Hot Flashes: Causes & How To Treat Them Naturally
One of the most typical and well-known symptoms of menopause is hot flashes. While hot flashes are unpleasant and disruptive, there are fortunately methods that can help you lessen their frequency and intensity without disrupting any of your body’s natural processes.
What are Hot Flashes?
Hot flashesphenomena in which you will feel as though your upper body has spiked in temperaturefeeling of heat typically concentrates around your face, neck, and chest region. Those experiencing a hot flash might also begin to sweat, and their skin can appear to redden, as though they’re reacting to an outside warmth.
Hot flashes at night are called night sweats, but the symptoms are identical between the two sensations. This can interrupt sleep or make it difficult to fall asleep. Similarly, during the day, hot flashes can cause disturbances in your daily routine and tasks.
Everyone who experiences hot flashes during menopause will react to them differently, and though the symptoms are almost identical across individuals, some people may experience them for longer periods of time overall. For example, it’s been found that black and Hispanic people may experience hot flashes for more years than white or Asian people.1
What Causes Hot Flashes During Menopause?
Many symptoms of menopause are caused by hormone imbalances within the body that are brought on by aging. While it’s not entirely certain, the leading theory for what causes hot flashes comes down to your body’s changes in estrogen levels.
Your body’s temperature is regulated by the hypothalamus (a region in your brain), and many scientists believe that the changing estrogen levels in your body convince the hypothalamus that you’re experiencing a dramatic change in temperature.
So, it’s not that your body is changing its core temperature, per se; it’s that it’s likely reacting to changing estrogen levels, and it’s doing everything that it normally would to cool down your body.2 This is why people experiencing a hot flash perspire and flush; their body is forcing them to sweat in order to carry out its typical cooling methods.
Lifestyle Changes To Mitigate Hot Flash Symptoms
There are many natural ways to help with manage and get relief from hot flashes.
When you know you’re likely to experience a hot flash due to menopause, begin to dress in layers. Although you weren’t experiencing a fluctuation in temperature before your body tricked itself into thinking you were, you definitely are now. By removing layers, you can help convince your body that the temperature fluctuation has passed.
By maintaining a healthy weight, you can also help to mitigate hot flash symptoms.
It has been found that individuals who are overweight tend to experience worse hot flashes that may last longer than hot flashes experienced by those within a healthy weight range. Likewise, a higher BMI (body mass index) has also been associated with more frequent hot flashes.
Because weight can tie so closely to the experience you have with hot flashes (how frequently they come on and for how long), maintaining an ideal weight for your body may help you lessen particularly severe symptoms.
In addition to staying active and eating a balanced, nutritious diet, do your best to get the rest you need each night. If you’re experiencing hot flashes at night, then sleeping with a fan on can help to prevent night sweats from waking you up.
Other Hot Flash Relief Options
Equelle is a twice-daily supplement that can help relieve the symptoms of menopause thanks to S-equol, a soy isoflavone that shares a similar molecular structure to estrogen.
As a result, Equelle naturally mimics estrogen to address the root cause of symptoms like hot flashes no matter what stage of menopause you’re experiencing.
According to clinical research, women using Equelle saw five fewer hot flashes per day. These clinical studies are backed up by hundreds of women who rave about how much better they feel now that they are using Equelle 1.
Key Takeaways
Hot flashes are one of the most common symptoms of menopause.
Hot flashes happen because the hypothalamus is convinced by changes in estrogen levels that the body is experiencing a rapid fluctuation in temperature where no fluctuation is actually occurring.
Those experiencing a hot flash might perspire or flush in reaction to the sensations in their upper body.
Natural ways to manage hot flashes include maintaining a healthy diet, sleeping in a cooler environment than usual, and dressing in layers to take off when the hot flash occurs.
For those who need more assistance with mitigating hot flash symptoms, Equelle is a twice-daily supplement that’s been clinically shown to reduce the frequency of hot flashes.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Resources:
1 “Hot Flashes: What Can I Do?” National Institute on Aging. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Accessed October 25, 2022. https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/hot-flashes-what-can-i-do.
2 Jones H;Bailey TG;Barr DA;France M;Lucas RAI;Crandall CG;Low DA; “Is Core Temperature the Trigger of a Menopausal Hot Flush?” Menopause (New York, N.Y.). U.S. National Library of Medicine. Accessed October 25, 2022. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31453964/.
