Mmenopause hit Amelia Cerbelli hard. The heat waves ruined his mood, sleep, and clothes; she was sweaty, uncomfortable and very irritable (especially in the summer). The only thing that made her feel better was her silent rebellion in the workplace. Every morning when she arrived at the office, Cerbelli turned the thermostat down until she heard a click indicating it was at the lowest possible setting.
“Everyone was freezing and wearing sweaters,” recalls Cerbelli, 65, who lives in the Poconos, Pennsylvania, and is now on the other side of her 12-year struggle with menopause. “It was like a refrigerator there. They finally put some kind of block on it, so I couldn’t change.”
Not everyone experiences menopause-related hot flashes — but for those who do, summer’s record temperatures can turn up the heat frequency and severity. This is physically unpleasant, of course, but also mentally draining. “Hot flashes feel like a loss of control because they come on suddenly and unpredictably,” says Dr. Kathleen Jordan, chief medical officer at Midi Health, a virtual care clinic focused on navigating perimenopause and menopause. “People think it’s temporary – that you just have them for a year or two, and then it goes away, and they have to suffer through it or grin and bear it. But for a significant number of women, these situations last more than a decade, and some of them perpetually. So we need to figure out how to deal with it.”
We asked several people – women who are or are going through menopause, as well as doctors – how to best manage hot flashes in the heat of summer.
Avoid caffeine, smoking, alcohol and spicy foods
Kelli Burroughs, head of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital in Houston, noted that patients’ anxiety about hot flashes increases with temperature. They tell her that when someone attacks, it feels like “a wave of heat took over your entire body,” she says, followed by sweating and chills that last anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes.
See more information: Menopause is finally going mainstream
Burroughs advises patients to avoid caffeine, even in the morning: “I hate to make this recommendation, but it can trigger hot flashes,” she says. The same goes for smoking, alcohol and spicy foods. It’s best to eat as healthily as possible and try to exercise, she adds. Some patients see improvement in symptoms when they make lifestyle changes.
Try to de-stress
Anxiety is a common symptom of menopause– blame hormonal changes. To make matters worse, research suggests that women experience more hot flashes when they are stressed. A proactive way to combat this is to build time into your schedule so you don’t have to rush, says Dr. Robin Noble, medical director of Let’s talk about menopause, a national nonprofit organization that promotes greater understanding of menopause and more comprehensive care. This can help lessen the chance of an anxiety attack when you’re, say, rushing to catch the train.
Meditating or trying different breathing techniques are also effective ways to reduce stress, says Noble. She recommends trying box breathing when you start to feel your anxiety levels rising: inhale through your nose for a count of four, hold your breath for four seconds, then exhale through your mouth for a count of four, and hold your breath again for that amount of time. . Repeat until you feel calm.
Wear a damp swimsuit underneath your clothes
Since entering perimenopause, Tawni Pargman has noticed that she gets hotter and hotter. She sleeps with the window open year-round (even in the cold Spokane, Washington winters) and wears a tank top or t-shirt when other people wear hoodies. So when she walks her yellow lab in the summer, she wears a damp bathing suit underneath her clothes. It’s a trick she learned from her mother. “In the 80s, she would do this too,” says Pargman, 46. “It doesn’t need to be soaked, but the freshness of the skin makes a big difference.”
Take extra clothes with you (or get rid of them)
Cerbelli overheated so much that her co-workers feared she might be having a heart attack or stroke. “You feel the moisture running down your body, through your armpits,” she says. “I would get soaked. I used to carry extra clothes in case I needed to change.”
See more information: What to wear when it’s really hot outside
This resonates with Karen Giblin, 70, who is president and founder of Red hot mothers, which offers menopause education and support programs in the US and Canada. Giblin worked in local government and always brought a second change of clothes to town meetings. Before going home, she undressed in the bathroom for a few minutes. “I put my body against the tile,” she recalls. She also accepted the fact that sometimes when she was at home, she had no choice but to tear off her clothes. “If the FedEx man answered the door, I’d think, ‘Oh, my God. What I’ll do?’ And I don’t think I’m an anomaly. I think other women had to strip down to almost nothing.”
Go to the supermarket freezer
If you’re running errands on a summer day and you feel a hot flash, what do you do? Cerbelli devised a creative solution: he went into the nearest supermarket, opened the freezer doors and went inside. “I put my whole body in there,” she recalls. “The funny part was, one time, a few doors down, there was another woman in the freezer.” There were certainly some strange looks from other shoppers, but after a few minutes she calmed down, so it was worth it.
If you are spending time outside, wet your hair
Pargman enjoys backpacking Washington’s trails with his family and has learned an important lesson: always hike with wet hair. She usually dips hers in the first stream she finds and finds that it keeps her cool for hours. “It makes a huge difference in your energy levels,” she says. Furthermore, it is an armor against possible heat waves.
Look for cool activities
Giblin entered menopause after undergoing a hysterectomy at age 40 and quickly began experiencing 20 to 30 hot flashes a day; each lasted about three minutes. In the midst of recovering from surgery, she thought to herself, “Where am I going to cool off?” It occurred to her that she had always loved ice skating and that it would be an ideal time in life for her to return to the cold rink. She began spending hours a week sliding on the ice. “That put out the fire,” she says. “I have never had hot flashes while ice skating. It was my secret weapon for my hot flashes.”
Test refrigeration products
A few years ago, Giblin did a segment for QVC focusing on her favorite cooling products for menopausal women. After a while, the segment began airing overnight — and she wondered who could watch it. But it turned out that viewers bought more in the middle of the night than during the day – probably because they were awake, hot and unable to sleep.
See more information: How to Spend Time Outside If You Hate Sweating
New refrigeration products are coming out all the time, and Giblin notes that it may be worth experimenting to find out which ones make a difference for you. Many people find relief by using battery-powered neck fans, for example, or carrying small fans that they can pull out of their bag when they feel a hot flash coming on. Embr Wave makes cooling bracelets that claim to provide on-demand temperature relief; there are even refreshing pearls you can freeze before using. You might also like to place discreet gel pads in your bra – the those made by Opal Cool may drop to 58°F after being refrigerated. The company is also known for cool wraps designed to be worn on the upper neck and shoulders in addition to cold eye masks which can improve long, hot nights. Spend some time researching your biggest pain points and you will be surprised at the innovations that have emerged to help alleviate them.
Ask your doctor about treatment options
If you’ve made lifestyle changes and reduced your stress levels but still experience persistent hot flashes, ask your doctor about prescriptive therapies, advises Burroughs. Among the options: hormone replacement therapy, low-dose selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), gabapentin, clonidine and fezolinetant. Ideally, these treatments would eliminate hot flashes completely, but people respond differently. “The more intense the symptoms, the harder it is to control them,” she says. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.
Burroughs wants people to know that they are not destined to suffer, even on the hottest days of summer. “Yes, it’s a natural part of the transition, but that doesn’t mean symptoms should be tolerated,” she says. “Don’t think that just because this is biologically engineered that we can’t help you make the transition as easy as possible.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
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