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| Help!
I have a hot flash that lasts all night long. I tear off my nightgown,
put the air conditioning on extremely low and get under the vent, but I
still can't get to sleep. My flash is on my body not my face.
From neck to thighs I feel like I'm in an oven.
Yikes -- an all night hot flash sounds nasty.
I found, in retrospect, that a little bit of alcohol went a long way in
exacerbating the flashes I was having in the three months I was on HRT
(Premphase in my case, and something it turned out I didn't need). Watch
out for alcohol, and caffeine, too -- and remember that flashes are a response
to sudden changes in hormone levels, which fluctuate wildly in perimenopause.
I have a sneaking suspicion, too, that when you dump a bunch of exogenous
hormones into the systems of some women, their own production cycles wildly
for a period -- but this is personal conjecture based on personal experience.
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| I get them both frequently
and infrequently on different days. More on hot days, definitely more when
I am in a stressful situation and at other time they just seem random.
I don't get many at night. They last a few minutes each. I get a hint they
are coming and sometimes seem to be able to stop their intensity by deep
breathing right away. I figure even one or so an hour is only a total of
20-30 minutes a day of discomfort.
They are visibly drenching but evaporate totally in a minute or so and only rarely stain clothing but occasionally are very dripping and drenching if I also exercised and the weather is hot. They often show up on my upper lip and around my ears but not always in the scalp. Then other times I have a hard time getting my hair dry since just the heat of the hair dryer keeps the flash going on a hot day.
They are upper body only for me. There is a very slight unique momentary
odor that is very different from typical perspiration smell, more musty
or dank but not lasting. It comes more like a wave at the height of the
flash. Can't smell anything on my skin later.
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I was trying to understand the posts on the mechanism of hot flashes. Those
posts spoke of the Dr. Love, hypothalamus, set point body temperature,
cooling the body, etc. Then I remembered how my body reacts to the health
club sauna.
I go in feeling and looking about "normal", but after I come out I have a fine coating of sweat all over and the important part: a rosy red appearance all over my skin. Looks pretty with my blonde hair and the white towel sarong. Anyway, why red skin--well, those little outer capillaries have tried to release body heat. My wise body knew that sauna was making my body get too hot too fast. Ladies, isn't that what those little blood vessels are also doing in a hot flash?! Aren't they trying to cool the body down since the faulty hypothalamus is registering a false too-hot reading? But the initiator as Dr. Love said is not a too-hot body but a false reading of the hypothalamus. The purpose of the hot flash is to divert blood flow away from the hotter core to try to cool it down, I think. But since our body is not really too hot, should we try to cooperate with what our body is doing, or divert it with remedies? Wow, what a question. Probably no real answer, so don't tax yourself. Might bring on a hot flash. lOve and later, glOria (lOve is like a circle, eternal in effects;& what goes around, comes around.) |
| I have had a problem regulating my body temp for several years. In peri and it seems I sweat like crazy. I will be in a store and start to sweat or get in bed and I am drenched. If I do outside activities during even moderately warm weather I begin to sweat profusely and if I continue the area under my eyes turns black!! It was very scary the first few times it happened then my GYN said its all part of the peri. |
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