Night Sweats -- another wonderful hormone change?

[Ali]

I'm 34 and have been experiencing these for about two months. They don't bother me until I wake up cold from sweating and my sheets are literally wet. It was only like once a night every so often, but it has been increasing to almost every night, and last night I experienced this three times.

Man, I really need to start charting again. That way I could keep track of all this stuff and where I am IRT my cycles.

[JaamE]

yup, hot flashes at night. i keep a dollar store fan next to my bed. Stress makes them worse, caffiene does too.. sometimes vit E makes them better.

[chantele]

This was happening to me and I thought it was early menopause, turned out it was my thyroid. :horse:

:razzberry: it seems like I'm always blathering about my thyroid lately

[kathy caribe]

34 sounds awfully young for perimenopause; if i were you, i'd be wanting to verify it was actually perimenopause.

i'm 47 and don't even have it to the soaked sheet stage; i get out of bed before that. are you seeing changes in your cycle too? i am seeing huge changes in my cycle that correspond to the perimenopause (or maybe i'm in menopause; not sure what the dividing line is).

[Nancy]

It was a definite sign for me. Progesterone supplement (cream, OTC) has helped tremendously. Other signs for me included anxiety, memory loss, and insomnia.

[kathy caribe]

It was a definite sign for me. Progesterone supplement (cream, OTC) has helped tremendously. Other signs for me included anxiety, memory loss, and insomnia.

OMG!!! I totally forgot about the memory loss and insomnia! So, I guess I have anxiety to go, eh? Maybe that's the reason for the poll in Questions :).

What, specifically, did the progesterone supplement do? I tried BCPs to regulate my hormones but got so sick off them I had to stop.

[Nancy]

There are literally hundreds of articles on it, but I buy from these guys (emerita.com) and this is a brief explanation of what it does, cut and pasted directly from emerita. Their website has lots of other information. I take their herbal supplement as well.

The Unconventional Wisdom of Progesterone
For a long time, progesterone just didn't rank in people's minds with estrogen as the female hormone. But now three decades of research are telling a different story.

We'd been told for decades that progesterone is the "pregnancy hormone." So why would we want anything to do with it as we approach mid-life? Well, it turns out that this story is far from the whole truth.

When our ovaries begin gently signaling that they do not want to continue the task of producing an egg every cycle, they don't do it by dropping estrogen levels. Instead, we start to experience the odd cycle when no egg is produced. In those months, the ovaries do not produce progesterone. And the relation between estrogen and progesterone levels in our bodies begins to change.

We know now that it's progesterone that affects our hearts, our blood vessels, our nerves, our brains and even our estrogen activity. Because progesterone does so much more than manage fertility, its decline can produce a lot of dramatic effects. We experience these effects as hot flashes, anxiety, sleeplessness, changes in sexual energy and vaginal changes.

Today we understand that it's progesterone-that other female hormone-that is missing, causing all kinds of subtle imbalances by its absence. And that led us to believe that supplementing the circulating levels of progesterone would curb a whole range of distressing experiences women had simply come to accept as part of being a woman.
https://www.emerita.com/pages/menopause/unconventional-wisdom-progesterone.asp?find%5Fcategory=&find%5Fdescription=&find%5Fpart%5Fdesc=

[Nancy]

I wanted to add that it's an easy cream, just apply it twice a day, after shower and before bed. Nothing to it. You can either apply it on days you are not menstruating OR do a 14 day cycle (stopping during menstruation and then beginning again 14 days later, I'm experimenting and trying it that way this cycle).

[kathy caribe]

Thank you SO MUCH for this information. I had lightly researched this issue when I was researching uterine cancer and was under the iimpression that I needed estrogen if, indeed, it was menopause that was causing my issues. I mostly concentrated on estrogen because I know how lethal estrogen can be if you already have cancer but totally missed researching progesterone. So, again, thanks!