Meno-frigging-pause.....ladies, HELP!

In My Humble Opinion
1

About two years ago I went through a brief period (no pun intended) of irregular periods and intermittent hot flushes (flashes to you US sheilas), but they stopped after a few months and things got back to ‘normal’ again. Peri-menopause gets the consensus there, yes?

So fast forward to late December 2007. The day I finished my period, the hot flushes started again with a fucking vengeance. Since then, about every 45 minutes or so, day AND night, I get a case of the OMGI’mgoingbrightredandthesweatispouringdownmyfaceandifIdon’tgettheseclothesoffrightnowI’mgoingtoburnupintoapileofcinders that lasts for about three or four minutes and then thankfully passes away.

Unfortunately, it’s also the height of summer here in Melbourne, so I can’t take advantage of sticking my head outside the window into a snowy or frosty clime.

I can sort of handle it during the day (except my workmates have taken up a ‘Red Watch’ to tell the whole place about an impending flush whereupon the bastards stand and point while I go through the rigours :stuck_out_tongue: ) but night-time is giving me the real shits. Every hour I’m up and running to the shower/getting another cold drink/sitting outside on the verandah in my birthday suit to feel the cooling breeze ease my hotness, so it really fucks up my sleeping pattern generally. I’m hot, bothered and buggered.

In the absence of other symptoms, I am loathe to approach the doctor for HRT (just yet) but I’m wondering if any of our Wonderful Lady Dopers of Mature Age have tried any other relief from their similar maladies. Does soy stuff work, what about Evening Primrose? Anything that you have tried AND seems to be efficacious AND doesn’t involve sacrificing goats/my first born or taking out a second mortgage to pay for the stuff would be appreciated, thanks!

2

I tried black cohosh, which some women swear by. Didn’t do a thing for me. My cousin’s wife does some sort of vegetable-based hormone that rubs on her wrist and she seems to be happy with that. You might want to look that up in a supplement website to find out what it’s called.

I went for the HRT and never looked back. It works on both the psycho-insanity and the hot flashes…for me anyway.

I did that for about 18 months, I think. I still get mild flashes, but nothing like they were. Good luck.

3

You have my deepest sympathies. It’s amazing how much “just being hot” can disrupt your life. Of course, IANAD, just a fellow sufferer (and US sheila :p), so be sure you talk to your doctor or nurse as well.

I tried some of the soy stuff and didn’t find it helpful, but I was on other meds that might have influenced its effectiveness. The soy stuff probably does not contribute to breast cancer risks, heart disease, alien abductions, or whatever else HRT might be connected with, so it might be worth a try.

I’ve heard some doctors and nurse practitioners suggest black cohosh rather than soy products, but I haven’t tried it myself. Definitely read up on any herbal product before you try it, though.

Buy or borrow fans. Lots of fans. I sleep with a fan blowing on me 365/6 days a year and my window open almost every day, even in the winter. You can even put a bowl of ice in front of a fan for added coolness.

If you do decide to go for HRT–and you should definitely consider it and discuss with your practitioner–you don’t have to take it for the rest of your life. I’ve been menopausal for 10 years, and I’m mostly comfortable now without any hormones or herbal products.

Stay cool!

4

My MIL, who can’t take HRT because she’s had breast cancer, swears by black cohosh and evening primrose oil.

5

I normally sleep with no coverings and the window open, maybe a sheet in autumn, while my husband sleeps with an eiderdown on. In the depth of winter I will sometimes use an eiderdown over my torso but not my feet. So I normally run hot, but as I am now heading into the periM this summer has been …difficult.

Some, but not all, Bunnings stores have single room portable airconditioners for ~$300 with a remote control, and Aldi also had some on special recently. Real dehumidifying ones, NOT evaporative coolers. I now have one trained on me most of the night. Fans do not cut the mustard here.

My husband currently sleeps with an eiderdown and 4 blankets. :slight_smile:

I may need to look at chemical assistance further down the track, but when you start adding up the cost of all the supplements/drugs/goat sacrifices/temple rubs that work for others but not for you, the cost of the airconditioner looks much more reasonable. Plus it is dealing with the notorious Sydney mugginess - none of our shoes are covered in green fuzz this year!!

6

Looks like it’s suicide at 40 for me.

Friend’s mom absolutely SWEARS by Evening Primrose Oil. Honestly, like she’ll bring it up out of the blue and say a little prayer for it. So definitely worth a try. (I’ve picked it up for PMS symptoms, but haven’t been taking it regularly or monitoring myself enough to come to any conclusions).

7

I went into surgically induced menopause last summer. For a variety of reasons, I didn’t want to venture down the HRT road, so my GYN recommended over the counter herbal stuff. I started taking Extra Strength Estroven and never looked back. Hot flushes stopped on about day 6, and although I do get overheated at night if I go to bed with too many clothes on. (This time last year, I would sleep in flannel pajamas and socks. This year, it’s panties and a tee-shirt. No down comforter, but just a lightweight blanket. And that’s with the room temperature at about 59 degrees.)

The Chillow has been a lifesaver when it’s just too damn hot to sleep.

Of course, we’ll talk six months from now when the temperature is between 70 and 90 degrees.

I haven’t had any additional symptoms, other then my hair falling out :eek: right after my surgery, but that was because the hormones were abruptly stopped. My hair has thickened again since then.

Weird thing though, my taste in food has changed. Mangos, which I LOVED, taste off and have lost their appeal, however, there are foods (like beets) which I didn’t like before, but like now. Don’t know if it’s related.

8

I had a hysterectomy (sp?) at 41 and decided I’d been on HRT long enough at 47 so I stopped and went into immediate menopause. I’m of the “always hot” variety as well so this hasn’t been much fun. But…two things:

Most of the time, if you don’t announce to people that you’re having a hot flash, they won’t notice. Think about it. You’ve been around menopausal women all your life even if you weren’t aware of it. And how many times did you notice someone getting red and sweaty for no good reason? I never did, and I taught for 17 years with mostly women colleagues. You really aren’t as noticeable as you feel so you don’t have to be self-conscious even if you FEEL self-conscious.

And for sleeping, I used to wet a washcloth, wring it out and put it on the nightstand in a dish. When I woke up unbearably hot, I’d reach for the cloth and lay it on my chest. It cooled me down really quickly. Before I drifted off back to sleep, I’d put it back in the dish. The intensity goes away after a while; scant comfort I know. But I’m 50 now and I don’t wake up at night very often because of hot flashes. They don’t come during the day much either.

You have my sympathy.

9

You have all my compassion, kambucta. It sux, big time.

I got about 6 months relief from Estrasoy, a “natural” product. For 6 months, it worked perfectly well, then it stopped. Other women I know have had good results with herbal remedies such as Black Cohosh, etc., and since they are, by and large, not harmful, I guess your best bet is to give some of them a try. The trouble is, sometimes they take weeks to kick in.

Since I have had breast cancer, I am not a candidate for HRT, and I am also, at 63, now 5 years past menopause. However, I still get night sweats, about once a night, and I can stand that. It doesn’t matter how cold the room is, and our bedroom is COLD. The discomfort is still there.

There are garments on the market that supposedly increase your comfort, but I haven’t tried them.

Good luck. It does slow down, but it never completely stops. My Mum is 83 and still gets the odd hot flash/flush/night sweat.

10

I feel your pain. :frowning:

What works for me: There is no “magic pill”, but a combination of all of the following suffices to keep the hot flashes down to a dull roar.

  1. I have cut out caffeine and other herbal stimulants completely, which included chocolate and things like Red Zinger teas, also licorice candy unless it was guaranteed 100% artificially flavored, and root beer, ditto. (Sasparilla, who knew?) And this is why I haven’t even tried the black cohosh, because it’s an herbal stimulant, and if Red Zinger makes the hot flashes worse, why would I want to inflict another herbal stimulant in its place?

  2. At least four days a week, a good solid half-hour of cardio workout. Walking is my chosen method.

  3. Soy. Both of these methods work for me: Either eat a big soup bowl of cooked TSP soy chunks at lunchtime every day, OR take a Soy Balance pill. I found that the TSP chunks need to be eaten at lunchtime to specifically combat night sweats, whereas the pills need to be taken about an hour before bedtime for night sweats. But if your goal is just to increase the amount of soy in your diet overall, eating the big bowl of TSP chunks can be done anytime, although I wouldn’t recommend it at bedtime, unless you enjoy turning in with your belly full of slowly digesting vegetable protein.

  4. My frequency and duration of hot flashes during the day, and night sweats and insomnia, are directly correlated with my level of background anxiety, seriously. The day I moved to a different Walgreens store, leaving behind the Big Dick who was impossible to work with, my hot flashes and night sweats turned off like someone had flicked a switch, no kidding, and they didn’t come back for three months. Last summer as soon as Bonzo came home from college for the summer, the hot flashes went away, and as soon as it hit me the first part of August that he was going back to school and that this time he’d be in his own apartment, the hot flashes came back like someone hit a switch. Then they tapered off after about 6 weeks, and I had a hot-flash-free winter–until it hit me the beginning of January that La Principessa would be leaving for college this fall. And again, here came the hot flashes, like someone turned a switch. So now that I’m getting reconciled to that fact, it’s all a bit better.

I don’t know of any constructive way to get you to cut down on your background anxiety, but for me, half the battle was recognizing that that’s what’s happening, and getting the fears and anxieties out into the open and dealing with them.

  1. Night sweats: have many layers on the bed, not just a top sheet and a duvet. I have a top sheet, a light cotton coverlet, a light quilt, and a duvet. What wakes you up in the middle of the night is not always the hot flash itself, but the chill that you get when the flash passes and you’re lying there in a puddle. That’s what wakes you up: you’re freezing. So you instinctively reach for all the covers, pull them up, and then 20 minutes later, just after you’ve fallen back asleep, you’re too hot, which triggers another hot flash, and you wake back up because you’re too hot and half-asleep, you fling the covers off. You drift back off to sleep, only to wake up a little while later, freezing. So you spend the night miserably, “too hot”, “too cold”, “too hot”, “too cold”. But if you have just a light coverlet available, you will quickly learn when it’s going to be “one of those nights”, and you will learn to pull up only the light coverlet, or some particular combination of quilt, coverlet, sheet, etc., that you’ll find out through practice, even though your instincts might be telling you to grab everything that’s on the bed because you’re freezing. You’ll know that the duvet will be too hot in 20 minutes, so you teach yourself to grab only the coverlet and go back to sleep.

  2. Understand that the insomnia is a very real thing, and the reason you’re walking around groggy and can’t find your car keys is not that you’re having some kind of Crisis and need anti-depressants, it’s just lack of sleep. Make sure your loved ones understand, too, that the absent-mindedness due to lack of sleep really is a problem, not just a menopause joke.

  3. You need to stop with running to the shower/getting a cold drink/sitting on the veranda etc. in the middle of the night. Eventually you WILL learn to go back to sleep after a night sweat episode, but not if you’ve thoroughly woken yourself up by getting out of bed and running around the house. You need to stay there in bed, in the dark, and let yourself go back to sleep. Your pineal gland is sensitive to light; when you get up in the middle of the night to pee and you turn on the bathroom light, that signals your pineal gland “Wake up!” and you do. And then you can’t get back to sleep. And when you’re afflicted with menopausal insomnia, you need every edge you can get, to help you get yourself back to sleep. So, sleep in as much darkness as you can manage without stumbling over the furniture or freaking out about monsters in the closet. I got rid of the nightlights, make sure all the windows are covered, and never turn on the bathroom light for those middle-of-the-night trips, and it makes a big difference. I can get up for my usual two to three pee-trips every night and fall back asleep within seconds. I even cover my eyes if I have to cross my daughter’s lighted doorway, until I get to the dark sanctuary of the bathroom. And I turned the clock’s lighted numbers out of my line of sight, and I avoid looking at the CO detector’s red numerals. No light, period. And when a hot flash hits, I stay right there in bed, I don’t get up and go running around the house and thus wake myself up completely. While lying there, I find it moderately entertaining to time them: “One mississippi, two mississippi…” The worst one I ever had went on for 90 seconds by the clock. Kind of like timing a labor contraction, yanno?

  4. Dress in layers. That way when a hot flash hits, you can rip off a layer without shocking everybody in church. Cardigans, or sweatshirts that zip up, are perfect. If you must wear long sleeves, pick something that you can push up the sleeves, like a long-sleeved turtleneck. Avoid at all costs the kind of long-sleeved blouse that you can’t roll up the sleeves. Also avoid polyester or nylon tops if you can help it, because they make you hotter than cotton.

  5. Understand that the reason for the hot flash is that your hormone-addled hypothalamus, for reasons known only to itself, suddenly thinks you’re too cold and it cranks up the heat. It’s not just that you feel hot: you really ARE hot. Ask your skeptical SO sometime to just come over here and feel your flushed tummy if he doesn’t believe you. It’s NOT all in your mind, you really are hot.

  6. I find that when I’m in the privacy of my own home and a hot flash hits, it helps to flip up my shirt and expose my belly, thus radiating heat out into the room. This works at night, too. Radiate the heat and it cuts down on the amount of sweat that needs to be generated by your idiot body, which is only doing its job to try to dissipate the heat that your hormone-addled hypothalamus ordered up.

  7. Be prepared for your libido to totally tank. Someone on the web somewhere compared it to going back to pre-puberty childhood, “What the hormones giveth, the hormones taketh away.” This doesn’t mean the end of your sex life, just that “lust” won’t be such a factor.

  8. Go buy some K-Y jelly. You’ll need it.

  9. You’ll find that your skin is a lot drier and needs more attention.

  10. Your hair will get thinner.

On the plus side:

  1. I love not having periods anymore. Really.
11

Duck Duck Goose! Good post, and mucho good advice. A lot of it resonates with me.

Only, I never wake up in the middle of a hot flash, or after. Oh, no. MY body wants me to enjoy every freaking second of it, so I am awakened by this certainty that “something” is about to happen and lo and behold, it does. An odd sensation, and one I know only too well.

12

I got one of these, and it was a lifesaver!

Also, cutting out caffeine seemed to have done the trick. Within a day of not having my morning cup, I stopped having hot flashes.

Now, I’m just in the early, early stages of peri-menopause, so I’m sure I’ll have to come back and check out Duck Duck Goose’s other advice as my symptoms progress, but this is what’s helped me for now, at least with the hot flashes.

The other symptoms, they can go fuck themselves. Seriously – the memory loss? Oh My GOD! Anxiety, insomnia, depression. Gah!

And I’m not a candidate for hormone replacement therapy because of a history of breast cancer in my family (mother died from it at 49). And soy is out because it’s contraindicated with my thyroid disease. Seems I’ve got it coming and going.

Oh well, at least I don’t have hot flashes anymore – Yippee!!

13

The memory loss is something that you learn workarounds for. Example: to keep from losing your car keys, you obsessively always put them down in the same place every single time you come in the house. Same with your coat, your hat, your purse, etc. Anything that you use a lot, you learn to always put it back in the same place so you can find it.

Another example: start parking your car in approximately the same spot at Kroger, Wal-Mart, etc. every time. This keeps you from wandering around looking for your car. Also, I find that at Wal-Mart it helps to say aloud to myself, as I walk away from the car, “I parked by Low Prices, facing north”, which gives me a handle on which aisle of the lot to begin looking for my car.

Another example: you stop relying on your memory to remember things and you start writing things down–phone numbers, grocery lists, to-do lists. If on Sunday morning at church you agree to come to a meeting Monday night, you tear a scrap of paper off your bulletin and you write it down and stick it in your skirt pocket. Because you WILL NOT remember it otherwise.

And if you don’t have a big appointment calendar in your dining room, now’s the time to get one. Write down everything that you have going. That way when you’re on the phone making a dentist appointment, you won’t get blindsided by the fact that that Tuesday morning you have to take the car into the shop and your aging brain forgot to tell you while you were on the phone and now you have to call the dentist’s pissy little receptionist back and reschedule.

See, now, this is precisely the sort of fussy behavior that gets Oldsters mocked by the younguns. But it’s all in self-defense, see. We need to be fussy and precise, because that’s the only way we’re going to survive without having to have Wal-Mart security go out and find our car for us.

On the insomnia thing, I left out that you should try not to take a nap during the day. You’ll sleep better, and be able to fall back asleep easier, if you’re totally sleep-deprived. It’s the death of sleep that night if you lie down for a long nourishing two-hour nap at 3 pm.

If you just absolutely cannot keep your eyes open at 6 pm., whatever you do, don’t go to bed. But you can sit up in bed, fully dressed, with your shoes on, with many pillows behind you to hold you upright, and all the lights on, and take a 15-minute cat nap. This will enable you to make it to bedtime at 10 pm.

14

No one has mentioned Vitamin E. Worked for me and a friend but then we were more in the mild warming trend stage. Might be worth adding to your regimen tho.

15

The only reason I went on HRT (the Combi-Patch to be specific) was because hot flashes woke me up EVERY hour. I had no other menopause issues, like crabbiness or memory lapses. Only hot flashes from hell. I’ve been on HRT for 5 years. I’ve done the research (being that I’m a medical librarian) and my ob/gyn has done the research and we’ve concluded I’m staying on HRT as long as I need to. If I can’t sleep, I can’t function. There’s nothing shameful about going on HRT and you don’t need to have a certain number of menopausal symptoms to qualify. If your flashes are causing you to not sleep, that’s reason enough. And yes, periodically I go off the HRT to see if the flashes have gone away or at subsided. They’ve gotten worse.

16

I started a discussion here because of some emotional issues I was having with peri-menopause.

See post 36 for a list of vitamin supplements my doctor suggested. I haven’t had hot flashes yet…and if they never start, I’ll be tickled pink.

17

I’m going on 42, and had a hysterectomy almost 4 years ago (kept my overies, TYVM.) My boss, who is a year older, had hers (same thing) the next year. She’s starting to have symptoms, she says, and I’m wondering if I am, too. I’m not having hot flashes, exactly, but I do have flushes, where my whole face/neck/ears gets red and hot for no apparent reason. Of course, I’ve always had those, but they seem to be way more frequent lately.

18

Yeah, in my Forties I had the vague sense every so often, “Gee, it’s hot in here…” but nothing approaching a classic scalp-prickling hot flash until I got to be 50. It’s part of what they’re officially calling “peri-menopause”.

To all of y’all who are apprehensive about your approaching menopause: don’t waste your time worrying about it. It’ll come when it comes, and everybody goes through it a teensy bit differently. It’s like being pregnant and worrying about your approaching labor and delivery–it’ll go how it’s going to go, and after you’ve read all the books and done all the exercises and signed up a good OB, there’s absolutely nothing you can do to affect the outcome, so you might as well relax.

And similarly to having a baby, being in good physical shape makes a big difference, so start taking those vitamins and exercising now. :smiley: The days when I skip the exercise–when I spend the entire day seated in front of the computer–I have the devil of a time sleeping that night.

19

my mum used ice packs. the kind that can be refrozen. kept them in an insulated lunch bag by the bed at night. nape of neck and tummy were her fav. ice placements.

20

Two days after I posted the OP for this thread the hot flushes toned down immensely to just one or two a day for a week (no medicaments or intervention needed), and since then I have had absolutely none. Not one single one, even though the ambient temp out there is up around the 38 degree mark!!

Could it be that easy to get through menopause? I’ve had no mood swings (to speak of), no other symptoms as such, and still no menses.

Is it remotely possible that I am THROUGH the climacteric…with no battle scars or psychiatric diagnoses? :smiley: