Is it just me or is it hot in here? Top tips for regulating heat and hot flushes.
During peri-menopause and menopause, heat can be a common experience, whether it’s flushes of heat or hot sweats or feeling generally overheated. Just like women’s bodies, hot flushes come in every shape and size.
Maybe you just get hot so you think, this can’t be hot flushes. You might perspire, you might not. You might turn bright red. Or not. You might get cold first and then hot. You might feel a wave or a flush or have nonstop heat. You might feel heat shooting upwards or flowing downwards. You might wake up bathed in sweat and have to change all your bedding.
As your ovaries stop working, your pituitary gland (the master gland located in your brain) keeps ‘calling’ your ovaries, hoping they will pick up the phone and respond with estrogenic hormonal production. When your ovaries do not answer the phone call from your pituitary gland, the phone just rings and rings. Those are hot flushes. External hormones (like HRT) will silence the phone call from the pituitary gland. However HRT doesn’t agree with everyone and not all women feel drawn to take it. When we take a natural approach, what we do is, we encourage other endocrine glands to answer the call.
The other endocrine gland that can answer the phone is your adrenal glands. Your adrenal glands are also responsible for answering the phone when an emergency or fright takes place. They produce cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine in response to stress. They help you meet the demands of stress. If the adrenal glands are overworked, they may not have the ability to fully meet your estrogen/progesterone needs as called upon by the pituitary gland.
So here are some top tips to help your adrenals help you.
Get plenty of rest. Full stop. No excuses. Just do it. There is absolutely no substitute for 8 hours of sleep. And the best sleep for your best immune function and best hormonal function occurs in a dark room from 10pm to 2am. Unfortunately being a ‘night owl’ is short changing you in melatonin production and in the formation of essential immune-protective substances.
Moderate the temperature inside and outside. Inside yourself, keep things cool. That means cutting down on hot tea & hot spicy foods, no alcohol, no heated arguments, no strong emotions…. this is your opportunity to practice equanimity.
Outside yourself, do your best to keep the house cool, keep your shower temperature moderate, keep your clothing natural cotton or linen or fine wool so your skin can breathe and any perspiration can be easily cleared. Polyester and synthetic fibres can make you hot.
Cool down before bed: this will make it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep. Even just putting your feet in a cool basin of water can help before bed. Sleep cool, very cool. If it’s very challenging to share a bed with a hot person, be creative. You could look at using a single for your partner and a lighter cover on your side of the bed. It may take some effort but make your room a place where you can rest deeply and sleep well.
No caffeine. Caffeine demands a response from your adrenal glands. This fatigues your adrenal response and heightens your insulin response. Both lead to more hot flushes.
Cut out white sugar. Minimise the processed food and the refined carbohydrates. Eating these ‘foods’ pushes up your insulin response and then your blood sugar crashes, and this creates hot flushes. Regulating your blood sugar will lead to less intense flushing and moderate the heat.
Eat good fats. Body fat stores estrogen and progesterone to be released when the pituitary gland calls in. Eating bad fats doesn’t count. What are good fats? Organic butter, wild salmon, oily fishes, avocados, coconut oil, free range beef and lamb, nuts, seeds, organic whole fat dairy in small quantities, olive oil…all good fats.
Your body needs fats to create hormones. If you do not give your body these good fats, your body will create a fatty waxy substance called cholesterol, so that you can make the hormones you need. Often women go on a low fat diet to lose weight and their cholesterol skyrockets and their blood sugar goes pre-diabetic. Low cholesterol is not good; you are potentially short-changing your hormonal production of things like DHEA. Very high cholesterol levels means that your body is so inflamed that fats are needed in large quantities to soothe your inflammation.
Reduce or stop your exposure to xenoestrogens. Xenoestrogens are estrogens from outside of you. They come in all forms: plastics, exposure to BPA, petroleum distillates (in cosmetics, lotions, lip balms…), birth control pills and rings and injections…even entering our drinking water. Xenoestrogens interfere with the natural feedback process of all your hormones and they get deposited in estrogen receptor sites like your breasts, uterus and ovaries…contributing to a higher risk of reproductive cancer. And xenoestrogen excess can overbalance what progesterone you have, making you more prone to hot flushes.
Drink plenty of water. Carry a non-plastic water bottle and sip throughout the day. Many of us are dehydrated much of the time. Drinking sufficient water supports our lymph, our liver, our gut and all our detoxification processes.
Eating nutritious food and exercising regularly will help regulate your blood sugar and your sleep patterns.
In my practice I use natural homeopathic medicines to support women through this transition and I find them very effective for supporting the mind, body, emotions and helping to regulate heat and flushes. In certain cases, where the flushes are very extreme and continue for many years even long after menopause, there are usually underlying health problems. Those underlying health problems need to be addressed and supported in order to resolve the heat response. I believe that menopause is a protective development in a woman’s life. It is an opportunity to enter into a new rhythm, to tune into new frequencies and find a different harmony within yourself. If you would like more support along the way, I work one to one with women and run workshops and courses to support this process. From September 16-18th I will be in situ at the Mind Body Experience in the RDS in Dublin, giving daily talks and answering questions. Do drop in to say hello!
