

5. Rediscover the undershirt and/or tee shirt. More clothing is better when you sweat in the sense that you don't look as disheveled. The undershirt catches a lot of the perspiration so you don't have big dark patches under your arms, or dark half-moons under your breasts, etc. 

6. Similarly, consider wearing cotton scarves or other easily washable scarves  at your neckline under your jackets. It minimizes the number of sweat stains,  especially, on light-colored jackets. 

7. When you start to heat up, drink something cool. In a few minutes, it really helps me, even though I may start sweating more at first. 

8. Try losing weight. Fat is a diabolically good insulator (think of seals,  Inuits, and polar bears), plus you throw off more heat just moving the extra bulk around. (This may not apply to you, but it surely does to me.) 

It sounds as though you're having a worse time of this than many of us. I hope a few of these suggestions actually turn out to be helpful. 

Regards, lblanch000

J

None of this will be new to anyone here, I suspect, but here's *my* strategy:

I sleep with the heat *off* in my bedroom, no matter how cold the weather, and the window open, even if just a crack, year-round. Having moving air in the room seems essential.

I've switched to all cotton bedding, and have ditched my old synthetic-blend blankets and comforter in favor of the lightweight, old-fashioned quilts my mother made for me. I keep three or four quilts on the bed so I can pull them on or off, depending ... 

I sleep in light cotton nightgowns or cotton T-shirts (cooler and less sticky than sleeping nude), and I keep a clean spare folded on the chair next to the bed, along with a spare pillowcase. If I wake up drenched, I get out of bed, throw back the covers to air out the sheets, peel off the wet garment and stand by the window doing controlled, deep breathing until I cool off. If I'm really sweltering, I run cool water over the insides of my wrists. Once I'm cooled down, I change the pillowcase, put on the fresh nightie and go back to bed. I've got this down to such a routine that some mornings I can't remember waking up, except for the evidence of the damp T-shirt on the floor by my bed.

If I'm so miserable that I can't get back to sleep -- or if I'm just having one of those insomniac nights -- I get up, throw on a robe, and go sit in my comfy armchair with a cat and a book, or sometimes just a cat. I *don't* lie in bed tossing and turning, because I think it's important for me to be able to think of bed as a place of comfort and rest, not a battleground. 

By day, I dress in loose layers, with a cotton undershirt and big, old-lady cotton underpants. I keep cornstarch-based baby powder in my desk at work. I've adopted lblanch000's habit of keeping a paper fan with me everywhere I go. I practice deep breathing. I drink quarts and quarts of water. I refuse to wear panty-hose any more (talk about heat traps!). I try to keep my caffeine intake down, but I'm not very good at that part -- I really *love* coffee, and part of what I love about it is the caffeine buzz. Still, on days when I find myself flashing, I steer away from it.

This may not work for you. Heck, there may come a time when it doesn't work for *me* any more. But I do believe it's possible for those of us who weren't thrust into meno by surgery to develop "comfort strategies" that may offer as much relief as medication, without any of the potential negative consequences.

Regards,

--Pat Kight

        I had hot flashes on and off episodically for about 6 years prior to my periods stopping and then really intense non-stop on the hour ones for about 9 months after my period stopped at age 52. I still get them but they are very few and fairly specific to certain situations.  But prior to my period stopping, they would be a problem for a few months and then not at all for a few months. But at their worst, they were never as bad as after my period stopped, But then I had less stress going on then too. 

        I found them very stress related and they made me look at what else was going on in my life that was causing the stress. When I changed thinking patterns, let go of some out of date "little girl" ways of handling situations, I found I got far less, plus cleaning up other stress situations made a major impact, or maybe it was coincidental. But I don't think so for me. However, what I found with the hot flashes was that I felt this stress as an -external- reaction now, (the flushing) rather than an internal one where I would usually feel it grip and twist in my heart or gut. So now I see hot flashes as a way of "flushing" out stress chemicals.  My speculation only. But tears do the same thing. For me, I sense these flushes, and the more the better, are in fact a good thing. Crazy, huh? 

        I had to observe when and why I was having the flashes for a long time to see the pattern of the stress connection. Now I value them greatly because I see them as a mental/emotional watchdog.  Additionally, getting overheated, in hot weather, or wearing non-natural fiber clothes didn't help either. No more turtlenecks during that time.  I don't drink coffee or tea or use any other stimulants, OTC drugs or nutritional supplements.  These all may have an effect on the flashes. 

        I discovered on my own that deep breathing helped to break the intensity of a flash, not cure it, but definitely make it less of an event. This was later actually confirmed by research at Wayne State so it is worth a try. I would just take 10 deep breaths at the first sign one was coming on and it would break it usually. Not always, but it would always be less than the ones that I had when I did not deep breathe. It started making me feel I had some control over them and that was nice. I figured the deep breaths helped to reduce the temperature like a dog panting on a hot day as well as expel stress chemicals. You know how the old wives tale says to take 10 deep breaths. Good advice, I guess. 

        I found them mainly to be upper body flashes, and I never had them at night. They would last over 2 minutes and when they were really bad they would be very drippy. In the summer, the flush could just pour for a few minutes and I wiped up with tissues. Always carried them with me. But that also was when I was exercising ahead of them and then had a momentary stress situation. But even at their worst, I figured the 3 minutes an hour times 10 hours a day max. was still only 30 minutes out of my life each day having to deal with them. So I chose to just let them happen rather than put a foreign drug into my system 24 hours a day to control them.  30 minutes of wacko stuff versus 24 hours of unknown drugs. But that was my experience and we are just talking hot flashes here, not other meno "symptoms" which can affect other women far more than just 30 minutes a day. 

But the best thing about just letting hot flashes happen is that they must burn up a huge amount of calories. One of their hidden benefits?  Pass the cookies.  Women have been having them for 3 millions years and on their own, they are at worst inconvenient and disruptive for a short duration, just like our periods were. We adapted around out periods and they created a lot of grief for awhile. So is true for hot flashes....for some of us . 

My own personal experience may not have any application to your life or medical history. But you asked about them and this was my experience. My advice: Try deep breathing and become aware and -change- the stress patterns of your life.  Can't hurt to try it for a while and it is free and has no side effects and doesn't require going back to the doctor to monitor for dangerous complications. Some women, especially by surgical necessity must take drugs and they are life savers for them. But if you do not have to take them, you may want to keep exploring the non-drug alternatives and options for wellness as your body naturally adapts to its post menopausal state. 

        Keep saying, this too will pass! It does. There is an end to menopause for some of us.  Good luck. Let us know what you find that works for you and your own unique health and life style history. There is a huge variation in how we all experience menopause. No one size fits all, at all. This group will teach you that. 

Joan L.

--Pat Kight 
[email protected] 

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The "active ingredients" in these neck coolers are hydrogel crystals, sold at many garden supply stores to retain water in house plants and gardens. When soaked with water, they swell up to many, many times their original size and look rather like cubes of clear Jell-O. 

Warning: A very little goes a long way. Before you fill the neck cooler, soak a teaspoon or so of the crystals in water for a few hours and see how big they get! Overfilling, or oversoaking the completed cooler may cause the crystals to burst through the seams or fabric; soaking for 15 minutes or so should be plenty. 

The crystals will eventually dry out, but can be re-soaked again and again. 

I haven't priced the crystals lately, but there's a Web site at  http://www.jmjent.net/magicgems/ that will send you a "free sample" for $2 (U.S.) shipping and handling -- they say it's enough to fill a gallon plant container, when hydrated -- that should be more than enough to make several neck coolers! 

Instructions for making the coolers: 

For a neck cooler, cut a piece of fabric about 20 inches long by three inches wide. Fold in half, right sides inward, and sew it into a tube, then sew across one end to close the tube. 

Turn it right-side out, and pour about 1/4 teaspoon inside -- this doesn't sound like much, but it is! Then tuck in the open end and hand- or machine-stitch it securely closed. 

Soak in water until the crystals swell to fill the tube. Refrigerate if you like. Drape across the back of your neck or forehead on hot days -- or when those hot flashes hit! 

For a head-scarf cooler, use a regular cotton bandanna, 22 inches square. Fold in half diagonally and mark off four rectangles 
along the fold, ten inches long by one inch wide each. 

Sew the rectangles along three sides, then put a scant 1/4 teaspoon of crystals in each tube (more like 1/8th teaspoon). Sew the fourth side of the tubes shut, soak in water and store in the fridge. This makes a wonderfully cooling headscarf!

Big mistake! My hot flashes are back just as bad as before. It doesn't do much for the migraines, but I will continue for the hot flashes and night sweats. 

I suffered terribly with hot flashes [many meno symptoms, for that matter] when I didn't understand what was happening.  I was many years post-surgery when a 'well intentioned MD' prescribed _RT.  within weeks I started running through the whole list of symptoms --I sure wish I'd had the list then  ;>   When my DC suggested hormone imbalance as a reason for my symptoms I found it easier to deal with them.  I eliminated the added hormones and still had symptoms for many months afterwards.  Of course, I let another 'well intentioned ND' sell me on the fear of heart disease and osteo and the 'new and wonderful specifically blended hormones' last summer and again started having 'heat waves'.  Actually I don't mind them too much, my feet and hands freeze a lot and the wave will keep me warm for hours.

I quit the pills and kept the symptoms.  Just how long could one expect 'hormone imbalance' to take to adjust to normal?  ;>

This too will pass....

Deb

I'm new here, so forgive me if this has been covered a zillion times. I had to go off estrogen recently, and although I've been menopausal  for 9 years am back to having hot flashes.  Is there any natural safe  remedy?  ...snip...

        -crashing fatigue
        -stomach cramps
        -hair loss
        -bad taste

        It may take several months of Vit E use to accumulate enough of an overdose to start experiencing these symptoms. Caution with Vit E in any amount.
Joan L

A double-blind, placebo-controlled study of vitamin E therapy for hotflashes in breast cancer survivors is in. The study used 800 IU a day for 4 weeks. The results showed that vitamin E reduced hot flashes by 25% and the placebo reduced hot flashes by 22%. Vitamin E was only 3% more effective than placebo. Not very encouraging.
J Clin Oncol 16; 495-500, 1998

There is some evidence, that psychological interventions which include some form of relaxation, can reduce the frequency of hot flushes. In a series of recent studies based at Guy's Medical School we investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of offering an alternative psychological treatment for women reporting menopausal hot flushes. 

Women, reporting hot flushes at least once a week, were interviewed and asked to choose between no treatment, HRT or psychological treatment (cognitive relaxation therapy, CRT), which includes relaxation, stress reduction and information about coping with hot flushes. <snip> A large proportion of women choosing the psychological treatment did so because they wanted help, but did not want to have HRT. Moreover, many of them wanted to learn skills to help them to control their symptoms themselves. (more at the URL above)

TAMPA (Fla): Anti-depressants may also help ease the misery of hot flashes, according to a small study that suggests Paxil relieves the effects of estrogen withdrawal in women being treated for breast cancer.