<p>Tonight I had the urge to get out of my cooking rut and do something different. I made shrimp/vegetable stir fry with fried brown rice. I enjoyed it, DH was thrilled and ate with gusto. But the kitchen was a MESS. Just a total wreck. DH said “I’ll clean up! But I need to take this business call, so I’ll take care of it when I’m done.” </p>
<p>Conference call went on and on, and I just can’t take a messy kitchen…just can’t. So I cleaned it all up and was just starting the dishwasher when he came back downstairs. He felt bad, I could tell. I was, quite frankly, a little irritated because this is how it plays out quite often.</p>
<p>I’ve been hot flashing so bad the past week…haven’t slept much…just sweating and flushing and pink cheeks flashing…Running the fan, changing shirts several times a day, struggling to find clothes which accommodate my problem. It was almost 90 degrees today in Dallas. :eek:</p>
<p>As a peace offering, he brought me a cold gel pack from the freezer wrapped in paper towels and awkwardly taped up with painter’s tape . He put it behind my neck and I’m stretched out in my favorite chair/ottoman watching “Cousins Under Cover” on HGTV and I’m LOVING this cool pack on the back of my neck. </p>
<p>Sweet Nrdsb4.
I had totally forgotten that I took a very low dose of Prozac–10mg every other day–to combat the hot flashes the first few years. It works very well for many woman in the beginning of their menopause.
I also looked into wicking pj’s. I have found that a larger than normal loose wicking exercise shirt under my cotton top works well.</p>
<p>just reading through these. My update on the menopause journey is that I’ve been on an estrogen patch since February 2013 due to intolerable hot flashes. I started out at .10 mg, and slowly worked my way down to .0375. After a year on the low dose, I lost my common sense and thought I could stop. The hot flashes that had been completely absent came back like a storm. I had forgotten how bad they were. So, I’m back on the patch and the hot flashes are slowly going away and decreasing in intensity. I also started on celexa last May and that has been wonderful for eliminating the anxiety I was feeling. I also now only take 5mg of melatonin about 45 minutes before I want to be asleep and it has worked like a charm. The combination of the patch, celexa, and melatonin has me acting and feeling like a normal person, something I have never felt like! I go to sleep when I want to and fall asleep without the “LIST” going through my head. No worries, just sleep! </p>
<p>I’d love to hear how all of you are doing. This thread is comforting. </p>
<p>Blech is how Im doing.
My periods were every month at 56, but Ive skipped the last two.
Hot flashes are really disrupting my sleep although I also have them all day long. If seven is severe, I have double that at least.
My naturopath has me on black cohosh & hespradin(sp), which helps maybe with 10-20%. Ive only been taking it regularly for a week or so.</p>
<p>When I drank soy milk I didnt have any at all, but I have low thyroid and soy makes it worse, so that isnt really a solution.
Ive pretty much cut alcohol and sugar out, which seems to help, unfortunately.
;)</p>
<p>I haven’t had hot flashes for a year or so. I’m almost 52, and my last period was 15 months ago. I AM having a harder time losing weight! It’s frustrating. I’m already running. I’m going to try working with weights to see if I can get toned!</p>
<p>Having been thrown into surgical menopause five weeks ago, I find this is the most difficult part of recovery. During the day, the hot flashes are tolerable, but they almost always wake me up at night, and in the ten minutes or so I’m waiting for it to go away, I find myself wide awake for almost another 30 minutes to an hour. I’ve actually had hot flashes while in the swimming pool, too. </p>
<p>My GYN felt my cancer was caught early enough that it was safe for me to be on Estrogel (which is a bioidentical hormone replacement therapy), so I started it this past Monday. He said it could take up to a week to see any improvement. I’m counting my days. My only saving grace?? I’m not really sweating when I have them, so during the night, I’m not soaking the sheets and having to strip the bed and wash the sheets every day like I hear many women do.</p>
<p>Baseballmom - your experience has me sort of terrified. I suspect that however long I am kept on estrogen (I’m only 54), I’m afraid that when I come off, the flashes will return. </p>
<p>Again, I can tolerate them during the day; it’s just during the night when they wake me up that annoys me to all end.</p>
<p>I have hot flashes in the swimming pool too!
Ive also gained ten lbs over the winter that I dont even know how that happened, because I had been at my former weight for a long time.</p>
<p>I don’t have to quite strip the bed, but they wake me up.</p>
<p>My sister had hot flashes but it went away eventually but she is turning 60 soon. She drinks a lot more alcohol then I do or did when we were younger.
I’ve heard from my rolfer that yam has lots of estrogen, she put on some yam cream on her hands when she went through menopause, so I did eat more yam, I prefer natural remedies because of less side effects.</p>
<p>Exercise 2 -3 hours and loose weight. However, if you are doing it already, then I do not have any other advice. I never had them. I was told that I do not have them because I exercise and my weight is somewhat in normal range (far from ideal though). Diet wise, I also do not eat like others. But I might not be eating good, so I will not mention it here except for the fact that I do not have regual breakfast, lunch, dinner, I just eat constantly, all the time with small breaks while doing something else. I do not like to cook and that is why my eating has evolved in this way. I am way way past this period, over 10 years.</p>
<p>I have been on a Combipatch for about 18 months. I was always hot, not sleeping and just felt miserable. I even had to go shopping for new tops since all my clothes made me overheated. I didn’t sweat just felt overwhelmingly hot.
I went to my gynecologist and she felt I was an okay candidate for HRT. For me to even consider it she knew I was miserable. I rarely take meds and she knew that. After a yr on the patch I started having some bleeding. I had a biopsy and some test done. Everything was fine. I am now on 1/2 a patch which is .025 mg of estrogen. The bleeding stopped immediately. I find I am not sleeping as well and occasionally have a hot flash but it is tolerable. I tried all the natural remedies and they didn’t work for me. I dread the day I have to go off if it starts all over again. I also have Estrace estrogen vaginal cream for dryness. I find I rarely use it.
I am 53, exercise moderately, rarely drink alcohol and my weight is at the high range do normal for my height and bodytype.</p>
<p>Glad to know I’m not alone in my misery! What makes me craziest is the feeling right before the hot flash…it’s like a big adrenaline surge, with my body feeling all restless like I’m going to go crazy if I don’t move around, then the hot flash, then I’m fine for a while. They are becoming more frequent.</p>
<p>YES!!! The surge - I feel it a few seconds before I start to feel the hot flash. That’s actually what wakes me up… the surge. And if I’m already awake, as soon as I feel the surge, I’m looking for something to fan myself with, or my water bottle, which is never far from reach (it’s not like I always drink the water; sometimes I use it - if the water in it is cool - to just rub around my face and neck).</p>
<p>Teriwtt, at least I have connected the surge with the hot flashes. At first I thought I was having anxiety attacks. </p>
<p>I drink quite a bit of coffee and eat too much sugar. I wonder if cutting out both would help but I haven’t wondered hard enough to try it. Is anyone here LDS/Mormon? That is pretty much a caffeine free community; I wonder if there are any studies that say that LDS women have fewer hot flashes.</p>
<p>But goodness, if my sleep is interrupted multiple times a night by the surge-hot flashes, how can I function without coffee?!</p>
<p>I don’t really do caffeine… never have (the only occasional caffeine I have might be in some chocolate, and even then, it’s very little). It incases my anxiety level beyond what I’m comfortable with. My sugar consumption is on the low side, but not absent. And I still get hot flashes. </p>
<p>The downside of not doing caffeine is I don’t get the benefits people talk about.</p>
