HOT Flashes!!! Do they continue for months or years? (not each one :) )

Parent Cafe
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I will admit that mine decreased to around almost nothing (other than the one after meal cooking one referenced earlier) when I started riding my bike regularly about 1.5 years ago. I had exercised before, but it was walking, not as vigorous as the bike riding as been.

Because I take high blood pressure medication (down to very small dose thanks to cycling), and due to my mother’s devastating history of severe strokes, I never took hormones. When I was going through the worst of perimenopause, my doc told me I was at a higher risk. He said he wouldn’t even consider giving them to me until I got my bp under perfect control. By the time I did, the hot flashes had ceased for the most part, so I didn’t see the risk/benefit to be in favor of hormones.

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"I walk 3 miles daily and lift weights and/or elliptical and am at a healthy BMI. The hot flashes are brutal. "- Then it must be genetics. I do not know my family history as my mother and my cousin both had hysterectomy and frankly, I never asked. I do not think that my BMI is that good at all, but my doc. never told me to lose, so I assume that it is OK. However, I do not go to doc. that often as I am not on medication (yet!). Please, do not be jealous of my genetic make up at all - I am sure that I will have diabetes, hypertension, maybe something else. Everybody on my mothers’ side and my younger brother have diabetes, I guess, if not one thing, then it is another. I do not need to push myself to exercise, it is one of my very favorite things to do. Surely, it is much easier to walk with my H. instead of serving dinner to him. So, I choose to walk and we just snack in the evening, having sit down dinner only once / week. I am pretty lazy person who just happen to love to move, it gives me energy.

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No hot flashes here. ==knock on wood== Periods are sporadic and light. I’m in my early 50s.

I do take a low dose of OTC progesterone daily and a very low dose of DHEA daily.

Adult acne = not. good.

My late 40s were bad with flooding periods. I’m relieved to be past that.

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For adult acne, a very low dose of aldactone was like a miracle cure for me.

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BTW-If any of you are having a really tough time, check out hystersisters website. It has a lot of info other than just about hysterectomies. There are conversations about HRT, hot flashes, etc. It’s quite the sisterhood over there and there are lots of medical information resources on the site.

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I have not read all of the post so perhaps Prozac has been mentioned. A very low dose helps with hot flashes.
Forget the dosage but it is too low to be therapeutic for depression.

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Fifteen long and sweaty years. That’s ten years post menopause. The only remedy that has had any impact is a low dose anti- depressant taken daily, in the late afternoon. It has no affect on my mood ( I am not depressed). It merely decreases the number and severity of hot flashes.

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My H is a doc and has seen women in their 90’s who still have hot flashes :|.
I wear nothing but layers–tank tops and shirts. I usually end up with just the tank top.
Not really having hot flashes as much as just too hot period.
During the worse of the hot flashes I bought wicking shirts–the athletic ones, cheap–and wore them too bed.
Less changing pj’s through the night. Actual wicking pajama cost $$$.

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All night, every night, all day, every day, panicky rage, then post-chills. Sleep with fan on face, work with fan on face. Year 7, The struggle is real

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I think I’m going to go nuts. How are we supposed to get through this? Can we please reverse the clock?

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@raclut - replacement hormone therapy is a wonderful thing.

I just had this conversation with my gynecologist on Thursday after one of my regularly-scheduled post-cancer check ups (I now get to move to every six months instead of every three!). Too many gynecologists/physicians these days are still looking solely to that 2003 (I think) study that showed an increase in gynecological cancers for women on synthetic hormone-replacement therapy. Of all the women my GYN has on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, none have had any relapses in cancer (of the ones who have had cancer) - their cardiac health is better, and their sex lives are better (newer studies also mention the better bone and bladder health as well as huge decreases in dementia, and he has women in their 70s and 80s on them). He is peeved as all get out, though, because Medicare won’t cover hormone replacement therapy for women after they turn 65 years old… EXCEPT, if you’re a man who wishes to transition to a female, then Medicare will cover those hormones (men can get breast cancer, too). And of course, Medicare covers testosterone replacement therapy for men after age 65. He thinks it’s just a matter of time before recommendations start to switch, maybe quite a few years, but it will.

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Gee I guess I lucked out on this. Never had one. Only way I know I went through menopause is my periods stopped. My mom says she never had one either.

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I thought I would never start menopause. I had heavy periods, regularly every 28 days, until right after my 57th birthday! (That’s not a typo). They abruptly stopped. Then, a couple months later the nightly hot flashes started. Ugh! Several times each night! Thankfully, after a few months, they’ve tapered down and seem to be disappearing (I can only hope after being “punished” by having been the oldest woman still having periods of any of my friends or family!!!)
X(

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I told a friend and she said welcome to the club. I begged her to kick me out of it. I thought I was too young to worry about menopause but I started perimenopausal symtoms at age 47. Had faint to nonexistent periods for 14 months and then two months ago had a very heavy one. Went for an ultrasound and tests to confirm it. No I am having irregular periods again and at times they are either light or heavy. I get irritable, feel hot in the evenings and feel like taking a cool shower. I just want to over and done with this. If I feel uncomfortable I can’t sleep well at night unless I feel the outside temperature go down and feel a cool fresh breeze.

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@teriwtt

Would you mind sharing what your MD is prescribing for you and how the proper dose was determined?

I’m taking a low dose of bio-identical OTC progesterone. No hot flashes yet, but very irregular periods (irregular in timing and flow).

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I took a low dose of the anti-depressant Effexor after having surgery for cancer (including a hysterectomy) and going cold turkey on the estrogen. I was not able to take hormones because of the cancer diagnosis and the hot flashes were horrendous, about three every hour, day in and day out. The Effexor cut down on the frequency and intensity, and while I was not depressed I think it helped with irritability, too.

Unfortunately, my primary care doc noticed my blood pressure was up about a year after starting it, and rising blood pressure is one of the possible side effects of Effexor. So I had to taper off of it, and that was a nightmare. I really began to appreciate how a drug addict must feel when they try to to quit. I had these weird dizzy spells and just felt shaky all the time. My experience wasn’t unusual, I discovered. So there are definitely downsides to trying a non-HRT drug route.

Anyhow, 12 years after the surgery, I am cancer free, but not hot flash free. I still get them maybe three or four times day and night, although they aren’t as bad. They are worse in the summer, though :frowning:

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I have had hot flashes here and there, for a couple of years now… I am 50. I’ve noticed they are more frequent when I don’t drink enough water, and/or drink too much alcohol.

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@Midwest67 - My GYN had me in for blood work five weeks after my hysterectomy, which as we guessed, showed I had very little estrogen (women do still produce some estrogen after menopause, which is why some women are prescribed estrogen-blocking medications such as Tamoxifen after being treated for certain kinds of cancer), so he started me on a prescription cream from a compounding pharmacy that I rubbed into my forearm twice a day; we doubled the dosage once, when I got no relief. With the increased dose, I still got no relief, so we moved to a gel (forgive me if I’ve gotten this backwards, but I know I started with either cream or gel, then switched to the other one). So I switched to the gel and we went through the same thing again; he did more blood work and told me I was no where near the therapeutic level, so for some reason, my body does not absorb the stuff well through the skin. Then he put me on the Minivelle patch, at .01mg/day. He used an analogy of my ‘reservoir being dried up for a long time’ (eight months) and that we were starting high to refill it. I’m telling you, within 3-4 days of starting that patch, the hot flashes started going away, and I was SO relieved - I slept better than I had in more than six months. But within a 3-4 months, I started having some really low-grade PMS symptoms (low-grade headaches and very tender breasts), so when I saw him the next time in six months (and yes, my blood work showed high levels of estrogen) , he lowered me to the .075 mg./day. When I had more blood work in six months, I was not surprised to hear that I was still on the high side as I was still having the occasional PMS symptoms, so he lowered my dose to .05 mg./day and that’s where I’ve been at since last December. When I saw him last week, I knew that my estrogen was going to be low as I’d started to have some very occasional hot flashes and occasional waking up in the middle of the night/throwing off sheets and blankets. But it’s very tolerable, unlike right after my hysterectomy. If it doesn’t get any worse, I can live with this. But yea, my estrogen has really reduced since December so we had a talk about it. I told him I was perfectly fine with it as it is right now, and if the hot flashes and sleep start to get effected again, he said he has some women alternate different prescriptions of patches. With the Minivelle patch, you change it every 3.5 days; I change mine on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings… one of those days I’d put on a .075 patch, and on the other day I’d put on a .05 patch.

The other part of the equation is what you’re doing already, taking progesterone. When I was having the heavy bleeding and refusing to have the endometrial ablation, he had put me on bio-identical progesterone then, so I was already on it when I had my hysterectomy. The most important thing to remember is that most of those women who were in the 2003 study that showed an increase in cancer while on HRT, they were only on estrogen - they were not taking progesterone. And yes, there can be a correlation between unopposed estrogen therapy and cancer. So anyone on estrogen should be on, and be monitored for their progesterone, too.

One of the reasons we had a more in-depth talk about it last week is that, since I saw him last in December, I had a pretty serious breast cancer scare. My mammogram classification correlated with a 79% chance of malignancy, so I was scared out of my mind for a couple of weeks until I had the biopsy and got the results showing what they saw was just scar tissue. But for a couple of weeks, I was assuming I was going to have surgery, and probably radiation and possibly chemotherapy. One of my biggest worries was my HRT was going to be taken away from me (which he assured me he would not do after I told him what had happened in April with the scare) and I’d go back to a miserable life that I had right after my hysterectomy when I was so sleep-deprived. Even my breast surgeon told me some of his patients are on HRT after a cancer diagnosis because really, for some women, it becomes a quality of life issue. Many doctors these days will suggest certain anti-depressants for hot flashes, but I wasn’t willing to go that route; I preferred the BHRT route and so far, I’m happy with the results, even if it has taken some time to get to a stable/manageable level.

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@teriwtt

Thank you for taking the time to write out your story. Much appreciated! Wishing you good health!

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then two months ago had a very heavy one
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My last period was extremely heavy and LONG…ridiculously so. It was like the “last hurrah!” Ugh!