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[Lizab]

I thought it might be helpful to newbies if we described hot flashes. I know mine have changed over time, and they can be worrysome.

My old hot flashes were simply a warm/hot feeling, and I would break a sweat, usually feeling damp on my upper lip and armpits. If I was outside, stepping into a bit of shade helped. Otherwise, I could just ignore it and it would pass. It would last perhaps a minute or two.

My next kind of flashes always came on while eating spicy foods. Everything would be fine, and suddenly I would feel something, I don't even know how to say what it was, almost a dizziness or a panic. I would often need to get up from the table and stand for a moment, and drink ice water. These pass really quick, less than a minute. It took a long time to connect it to the spicy food, because I didn't always feel the heat or sweat.

And my worst kind of hot flash begins with a feeling of uneasiness. Something's just not right. I get a little anxious, and that can last for hours, then I may have one big sweaty HOT flash, or may have smaller waves of warmth come over me, one after another. It's very uncomfortable. This certainly goes on longer than a few minutes. After it subsides, I get chills, and often times I'll cry. After my chills are gone and I dry my tears, I'm back to normal.

[dogdoc]

Interesting. Mine started with night sweats....I'd just wake up sweating, mostly between my breasts, but sometimes my sheets were dampish too. Then I started getting daytime flashes ranging from a feeling of increased warmth and sweat in weird places ( like my inner elbows or my shins) but mostly entered around my chest/neck/face. Never drenching but like someone sprayed me with a spritzer bottle. Early on I also had cold chills. Chills like I'd never be warm again, wrapped in a blanket teeth chattering COLD!! My feet could not get warm EVER. Cold is all gone now though.

The bigger ones are a feeling of self combustion...this is when I start ripping off clothing. During these ones I can get light headed, have heart arrhythmia or a sensation like i might pass out, dizziness etc. Lasts a few minutes at most.

I have noticed I'll be cruising along all normal in the brain department then I'll suddenly start dwelling on something anxiety provoking: my kids well being, my health, my husbands...just a general feeling of anxiety then BAM...hot flash. Then normal again.

Is whatever causes weird thoughts and anxiety the same brain 'switch' that causes hot flash? I think so....but I bet many would say that the 'stress' of thinking the stressful thoughts triggered the hot flash. Hmmmm.. who knows.

[Lizab]

I forgot about the night sweats. I had them during my periods. Waking up boiling and drenched. Silly me, I blamed my pads. Wearing pads at night was burning me up!

And yes to the anxiety with the hot flash. I don't even have to be thinking about anything anxiety-provoking at all. The anxiety feeling pops up and then the hot flash.

I get the internal combustion ones too. I was calling them panic attacks, but now I'm convinced they're hot flashes.

Also, I find that often I need to pee when I get a hot flash.

I think the anxiety and hot flashes must be connected. I had no history of anxiety or panic problems.

[Dorothy]

Mine started off with 'dry' flushes, where I would feel extreme heat on my head, neck and a 'triangle' running from my shoulders to the base of my breastbone.  I still get a lot of those.  It starts off with a weird feeling on the skin of my face and neck, and if I can strip off some layers or go somewhere cooler at that point, it usually dies down.  Otherwise, I get the wet flushes, which leave me with sweat dripping off the end of my nose.  I remember at my uncle's funeral, at the reception, I was soaked - wet hair, the whole lot - which was hugely embarrassing, especially when people are condoling with you & you have moisture rolling down your face    I was 38 then, hadn't been diagnosed & couldn't work out why I was sweating so much on a fairly cold late autumnal day.

[Joyce]

I could feel mine creeping up from my toes. If I could, I'd then try to find somewhere cool, or grab something to  fan myself with. Then when I thought it couldn't get worse, sweat would pour down my back & front.

During the night I'd pace the floor to cool off. Standing on ceramic tiles in bathroom helped a bit.

In between I'd get cold flushes. Not sure which was worst.

[coldethyl]

I'd had a few years of generally feeling suddenly warm then the night sweats started- I'd wake up soaking and heart racing and generally felt rubbish. These come and go and have improved a bit since losing weight -now it's mostly round period that they wake me up otherwise they come but it's only when I wake up in morning I notice how damp the duvet is!
The day flashes are worse- I don't sweat with them but they make me feel like I am being burnt on my back by a blowtorch- I get two sorts- one is just a creeping warmth that gradually increases and sticks around for hours so I just feel burning back and a bit bleurgh. The second comes on suddenly from my stomach mostly, though it can start as surges in my arms or legs- I can feel the adrenalin coursing through me, heart flip flops or beating fast, whooshes of heat up head- these come in waves for hrs at a time and I feel shaky, nauseous, anxious and scared that I am about to die.

[Rosie500]

Golly, reading all this makes me realise I was lucky! I mostly just got them at night (every night), I would wake up feeling boiling hot but not dripping with sweat. Accompanying the heat, my mind felt intensely alert and I couldn't go back to sleep for a few hours so I would be wrecked in the morning. The rest of the time I would say I just had a faulty thermostat - would randomly feel too hot or too cold, completely unrelated to outside temperature or what I was wearing. Now I am on HRT it's miles better - sometimes I wake up in the night briefly and think, "Good, I'm not hot." then a minute later experience a surge of heat but I go back to sleep almost instantly, so I'm happy to cope with that.

I cannot tell you how much I love my oestrogel! It's a bit sad    But thanks again to all the lovely people on this forum - it's improved my life so much.

[skkb]

My worst ones are a feeling of spontaneous combustion, inner heat so intense I thought I would explode, quite frightening.....feelings of disorientation , faint, sometimes nausea.....now back on HRT these have all but gone. Strangely the backs of my hands sweat but not the palms!! The milder ones just make me hot, sticky, wet and very uncomfortable....I grab anything to fan myself with, don't want to interact with those around me, if I'm with company, until it passes. Sometimes my head kind of jolts inside which again can be frightening so then the anxiety kicks in again and round it goes.....hate all this meno stuff, had 13 years worth....would rather give birth to quads !!

[Noodle]

I have more experience of the night sweats, only two years of daytime hot flushes.

The night sweats, just before I started HRT had got up to about 6 full blown ones a night. By this I mean they disturbed my sleep for half an hour to an hour - seems incredible to think of it now.  I'd wake for no apparent reason, then a few seconds/minutes later it would start. Off would come the covers and the heat would just eminate from me for minutes on end.  You think it's died down, but as soon as you pull the duvet back up, it starts again.  Luckily I never got to the stage of soaking clothes or sheets, most of the perspiration was between my breasts.  Bizarely I learned after quite some time, they diminished quicker if I lay on my back.  What's that about?

Then two years ago, I got the daytime flushes.  Happily they tended to be shorter than the nighttime ones but they're not good when you're in a meeting with a load of blokes and nowhere to go.  I learned to avoid nylon stuff (it didn't cause them but made them worse when they came) and always wore layers so I could take the top one off.  These I described as a furnace.  The fire started sort of mid abdomen, spread around my back and then went upwards to my face and head at the same time.  They would dampen my hair at the back, so goodness knows what my face looked like!

Anyway, as I said, started HRT 7 weeks ago and both the nighttime and the daytime ones stopped after about a week.  Happy days!

[anna123]

Interesting thread. I had/have the night ones where I wake up soaking to the extent I need to change pajamas, I genuinely didn't know what they were and thought I was just too hot or had too many covers on. I was only 38 so didn't associate it with menopause.

My day ones are nowhere near as bad as others have. The best way I can describe it is like when you are in a very embarrassing situation and you feel yourself going red. I can feel myself getting hotter from shoulders/chest upwards. I don't think I actually blush, as I would when embarrassed, but it is the same feeling

[Clovie]

Firstly came the sweaty in bed type for me. I think I was about 46, regular periods. I'd wake up and I would be wet between my breasts and my chest and neck. Never soaking wet though. I had no other symptoms to speak of apart from the PMS I'd always had seemed to be stronger coming up to my period. 

I can remember clearly the first proper daytime hot flush I had.
To be honest it scared me - I thought I was having a heart attack or stroke or something.
I was sat using the laptop and watching TV and I got this sudden BAM - feeling of unease or dread, then my heart missed a beat (I 'd had ectopic beats previously on and off so I recognised that) and I felt like I was going to pass out, lose consciousness. A feeling of panic followed when I thought "this is it!" but all that happened was a feeling of heat spreading from my chest up to my neck onto my face and I was wet and shaky. It was like a mini panic attack - with sweat.

When it happened again a few times I realised what it was. I looked in the mirror and expected to see a bright red face at the peak of these flushes but my face was white, but my neck was red, but you could literally see the sweat running down my face.

These would come on randomly - but also at times of stress. (I once disappeared between tasks during a job interview it was so obvious I was wet through, my hair stuck to my head)  I would be driving along in freezing temps with all windows down and still hot. It was surreal looking back.....

For this reason I started on HRT. The sweats were affecting my life that badly.

[kew]

Mine are in varying degrees of intensity both heat and length. During the day they always felt like they started in my lower back and then moved up towards my face, finally ending with sweaty face/top lip and forehead. The skin on my lower back and face would feel like it was burning., a bit like when you have sun burn.

During the nighttime ones, I found that I would wake up before it started and got into the habit of throwing the quilt off in enough time to try and cool down, usually not soon enough to avoid a sweat and then ending up freezing.  This would happen about 4 or 5 times a night, so I was regularly sleep deprived.  After 2 years of being sleep deprived, then losing my job last year, I thought that's it.  After doing a bit of research on all things Meno related, stalking this forum and trying to understand what was going on with my body, I went to the dr and asked for hrt.  I don't think she's a fan of it, but I feel so much better now I'm going to find it hard to give up.

Have been on Evorel conti now for 2 weeks, the first week the day time sweats seemed to go into overtime, and I started to note down how frequent they were, some almost every 20mins. Thankfully the 2nd week has seen them in decline, and I hardly noticed them at all this weekend.  😀😀😀. Sleeping in the first week was wonderful,seemed like the first full nights sleep that I've had in a long time and that has continued.

All in all good so far, just hope it continues.

[Lizab]

Welcome, kew!

[Mary G]

I have never had hot flushes or night sweats which seems to be unusual.  My mother and aunt didn't have them either. 

That said, I did used to have a dodgy thermostat and used to break into a sweat too easily and found it difficult to adjust to different temperatures.  I used to have trouble with aircon in cars and would break into a sweat in places with airconditioning.  I never actually felt that hot at any particular time, it just seemed to be a kind of sweating attack.  I used to sweat on my back, face and under the bra line, it was really horrible and embarrassing. 

I had these symptoms before going onto HRT (I didn't know what was wrong at the time) and again while taking HRT when the oestrogen dose was too low (Mirena coil and 50mcg patch and also with Angeliq and 50mcg patch) and also when I took a year off HRT altogether once several years post menopause.

I have now consigned these sweating attacks to the history books by switching to the Oestrogel which is only form of HRT that has ever worked for me and I strongly recommend it, it really is a life changer.