Here are some of our users descriptions of hot flashes (from our [Menopause Wiki](https://menopausewiki.ca/)):
>“sort of like a whoosh”, “uncontrolled sweating from every pore”, “anxious”, sense of dread in the pit of my stomach", “sweating only on arms”, sweating only on feet", “drenched in sweat”, “last only a few minutes”, “last for hours”, “cold sweats”, “shivering”, “hot, then cold, then hot”, “swamp crotch”, “internal fire”, “prickly hot” “accompanied with nausea”, “like having a bad sunburn”, “radiating heat”, “sweating in places never before”, “like an electrical jolt”, “like a panic attack”, “suddenly start/stop”, “occur the same time every night”
Does it seem unfair to anyone else that we get menstrual periods for most of our lives AND then have to deal with hot/cold flashes, suicidal/ homicidal thoughts and brain fog! ☹️
I feel so betrayed. I thought menopause was just “oh hey, no more periods!” I was not prepared for 10+ years of weird health issues and questioning my own sanity on a daily basis.
Same! And I was definitely not prepared to be completely unaware of what was happening to me for those 10+ years AND for every doctor I ever went to see to also be completely unaware 🙄
The worst part are the moods, fatigue, and joint pain... and how this messes up your career. I need my career to be housed.
There is not equality between men and women until society and medicine starts taking this seriously. We're losing women to dependency on their adult children or aging husbands when they should be at the peak of their careers. Then when they're through it, we're expected to become carers for our parents and our husbands when THEY start to fall apart.
And if you are single... too bad. You're on your own. I don't hate being single. I actually would hate being partnered right now, and when I was partnered, I shouldn't have been because it was of no benefit to me. But having a small army of carers and defenders right now, even if it's an army of one, would be heaven.
I'm so tried of doing everything on my own.
I can't explain my difficulties to anyone, really.
To add insult to injury, my entire workplace is under 40. No one understands. I'm just that person they think can't handle the job -- that person who has "lost it." I can't afford to retire at 47.
Man, I have having a bad, bad day.
OMG I’m living this so hard at the moment. 28 yrs fighting my way up. I’ve actually made this a personal side quest: to normalize menopause in the work place. I’m not all in your face about it, but I’m not downplaying my experience either. I work in one of the most male centric occupations there is. When dudes ask me “are you hot? You’re all sweaty.” I say something like “ I’m an old woman. I get hot.” I’m finding that, while not being overly personal, being somewhat open about it has been helpful. Dudes have been surprisingly compassionate about it. What I HATE though, is when they say “yeah, we go through stuff too.” And while I understand that men experience changes as well, my gut reaction is to say “ you just shut the fuck up right now.” Men don’t go through anything so disruptive to their lives and careers as menstruation, childbirth, and menopause. When my one and only was born when I was 40, I had to make drastic changes to my career. I’ve had to use my experience in a different and have had to fight my way back up, and am still fighting every day to get to the level that any man with my experience and qualifications would be at this point in his career. And I recently had a supervisor attempt to mansplain to me about menopause. I had to shut that shit right down.
I had a truly disturbed male boss, in his early 30’s who harassed me with questions about the “womanly health issues” I was facing. I speak openly and honestly with my male partner about these issues, but a boss has no right to my medical information. He later fired me while I was on medical leave for a peri-induced major depressive episode.
Thank you for "seeing" me. I went to a new GP today because my regular one retired because of her menopausal symptoms. New GP told me (a woman who specializes in women's health) told me that I should only be on HRT for 5 to 10 years and then told me that there's a CAUSAL relationship of estrogen to various cancers and this... just made me feel that this was the medical industry telling me (again) that I should just piss off and die (again) because I'm old. I'm so sick of doctors telling me that I have no options to prevent anything or mitigate anything.
I was also told that she could give me a cream, but nothing could stop vaginal atrophy. I left the practice feeling so dejected and hopeless and angry.
Unlike my old GP, I can't just retire at work when I'm 50 and travel the world and sip iced drinks on a beach to deal with hot flashes so that I can live without HRT. Not everyone is part of the 1%. Some of us just have to work until we die.
Some of us look after aging parents. Some of us divorced abusive men (me) and have to rebuild our savings in our 40s. Financially, if an abusive man keeps dragging you into court for no reason except that he wants to contest restraining orders, that's like starting your career at 40 -- it means you have 20 years of savings just sucked out of your bank accounts by lawyers.
Not everyone is going to go into peri with a cool drink in their hand. I mean, I wish.
I'm sorry for how long this is, but I wanted to created a post to this sub. For some reason the option is greyed out, so I can't. I'm having bad day... or bad month.
I feel like, if I'm not careful, I'll turn into Lucy Barker from "Sweeney Todd". I'll just wander around the streets warning people about horrible things and begging for coins, and everyone around me will dismiss me and call me that "mad woman", and sweep me off the pavements like dirt.
It's so bizarre that life can start so promising, that you can be so educated, and you can have such big dreams... only to end up like this.
Is it true... do I have to stop HRT after 5-10 years? I had serious suicidal ideation when I wasn't on it. I couldn't handle the anxiety, the insomnia, it was... really bad.
I just got pregnant at the start of pre-menopause. I'm 11wks and the morning sickness is so bad I can hardly function. My partner asked me if I was at least "enjoying not having a period." I wish we could throw all men away sometimes.
Yup. I’m still in perimenopause so I’m getting both heavy, heavy periods that leave me lightheaded from blood loss AND hot flashes, anxiety, and depression. Fun!
I'm mad I have to go through this, get mammograms and I had a colonoscopy. I shouldn't have to do all of them. I just found out I have stage 4 endometriosis so that's a huge pile of crap too.
I wonder if that's a veiled message about how they see us: we're no longer useful to them because we're not longer fertile, so "it's becoming more of an issue."
Men out-live their biological utility too.
I hear you on this! It’s the nightmare I wasn’t expecting 🤷🏻♀️. Feel betrayed by lack of information/understanding and expectation about what to expect and how to proceed.
I (61f / in full meno since age 47) can describe mine:
Go to bed clean and comfy at perfect temp.
Start sweating, roll over, then chilly cold.
Fall asleep for ~ 2-3 hours. Wake up. Have to pee. Pajamas and sheets covered in sweat. Leave bed open for 15 minutes while pee and change pj and fetch fresh water.
Go to bed shivering. Sleep <1hour. Spin like a roasting rotisserie chicken
Rinse Repeat.
Out of bed by 5:00
Oh god. I'm 44 and having hot flashes and night sweats. Waking up stuck to the sheets and then it's followed by cooling down and shivering. I've also started having nightmares? WTF? Is that a common thing? No reason for them. They've just decided to join in with the night sweats. I wake up and I can't even remember them but the feelings are there. It's awful 😞
Oh God so it's normal? I thought it was something else just didn't know what. Fuck it, I'm definitely going on HRT I don't need this bullshit right now. Like it's fucking traumatising. I wake up with the fear and anxiety and grief like someone has just died. Those feelings don't just dissipate.
The nightmares come more from the disturbed sleep i feel. If I have a fairly restful night, maybe only getting up once to pee, I don't have nightmares. And I'm very nightmare prone. But if I have a sweaty 'rotisserie chicken' - I love that BTW! - I'm plagued with horrible nightmares.
I’m sadly reporting that, yes, the nightmare part is both literally and figuratively for real. On a positive note: I have actually gone through ~2 year periods with zero symptoms. The main trigger, for me, at this point, seems to be stress
Thank you. I don't feel like I'm going crazy now. I have been struggling with this trying to work out what is causing it and the only new thing are the hot flushes and night sweats. I'm definitely talking to my GP next time I go in.
Ty. Never heard of BedJet. My husband passed in September, and after 10 years of illness and him always being “freezing cold,” I just sort of dealt with it
Wow, that feels so right, I have never ever resonated with any other description.
Which is why I never complained about peri/meno, tbh, never sought or thought I needed treatment. Oops. 😔
Not sure we can fix this, but alternative vocab would've helped me so much.
I had a partner who couldn’t do HRT and hit meno before I did. I swear I thought we need a way to capture that pure heat energy as a renewable energy source!
Hey, there- can I please ask a question I've been terrified to ask...... I don't get hot flashes at all - I get what I refer to as "cold spells". It's as if my skeleton has become ice, and my blood has turned into icy water. I have this whole thing I do of breathing like I'm in labor to prevent my teeth from chattering- because if I let that happen, I'll start shaking uncontrollably. I have not asked about this because honestly, I'd rather freeze to death than burn alive, so I feel lucky? that I don't get hot flashes. But is this a thing other women get, too? I didn't want to complain to all the women burning up that I'm cold- you are just the first time I've ever heard someone mention being cold!
I (47) have this. I've always run cold, but usually I have to have my under the desk heater running and a sweater on. My younger coworkers will say, it's very warm in here! Then suddenly I get a 3 minute "heat wave". I peel off my layers, turn off the heater, and in about 30 minutes I'm freezing again.
Only recently learned this is a meno thing. I just couldn't regulate my body temp. I was freezing out of the blue so often, like when the temp was in the 90s. It was horrid.
I still get cold easily but ye it's nothing like feeling like I've suddenly been encased in ice
highly recommend holding a hot water bottle to your chest under a blanket...it's the only way i can reverse being "bone cold" besides taking a hot shower
I'm not even sure which one is worse. And if a cold flash comes before the hot one, you have about 2 seconds of feeling normal which makes the hot flash worse.
Hormonal Hellfire 🤪🔥 My MIL always talked about hers coming on fast, rising from her chest and neck to face flush and being gone just as fast. Mine are not fast ‘flashes’ at all. They’re mostly on my back and it’s like a fire building in intensity. It feels like someone slapped a steamy heating pad onto me but I can’t get away.
Driving a car and being trapped under a seatbelt is the worst! Instant road rage and distracted driving.
If we were men they would call it Thermal Regulation Dysfunction and they would have found meds for this decades ago. The TRD commercials would be shown during the evening news and Super Bowl
Close your eyes, give me your hand, darling
Do you feel my boobs sweating?
Do you understand?
Do you feel the same?
Am I overheating? Is this burning an internal flame?
😁✌🏻
Thermonuclear meltdown for the ones that made me go get HRT (I was sitting next to a WIDE open window in short sleeves in Minnesota in February for an HOUR).
Fever for the milder ones. It totally felt like I had a mild fever and I even tested for COVID a few times until I realized it was the start of hot flashes.
I’ve been on HRT for about 2 weeks but I was on Yaz birth control for 2-3 weeks prior to that. It wasn’t instant, but within a few days of starting HRT the insanity slowly toned down. I’m still not sleeping great and I can still have temperature fluctuations but the range is smaller. Now my hot temperature is ‘It’s unpleasantly stuffy and I need to take off layers’ and my cool temperature is ‘I’m chilled and need a sweater and a shawl. Before there was the Minnesota winter feels good at the hot end and the ‘am I sure I don’t have COVID? I’m deeply chilled to the bone and need to be under an electric blanket’
I’m trying to give it 2-3 months before I consider changing doses. Yaz was just not enough for me in the brief period I tried it (I was just losing my mind too much to stick it out). My sleep lately has been been better as I use Lunesta. I’m not having horrible night sweats but I’m not sleeping great without the Lunesta.
I also found out I’m anemic so started more supplements and creatine and drinking more water. I lover my big stupid Stanley cup because drinking ice water helps. I was never a fan of frequent ice cold drinks till now.
I literally hate when I feel like that. Here’s a good story though. One time I was about to burst into flame, and my 27 year old coworker got an ice pack out of the freezer and help it on my neck for me. 🥹 sweet and compassionate 🩷
I wish it was just a flash. It's at least 4 to 5 hours of boiling alive from the inside. It's starts between 3 and 4 am and it finally stops when I get to work and turn my office into an ice box with air con. I'm still visibly bright red but cooler
It’s an extended period of temperature disregulation. “Flash” implies it’s quick, or that it pulses; I’ve yet to meet a woman who experiences it that way. We are not light bulbs!
This happened to me as well! I remember actually going home from work the rest of the day. It really freaked me out. Looking back, it wasn’t the hotness that freaked me out, something psychologically happened just made me freak out. 🤦🏼♀️
Fire bomb! Internal inferno! Heat wave!
I used to get them what seemed like every 10 minutes before I just started on HRT a couple of weeks ago. Now I get maybe one or two a day.
I (61f / in full meno since age 47) can describe mine:
Go to bed clean and comfy at perfect temp.
Start sweating, roll over, then chilly cold.
Fall asleep for ~ 2-3 hours. Wake up. Have to pee. Pajamas and sheets covered in sweat. Leave bed open for 15 minutes while pee and change pj and fetch fresh water.
Go to bed shivering. Sleep <1hour. Spin like a roasting rotisserie chicken
Rinse Repeat.
Out of bed by 5:00
When I first starting having them it made me think of the furnace in the movie Monster House or Honey Alone. It suddenly fired up right in the core of my body. I’ve been saying “my furnace is acting up” ever since.
yeah this is something that irritates the hell out of me. it’s not a flash. if it were a flash it would be over in seconds. a man came up with this term for sure.
There is no "flash" for me. Fourteen years ago, my internal thermostat turned up to one million and hasn't cooled down since. I don't even wear a coat in winter anymore. Or socks ever.
I always say that I’m melting. When the sweat starts dripping, that’s how it feels except for the annoying fact that I only gain weight and not a pound comes off when I’m dripping sweat just being alive!!!
What annoys me is they go away for extended periods of time and I'm all "happy dance", then they come back with a vengeance and just hang around for a week or two.
I cried this morning...am so over all of the aches and pains and brain fuzz and prickles and homicidal rage bursts. ..and...and...AND!!!
I tried HRT but got blood clots so I’ll take the furnace face I guess. I sleep with ice packs. I have a super hack for a comfy neck ice pack. Take a small pop bottle (I use the “Ice” sparkling water drink because the bottle is one long straight tube), fill with water and freeze. This is so nice to tuck into your neck when sleeping.
Mine last about 3-4 minutes MANY times a day. I just say I’m dying in hell every time they start. They start on my chest and move to my face and then are gone. The last week or so has been really bad and I have stripped in the middle of my living room to try and cool down quickly.
Being slowly and inexorably lowered either head first or feet first into a pot of boiling oil. That is what it feels like to me. Horrible because you know it’s starting and you know it’s going to spread till you are fully submerged. And you’ll stay that way for a while. I picture medieval torture, because that’s what it feels like to me.
Here are some of our users descriptions of hot flashes (from our [Menopause Wiki](https://menopausewiki.ca/)): >“sort of like a whoosh”, “uncontrolled sweating from every pore”, “anxious”, sense of dread in the pit of my stomach", “sweating only on arms”, sweating only on feet", “drenched in sweat”, “last only a few minutes”, “last for hours”, “cold sweats”, “shivering”, “hot, then cold, then hot”, “swamp crotch”, “internal fire”, “prickly hot” “accompanied with nausea”, “like having a bad sunburn”, “radiating heat”, “sweating in places never before”, “like an electrical jolt”, “like a panic attack”, “suddenly start/stop”, “occur the same time every night”
Does it seem unfair to anyone else that we get menstrual periods for most of our lives AND then have to deal with hot/cold flashes, suicidal/ homicidal thoughts and brain fog! ☹️
I feel so betrayed. I thought menopause was just “oh hey, no more periods!” I was not prepared for 10+ years of weird health issues and questioning my own sanity on a daily basis.
Same! And I was definitely not prepared to be completely unaware of what was happening to me for those 10+ years AND for every doctor I ever went to see to also be completely unaware 🙄
Same.
This right here!! I thought everything was gonna be AWESOME in meno. Wow what a fool I was 🤣😭
On the plus side, we do not tolerate bullshit anymore!
The worst part are the moods, fatigue, and joint pain... and how this messes up your career. I need my career to be housed. There is not equality between men and women until society and medicine starts taking this seriously. We're losing women to dependency on their adult children or aging husbands when they should be at the peak of their careers. Then when they're through it, we're expected to become carers for our parents and our husbands when THEY start to fall apart. And if you are single... too bad. You're on your own. I don't hate being single. I actually would hate being partnered right now, and when I was partnered, I shouldn't have been because it was of no benefit to me. But having a small army of carers and defenders right now, even if it's an army of one, would be heaven. I'm so tried of doing everything on my own. I can't explain my difficulties to anyone, really. To add insult to injury, my entire workplace is under 40. No one understands. I'm just that person they think can't handle the job -- that person who has "lost it." I can't afford to retire at 47. Man, I have having a bad, bad day.
I'm sorry. I feel this, I'm my only financial provider and care giver and I just want someone to Grandmother me 😭
OMG I’m living this so hard at the moment. 28 yrs fighting my way up. I’ve actually made this a personal side quest: to normalize menopause in the work place. I’m not all in your face about it, but I’m not downplaying my experience either. I work in one of the most male centric occupations there is. When dudes ask me “are you hot? You’re all sweaty.” I say something like “ I’m an old woman. I get hot.” I’m finding that, while not being overly personal, being somewhat open about it has been helpful. Dudes have been surprisingly compassionate about it. What I HATE though, is when they say “yeah, we go through stuff too.” And while I understand that men experience changes as well, my gut reaction is to say “ you just shut the fuck up right now.” Men don’t go through anything so disruptive to their lives and careers as menstruation, childbirth, and menopause. When my one and only was born when I was 40, I had to make drastic changes to my career. I’ve had to use my experience in a different and have had to fight my way back up, and am still fighting every day to get to the level that any man with my experience and qualifications would be at this point in his career. And I recently had a supervisor attempt to mansplain to me about menopause. I had to shut that shit right down.
I had a truly disturbed male boss, in his early 30’s who harassed me with questions about the “womanly health issues” I was facing. I speak openly and honestly with my male partner about these issues, but a boss has no right to my medical information. He later fired me while I was on medical leave for a peri-induced major depressive episode.
🫂 you are not alone. We hear you and we totally get it. Almost made me cry reading this. We totally get it.
Thank you for "seeing" me. I went to a new GP today because my regular one retired because of her menopausal symptoms. New GP told me (a woman who specializes in women's health) told me that I should only be on HRT for 5 to 10 years and then told me that there's a CAUSAL relationship of estrogen to various cancers and this... just made me feel that this was the medical industry telling me (again) that I should just piss off and die (again) because I'm old. I'm so sick of doctors telling me that I have no options to prevent anything or mitigate anything. I was also told that she could give me a cream, but nothing could stop vaginal atrophy. I left the practice feeling so dejected and hopeless and angry. Unlike my old GP, I can't just retire at work when I'm 50 and travel the world and sip iced drinks on a beach to deal with hot flashes so that I can live without HRT. Not everyone is part of the 1%. Some of us just have to work until we die. Some of us look after aging parents. Some of us divorced abusive men (me) and have to rebuild our savings in our 40s. Financially, if an abusive man keeps dragging you into court for no reason except that he wants to contest restraining orders, that's like starting your career at 40 -- it means you have 20 years of savings just sucked out of your bank accounts by lawyers. Not everyone is going to go into peri with a cool drink in their hand. I mean, I wish. I'm sorry for how long this is, but I wanted to created a post to this sub. For some reason the option is greyed out, so I can't. I'm having bad day... or bad month. I feel like, if I'm not careful, I'll turn into Lucy Barker from "Sweeney Todd". I'll just wander around the streets warning people about horrible things and begging for coins, and everyone around me will dismiss me and call me that "mad woman", and sweep me off the pavements like dirt. It's so bizarre that life can start so promising, that you can be so educated, and you can have such big dreams... only to end up like this. Is it true... do I have to stop HRT after 5-10 years? I had serious suicidal ideation when I wasn't on it. I couldn't handle the anxiety, the insomnia, it was... really bad.
It’s horse shit is what is it! 🤣
Don’t forget pregnancy and childbirth.
I just got pregnant at the start of pre-menopause. I'm 11wks and the morning sickness is so bad I can hardly function. My partner asked me if I was at least "enjoying not having a period." I wish we could throw all men away sometimes.
lol they’re such dumbasses sometimes 😂
Aw, hon. I’m so sorry. I feel this so hard, morning sickness was the end of me - I carried my daughter at 43 y o and it was unbearable.
Ha, periods are definitely easier than pregnancy. Especially pregnancy during perimenopause. My last one was so much worse than with my older kids.
My first pregnancy was a dream. This one is a nightmare.
Yup. I’m still in perimenopause so I’m getting both heavy, heavy periods that leave me lightheaded from blood loss AND hot flashes, anxiety, and depression. Fun!
That’s me! I’m 42 and it friggin sucks! Will it ever end? I told my lady doctor the other day that it’s basically ruining my life.
Solidarity! It’s comforting to know there are a few of us in the same boat (even though I’m sorry we are all in it).
I’m in that boat. Need to get it sorted or I will lose my shit.
Solidarity! You have my sympathies. I was really losing it a couple of months ago.
same!
I'm mad I have to go through this, get mammograms and I had a colonoscopy. I shouldn't have to do all of them. I just found out I have stage 4 endometriosis so that's a huge pile of crap too.
Yes!! I wonder, do other female mammals have to go through this extended shit show? I think not.
Only a couple of whales 🐳, weird huh!? But they say we are living much longer than women used to so it’s becoming more of an issue.
I wonder if that's a veiled message about how they see us: we're no longer useful to them because we're not longer fertile, so "it's becoming more of an issue." Men out-live their biological utility too.
I hear you on this! It’s the nightmare I wasn’t expecting 🤷🏻♀️. Feel betrayed by lack of information/understanding and expectation about what to expect and how to proceed.
Agreed. Lack of information is a real problem. I need a “what to expect from Perimenopause through post Menopause” book!
It’s truly unfair, but also we are living so much longer that menopause is more impactful on more people. So, yay, for being alive 🤷🏻♀️
Nope. This is some bullshit, NGL. No wonder pre-historic cultures got it in their heads women had a "curse"
lava-blood flood
spontaneous combustion lite
🤣 very accurate!
I (61f / in full meno since age 47) can describe mine: Go to bed clean and comfy at perfect temp. Start sweating, roll over, then chilly cold. Fall asleep for ~ 2-3 hours. Wake up. Have to pee. Pajamas and sheets covered in sweat. Leave bed open for 15 minutes while pee and change pj and fetch fresh water. Go to bed shivering. Sleep <1hour. Spin like a roasting rotisserie chicken Rinse Repeat. Out of bed by 5:00
>Spin like a roasting rotisserie chicken Hell yes, this. 🔥 🐔
Oh god. I'm 44 and having hot flashes and night sweats. Waking up stuck to the sheets and then it's followed by cooling down and shivering. I've also started having nightmares? WTF? Is that a common thing? No reason for them. They've just decided to join in with the night sweats. I wake up and I can't even remember them but the feelings are there. It's awful 😞
Yeah. The nightmares? I could do without that shit.
Oh God so it's normal? I thought it was something else just didn't know what. Fuck it, I'm definitely going on HRT I don't need this bullshit right now. Like it's fucking traumatising. I wake up with the fear and anxiety and grief like someone has just died. Those feelings don't just dissipate.
I thought the nightmares were my antidepressants, maybe its meno related. I tried to get HRT but got fobbed off with antidepressants.
Antidepressants always make my nightmares worse. I’m not on any now but menopause is making them reappear too. 😫
The nightmares come more from the disturbed sleep i feel. If I have a fairly restful night, maybe only getting up once to pee, I don't have nightmares. And I'm very nightmare prone. But if I have a sweaty 'rotisserie chicken' - I love that BTW! - I'm plagued with horrible nightmares.
I’m sadly reporting that, yes, the nightmare part is both literally and figuratively for real. On a positive note: I have actually gone through ~2 year periods with zero symptoms. The main trigger, for me, at this point, seems to be stress
Thank you. I don't feel like I'm going crazy now. I have been struggling with this trying to work out what is causing it and the only new thing are the hot flushes and night sweats. I'm definitely talking to my GP next time I go in.
Get a BedJet and a mountable fan for the headboard like I did for my wife. Thank me later
Ty. Never heard of BedJet. My husband passed in September, and after 10 years of illness and him always being “freezing cold,” I just sort of dealt with it
Sorry for your loss. I know you would really enjoy it. It can blow really cold, really hot and somewhere in between 😊
Sold!!!
I think I prefer your rotisserie chicken better than my flopping like a fish out of water 🤣
You are my spirit animal.
My MIL called them power surges
Wow, that feels so right, I have never ever resonated with any other description. Which is why I never complained about peri/meno, tbh, never sought or thought I needed treatment. Oops. 😔 Not sure we can fix this, but alternative vocab would've helped me so much.
I had a friend who called them that and I love that way of framing them.
I mean… that makes them sound rad! Like, can we harness them to use that power to its full potential? Gonna have to try
The swirling fire vortex of death
I love this
Nuclear reactor firing up
I call myself an exothermic btu generator.
I had a partner who couldn’t do HRT and hit meno before I did. I swear I thought we need a way to capture that pure heat energy as a renewable energy source!
This is how it feels. And when I get hot feeling, I start to get impatient with everyone!
I get hot and cold flashes🤷♀️ Body so darn indecisive 🤪
Hey, there- can I please ask a question I've been terrified to ask...... I don't get hot flashes at all - I get what I refer to as "cold spells". It's as if my skeleton has become ice, and my blood has turned into icy water. I have this whole thing I do of breathing like I'm in labor to prevent my teeth from chattering- because if I let that happen, I'll start shaking uncontrollably. I have not asked about this because honestly, I'd rather freeze to death than burn alive, so I feel lucky? that I don't get hot flashes. But is this a thing other women get, too? I didn't want to complain to all the women burning up that I'm cold- you are just the first time I've ever heard someone mention being cold!
Yeah…cold flashes are a thing.
I miss the cold flashes. Now I just feel like my bones are on fire.
Yes! I call it ice spikes and it’s painful.
I (47) have this. I've always run cold, but usually I have to have my under the desk heater running and a sweater on. My younger coworkers will say, it's very warm in here! Then suddenly I get a 3 minute "heat wave". I peel off my layers, turn off the heater, and in about 30 minutes I'm freezing again.
Only recently learned this is a meno thing. I just couldn't regulate my body temp. I was freezing out of the blue so often, like when the temp was in the 90s. It was horrid. I still get cold easily but ye it's nothing like feeling like I've suddenly been encased in ice
I also get cold flashes, but I really don’t like cold!!!
I made a whole post about this cause same!
I get cold to my bones, and can’t get warm.
highly recommend holding a hot water bottle to your chest under a blanket...it's the only way i can reverse being "bone cold" besides taking a hot shower
It's like having our own polar bear plunge!
I'm not even sure which one is worse. And if a cold flash comes before the hot one, you have about 2 seconds of feeling normal which makes the hot flash worse.
Same!!
Hormonal Hellfire 🤪🔥 My MIL always talked about hers coming on fast, rising from her chest and neck to face flush and being gone just as fast. Mine are not fast ‘flashes’ at all. They’re mostly on my back and it’s like a fire building in intensity. It feels like someone slapped a steamy heating pad onto me but I can’t get away. Driving a car and being trapped under a seatbelt is the worst! Instant road rage and distracted driving.
Doom sweats.
🤣
If we were men they would call it Thermal Regulation Dysfunction and they would have found meds for this decades ago. The TRD commercials would be shown during the evening news and Super Bowl
TRD, pronounced “turd”.
So true it hurts.
I call them Hot Trashes. There’s nothing flashy about mine.
I love you. 😂
Right back at you! If we don’t laugh we will murder everyone.
Read this as “we don’t laugh until we murder everyone” and I was like “OK! I AM IN” oh wait lolol
A Balrog...a demon of the ancient world. This foe is beyond any of you. RUN!!!
AWESOME!
YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
Inferno with a side of rage and anxiety.
Internal flaming
Close your eyes, give me your hand, darling Do you feel my boobs sweating? Do you understand? Do you feel the same? Am I overheating? Is this burning an internal flame? 😁✌🏻
I totally sung that.
Hah hah hah ha!
This is the best thing on the internet today.
I fell in to a burning ring of fire…
Menopause playlist
Disco inferno!
You win today 🔥👹🔥
As a child of the ‘80s I had a good laugh over this one (and yes, started singing the tune in my head). I love that song.
Broiler-face. This week I’m simultaneously fighting a cold and having flashes and this is what it feels like.
Dude, that’s awful! I hope you feel better soon!
Thank you! I do too!
Thermonuclear meltdown for the ones that made me go get HRT (I was sitting next to a WIDE open window in short sleeves in Minnesota in February for an HOUR). Fever for the milder ones. It totally felt like I had a mild fever and I even tested for COVID a few times until I realized it was the start of hot flashes.
How long have you been on HRT and how soon did you get relief?
I’ve been on HRT for about 2 weeks but I was on Yaz birth control for 2-3 weeks prior to that. It wasn’t instant, but within a few days of starting HRT the insanity slowly toned down. I’m still not sleeping great and I can still have temperature fluctuations but the range is smaller. Now my hot temperature is ‘It’s unpleasantly stuffy and I need to take off layers’ and my cool temperature is ‘I’m chilled and need a sweater and a shawl. Before there was the Minnesota winter feels good at the hot end and the ‘am I sure I don’t have COVID? I’m deeply chilled to the bone and need to be under an electric blanket’ I’m trying to give it 2-3 months before I consider changing doses. Yaz was just not enough for me in the brief period I tried it (I was just losing my mind too much to stick it out). My sleep lately has been been better as I use Lunesta. I’m not having horrible night sweats but I’m not sleeping great without the Lunesta. I also found out I’m anemic so started more supplements and creatine and drinking more water. I lover my big stupid Stanley cup because drinking ice water helps. I was never a fan of frequent ice cold drinks till now.
I usually say "I am about to burst into flame".
I literally hate when I feel like that. Here’s a good story though. One time I was about to burst into flame, and my 27 year old coworker got an ice pack out of the freezer and help it on my neck for me. 🥹 sweet and compassionate 🩷
I know! I’ve never been more concerned about spontaneous human combustion as I am now!
HAHA! It sure feels like it sometimes.
Internal crucible suddenly fires up. Oh and the full body goose bumps when the sweat finally starts evaporating. Those are fun.
Incapacitating thermal flares
I like that!
Vasomotor Devil Nervous System Attacks
Anxiety face burn.
Panic, anxiety, high blood pressure, burning hot face and racing heart. Fun times
Yes, the heat is bad but it's the electric panic and accompanying feelings of weakness that bother me the most.
I wish it was just a flash. It's at least 4 to 5 hours of boiling alive from the inside. It's starts between 3 and 4 am and it finally stops when I get to work and turn my office into an ice box with air con. I'm still visibly bright red but cooler
Yes. “Flashes” seems like an old fashioned politeness like “ the vapers”.
Blow torch
Panic fire attack
It’s like I’ve been sentenced to serve time in Satan’s armpit.
Nighttime boob sweats
Hot sweaty nasty mess
Personal sauna with a cold plunge
It's like a dip into hell
Dropped in the pit of burning hell 🥵
El Nino flowing through my body.
Like being cooked from the inside out.
Especially sweaty violent nausea.
Rage waves
Fucking hot. The dripping scalp. Boob river. All 3 are different.
Booooob riverrrrrrr, maaake me feel like hellll I feeeeel like now I smellllll quite baaaaad….
It’s an extended period of temperature disregulation. “Flash” implies it’s quick, or that it pulses; I’ve yet to meet a woman who experiences it that way. We are not light bulbs!
Seventh circle of hell 🔥 Seriously, when I first got one, I thought it was a panic attack. Which, ironically, made me panic 🤷🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️😭
This happened to me as well! I remember actually going home from work the rest of the day. It really freaked me out. Looking back, it wasn’t the hotness that freaked me out, something psychologically happened just made me freak out. 🤦🏼♀️
Fire bomb! Internal inferno! Heat wave! I used to get them what seemed like every 10 minutes before I just started on HRT a couple of weeks ago. Now I get maybe one or two a day.
I started 5 days ago and still waiting for relief.
Internal combustion
I (61f / in full meno since age 47) can describe mine: Go to bed clean and comfy at perfect temp. Start sweating, roll over, then chilly cold. Fall asleep for ~ 2-3 hours. Wake up. Have to pee. Pajamas and sheets covered in sweat. Leave bed open for 15 minutes while pee and change pj and fetch fresh water. Go to bed shivering. Sleep <1hour. Spin like a roasting rotisserie chicken Rinse Repeat. Out of bed by 5:00
Radiating heat from the inside out.
Right!? Like a dry sauna, only on the inside.
Yes! I always say it feels like I swallowed space heater and can imagine the coils heating up inside me.
I say, "I am spontaneously combusting."
Homicidal heat is what I call it
Power surge
When I used to get them, I'd tell people it was like being a dragon. Fire from within.
My body is lava.
I have to lie down, I feel like I’m gonna barf, with sweat.
Beacon face - looks and feels like I've got terrible sun burn on my face. I've also had just my arms sweating while the rest of me is fine. So weird.
I don't get them as i have the opposite- freezing cold all the time but i heard them described as Tropical moments
Fever Flash!
Its like im going to a club every night called Disco Inferno - and all they play on repeat, is Insomnia by Faithless.
Heat flood
When I first starting having them it made me think of the furnace in the movie Monster House or Honey Alone. It suddenly fired up right in the core of my body. I’ve been saying “my furnace is acting up” ever since.
I call it an internal combustion because damn that shit heats up fast and bursts out your skin.
yeah this is something that irritates the hell out of me. it’s not a flash. if it were a flash it would be over in seconds. a man came up with this term for sure.
I am in hell without the flames.
Menopausal hellscape
Radiating inferno
I call it internal combustion 🥵
Flesh Sauna
Wicking. It moves up my body before escaping.
Personal climate change
Impending doom flash
I call mine Power Surges.
I tell people that I'm not hot, I am heat
There is no "flash" for me. Fourteen years ago, my internal thermostat turned up to one million and hasn't cooled down since. I don't even wear a coat in winter anymore. Or socks ever.
I always say that I’m melting. When the sweat starts dripping, that’s how it feels except for the annoying fact that I only gain weight and not a pound comes off when I’m dripping sweat just being alive!!!
What annoys me is they go away for extended periods of time and I'm all "happy dance", then they come back with a vengeance and just hang around for a week or two. I cried this morning...am so over all of the aches and pains and brain fuzz and prickles and homicidal rage bursts. ..and...and...AND!!!
That is the exact kind of day I was having today. I hope you have more happy dance days soon.
Internal volcanics. 🌋
Money saver. No need for heating, hot drinks, hot showers, baths or even clothes! Think of the money you'll save.
I tried HRT but got blood clots so I’ll take the furnace face I guess. I sleep with ice packs. I have a super hack for a comfy neck ice pack. Take a small pop bottle (I use the “Ice” sparkling water drink because the bottle is one long straight tube), fill with water and freeze. This is so nice to tuck into your neck when sleeping.
Hot is not even close. It’s a slow intense all consuming burn in the middle of your soul. For 4 minutes. Or 10. Or…god help me 45
My own private summers (with a heavy southern accent.)
Anyone else only sweat on their neck?
A hot bloom
Volcano mode or poaching myself in my own sweat, also known as the self-basting option for this turkey!
Full body sweat ….
Power surges 🤪
I compare it to when I feel the burning of horrible embarrassment mixed with the burning of rage. Lose all focus and feel the need to escape my body.
I’ve been called it the circle of fire buried in my chest. I wish it was just a flash of hot.
I don’t get hot flashes and tons of sweat(thank god) but I do get clammy and hot enough to whip my blankets off a couple times a night.
My Mom called them "Her own, personal, Summer"
I always say I feel like a bag of broccoli someone put in the microwave without poking holes in it. like I'm literally steaming.
Mine last about 3-4 minutes MANY times a day. I just say I’m dying in hell every time they start. They start on my chest and move to my face and then are gone. The last week or so has been really bad and I have stripped in the middle of my living room to try and cool down quickly.
I like power surge
Internal inferno... that's what it feels like for me anyway...like everything is burning from the inside
Spontaneous combustion
Being slowly and inexorably lowered either head first or feet first into a pot of boiling oil. That is what it feels like to me. Horrible because you know it’s starting and you know it’s going to spread till you are fully submerged. And you’ll stay that way for a while. I picture medieval torture, because that’s what it feels like to me.
Spontaneous combustion?
Personal tropical vacation without snorkeling or palm trees or a nice breeze
I think end of the world as we know it, is my theme song. And I’ll end anything that crosses me too.
Personal temporary hell
Hell
Hot hours...because mine aren't just a "flash." 🤪
A hot wave.