Midlife’s A Trip

Hot Flash. News Flash. Relief is in the Freezer.

Posted on 11. Sep, 2007 by Karen in Misc

It’s so great to be able to talk about menopause in public.  When I started going through it, I was in corporate America where the movement on diversity didn’t include dialog about the woes of something only women had to endure.  So we suffered in silence.  Especially on the issue of hot flashes. 

For those who may never know, here’s a little primer on the topic.  A hot flash is like being struck like a match and–poof!–you’re on fire.  Yes, the heat comes on that quickly.  Or liken it to being tied to a stake while someone’s fanning the flames of the wood pile burning at your feet.  It’s this relentless heat, that causes your adrenalin to spike, your composure to plummet and sweat to drench you in places that should only be wet during exercise or in the shower.

The researcher in me figured that there must be a correlation between the flashes and my body temperature.  In a moment of curiosity between flashes I pulled out the thermometer, keeping it nearby to collect empirical data about my hot flashes.  I don’t know what made me think this was important but when you’re "flashing" any distraction is a good one. 

As the next hot flash rolled in, I popped the thermometer in my mouth and monitored the sweat beads on my arm.  I could feel my temperature rising.  At the peak of the heat, I whipped the thermometer out of my mouth and into view.  The results were 98.6 on the glass tube, 2000.8 degrees on my body!   

Lack of experience might lead you to say–just take something already.  Well I did.  In fact I tried everything imaginable.  If it professed to cool the fires, I took it.  First, it was hormones.  Although they didn’t completely obliterate the flashes, they did reduce their frequency–to about 6 a day. 

Then medical research uncovered a link between hormones and cancer.  The reasonable me was aghast that I had been taking a carcinogen while the "hot" me muttered a litany of four letter words.  But I wisely and reluctantly stopped taking hormones and moved through a menu of alternative remedies. 

I won’t bore you with the list but notably there was evening of primrose oil in gargantuan capsules and a Peruvian herb I found on the Internet.  Some of the alternatives made a little difference but nothing doused my internal flame. 

To this day, I still "flash" from time to time.  But now then I start to fire up, I hit the floor, head to the kitchen, stick my head in the freezer and bask in the instant relief. Pass this news flash on to people you like–it really works.  (Please note: this solution’s flexibility and agility if you’re the proud owner of one of those freezer-on-the-bottom refrigerators). 

How do you handle hot flashes?

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