Heart Effects of a Hot Flash

Hot Flashes should be considered when evaluating whether you are healthy, or could use treatment for prevention.

Although most women view hot flashes as just an annoyance, like taking off your sweater if it’s warmer outside than you thought, it is actually a systemic physiologic response that occurs when you get a hot flash that has a dramatic effect on your body.

In some cases having a hot flash elevate blood pressure, some of the time your blood pressure can plummet, in an article published in Menopause. In fact the authors from Canada and Australia in this report noted that for each additional night sweat the blood pressure climbed 2 mm of Hg.

Interestingly there was a drop in blood pressure by 2 mm of Hg for each time a woman had a daytime hot flash.

Other women may have actual heart rate changes, or heart rhythm changes with their symptoms.

Hot flashes may just be a sign that other aspects of your physiology is off. Other studies have shown that hot flashes also are accompanied by worse cardiovascular health such as worsening cholesterol, and that these risk factors will vary by your age, your weight, your menopausal status (how long from your menopause you are), and your ethnicity.

It is not just how your heart function that can change if you allow hot flashes to go unchecked, but how you feel and how you function can be affected by hot flashes. Women with moderate to severe hot flashes report they are miserable, and their quality of life is compromised.

Some women want to know, if hot flashes are so common, can they sometimes be good for for your menopausal health as a recent study in the British Medical Journal Suggests? They showed that women with more hot flashes had less heart disease, and they have some theories as to why.

The real answers lie in an individualized approach to your health, and your gyno are just going to have to work this out together based on some facts that are gathered at your next check up.

At Women’s Health Practice we use advanced evaluations such as lipid testing for part of this information.

Contrary evidence to any perceived benefit is that fact we’ve discussed previously, if you have lost your ovaries before the age of natural menopause you are at risk for early death due to cardiac causes. These risks are not inevitable. You can change the outcome of your health even if you have lost your ovaries. This can be done with hormone therapy.

Your gyno will have to weigh other factors such as whether you had early menopause due to other reasons such as surgery to remove your ovaries. You gyno may ask if you have had pelvic radiation, ovarian infections, other causes that your hormone levels are in the menopausal or close to menopausal range?

You may be at risk for heart disease genetically and there are blood factor tests that can answer this question.

Maybe some of the women who suffer the worst hot flashes had higher protective levels of estrogen going into menopause, or maybe women with hot flashes get that occasional palpitation that gets worked up and silent underlying heart disease is uncovered and treated, so they did better. You cannot just rely on one study or one health measurement like blood pressure to give us all the answers about hormone therapy.

Its hard to resolve these conflicting studies, and it’s important to keep posted on all new studies. If you have signs of lower estrogen levels, hot flashes, night sweats, difficulty thinking due to lack of sleep, lower libido, then discuss this with your gyno, you might need hormone therapy to help your heart as well as your overall health. And what type of hormone therapy is the safest form? Well, many forms are safe, but for some transdermal therapy is the best, for some pellet therapy may be better, and for others a pill may provide what you need without increasing risk.

Personalized approach to hormone therapy is what is likely best for women.