Sweating off a Hot Flash

Everyone can do some exercise, everyone can work up a sweat, exercise is accessible. So if exercise can possibly work to treat your hot flashes, why would you not try? One fact is shown in research over and over: the more sedentary you are, the worse your menopause symptoms, including hot flashes, are!

1. Exercise will affect your metabolism

2. Exercise will affect your heart, improve it’s ability to respond and thus there is less heart racing when the hot flash is begun, and thus women are not bothered by the hot flashes as much.

3. Exercise will affect you endocrine and gland system, which is part of how we thermoregulate. If you are a regularly exerciser you will have a slightly lower core temperature. This in tern will decrease the hot flash frequency, and it is thought that it is because the onset temperatures of the hot flashes will change.

4. Exercise will affect your vascular system, making your blood flow better surely can cool us, even in the midst of a hot flash.

5. Moderate and high intensity exercise have both been shown to affect hot flashes; but oddly studies of just aerobic exercise have “only” shown benefit on mood, memory, and bones, not really hot flashes. We are not sure why, some think we just really weren’t consistent enough in the sustained aerobic intensity, in the research trials to prove the theory.