Setting the Internal Thermostat with Natural Help for Hot Flashes

About 85-percent of women going through the change of life experience hot flashes throughout the perimenopause stage of their life, and some of them are exceptionally intense. Hot flashes are the result of a malfunction with their internal thermostat that misreads their body temperature as being too high and signals all of the cooling systems to jump into action and reduce the internal heat.

It could be likened to a bad thermostat in the home that misreads the room temperature, accepting a reading of 90-degrees when it is only 60-degrees and sending a spark to turn on the air conditioner. However, the body operates differently than the home thermostat; the hypothalamus (the medical name for the internal thermostat) has to send the signal to different cooling devices in the body such as the sweat glands and the blood vessels. As the blood vessels dilate to move blood faster through the system to cool the body off, those closest to the skin make the body appear red or flushed.

For women in perimenopause, the period during which they transition from having periods to not having them, is tough enough with all of the changes sparked by varying levels of different hormones. While hormone replacement therapy can provide relief for many of the symptoms, the relief comes at the cost of many potential adverse side effects. Women need not put themselves in that position however, since natural help for hot flashes is available and has been for decades before the introduction of synthetic drugs. After research and consultation with a health care professional you should be able to find the right natural remedy for hot flashes and other symptoms.

Women were going through menopause long before drug companies started to push out pills for everything that ailed them. Hot flashes were still hot flashes and women's only relief was through natural help for hot flashes available with botanicals. Like most herbal remedies a couple of centuries ago, products were tried and if they worked, were passed on to subsequent generations. Today, more women are turning back to the natural help for hot flashes in order to avoid the side effects associated with many synthetic menopause medications.

Soy foods have been found to offer a reduction in the frequency and intensity of hot flashes and, when used in moderation, have also been shown to help with other medical conditions as well. Red clover and black cohosh are two additional products used to provide natural help for hot flashes. However, using specific foods containing phyto-estrogen is not going to be the only answer to having natural help for hot flashes. A combination of lifestyle changes, including the diet and exercise program will offer relief from hot flashes.

Topical transdermal creams containing progesterone, a bio-identical estrogen supplement, has shown remarkable results when used by women in the perimenopause stage of their life. While there is no means available to stop the progression of menopause, creams for natural help for hot flashes can help reduce the affects of many symptoms of menopause. For some women it may require a combination of treatments as well as seriously considering foods and activities that trigger a hot flash. By understanding what causes them on an individual basis, the right natural help for hot flashes can be found for each person.