6 Ways to Deal With Night Sweats During Menopause – Self

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If youre going through menopause, you may be familiar with the following experience: You wake up throughout the night, drenched in sweat for no discernable reason. You toss and turn, clammy and cold. You feel anxious and exhausted, and youre painfully aware that the lack of sleep youre currently experiencing will perpetuate both of those feelings.

Unfortunately, vasomotor symptomswhich include hot flashes and night sweatsare a common symptom of menopause, affecting approximately 50-75% of those going through it.1 Theyre not just a nuisance; they can have real health consequences. Women who have bad hot flashes and sleep disruptions are also at higher risk for cardiovascular disease and dementia in their lifetimes, Melanie Marin, MD, director of the menopause program in the Raquel and Jaime Gilinski Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, tells SELF. Fortunately, experts say, there are actionable things you can do to improve sleep when night sweats are getting in the way.

Make a visit to your doctor to specifically go over your menopausal symptoms, their frequency, and their severity. Its really important for it to be separated from an annual GYN visit or any other kind of visit, because there is a lot to go through, Laurie Jeffers, NP, DNP, co-director of the Center for Midlife Health and Menopause at NYU Langone Health, told SELF. In this consult, your doctor or nurse practitioner will parse out which symptoms are related to menopause and provide knowledge about treatment options. Typically we go through the data, and we give women education regarding the actual risks, benefits, and potential side effects for either the hormonal options that are available or nonhormonal options, Dr. Jeffers says.

Hormone replacement therapy is a treatment used to address the hormonal imbalances one goes through during menopause by replacing (or supplementing) estrogen that the body produces far less of during, and following, menopause. I think women suffer a lot thinking that hormone replacement therapy should be the last choice, instead of the first choice, says Dr. Marin. (Theres enough popular confusion about this point that the North American Menopause Society, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and the Endocrine Society have gone so far as to put out a joint statement that medical organizations devoted to the care of menopausal women agree that there is no question that hormone therapy has an important role in managing symptoms for healthy women during the menopause transition and in early menopause.) While there are risks and side effects with any medication, Dr. Marin explains that estrogen is the most effective method for alleviating hot flashes and night sweats. It can also help prevent bone loss and vaginal dryness, according to the FDA.

If youre suffering from night sweats, and you havent been able to find relief in the oft-stated (but perhaps not particularly helpful) suggestions of dressing in light layers and using a fan, its worth speaking to your doctor about whether hormone replacement therapy would help. I would truly encourage anyone who's really suffering and not able to get significant relief to speak to their doctor, Dr. Marin says, whether you're in perimenopause [the transitional phase into menopause], and low-dose birth control pills are the right way to go, or whether you're in menopause and hormone replacement therapy is the right way to go.

Dr. Jeffers agrees. if youre an appropriate candidate for hormone therapy, she says, then that's going to be the most effective relief from night sweats.

If you arent an appropriate candidate for hormonal therapy, Dr. Jeffers says, there are very good, very effective, and very safe non-hormonal options available. These options might include SSRI or SNRI antidepressants alone or combined with clinical hypnosis, which is totally realits a state of deep relaxation and focused concentration that youre guided to with verbal cues, repetition and imagery by a trained therapist, according to the Cleveland Clinic.2,3

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6 Ways to Deal With Night Sweats During Menopause - Self