As I sit here reading through posts on this forum, I am dumbfounded. I'm 44 years old and didn't realize until last week that I have been having hot flashes for the last 2-3 years. I still can't quite believe that what I am experiencing is related to perimenopause. I'm hot all the time, even just sitting in one place, never mind if I am doing physical activity, even just walking around. There were times that my face would get hot and red, though, and I always chalked it up to coming down with the flu (that never came on) because then I'd get the chills after the hot face thing went away.

I can't tell you how many times I've awakened in the middle of the night, sweating profusely. Since I'm hot all the time, even at night, I never attributed these sweating things that jolt me out of sleep as something related to perimenopause. I still can't quite believe it. Do you mean to say that even when the temp in the room is a steady 67F degrees, it's related to menopause when I wake up in the middle of the night sweating my head off when I felt fine when I went to sleep (temp still at 67F degrees)? If so, well, heck.....I've been dealing with that for the last 3-4 years, but it seems to be getting worse.

Over the past couple months, there have been times when I've felt "chilled" and had to put on a sweater. For someone who is never cold, that was unusual for me. I suddenly feel cold, even if I've just been sitting here in my office where the temp has remained at 70 degrees. These times aren't related to the chill that I feel when a face-hot-red flash comes over me - it seems to be unrelated.

I woke up last night drenched in sweat and twice today here at work, I've felt alternatively hot and cold, even though the indoor temp hasn't varied. I know now I'm not coming down with the flu - I feel fine otherwise. Geez.....all this time I've been having peri symptoms? I'm flabbergasted.

Sure miss my mom (she passed away 5 years ago) at times like this - wish I knew just what she went through in menopause. I only know that she started menopause at age 45.

HAd I known 10 years ago that this is all related I would have been relieved. Looking back I didn't realize that it was all perimenapause. It sounds to me as if you have been getting the symptoms for a few years now. My symptoms started heavy duty after my mom died a year and a half ago. Like you I wish I had talked to her about it. Good luck!

I missed out on asking my Mom, too, but these gals are GREAT source of info and support.
Welcome to the club!

I miss being able to talk with my Mother about all this also....Although she is still living we haven`t talked in almost 20 some years. I do have a Step-Mother but sometimes it`s just not the same......My biological Mother and I had a falling out all those years ago,because she could never get over the fact that her and my Father were divorced and that he remarried...All always felt that she had never wanted me in the first place....

But,I sure am glad I found all you Ladies here at PS!...you ALL have helped me a great deal with alot of my problems that I have been facing...

Luv and (((Hugs)))....
Christina

I have a theory about cold. I think cold flashes are different from being unreasonably chilled for environmental conditions. A cold flash is spontaneous hypothermia, which can come during sleep despite being well covered. Hypothermia occurs when your body's control mechanisms fail to maintain a normal body temperature.

The feeling of anxiety we have when we wake up to find ourselves in this situation, where our core temperature has dropped below normal range and we cannot warm up again, is a normal reaction to what our bodies realize is a potentially life-threatening situation.

This is different from being unreasonably chilled for environmental conditions; for example, when there is a heat wave on and you have to sleep under a down coverlet in order to be comfortably warm, but your core body temperature stays within normal range. Even if you feel uncomfortably cool or your hands and feet are cold and your fingernails are blue, if your core temperature is in normal range, it's something you can compensate for with extra clothing. Or at least live with. The same is true if you get the shivers for a moment, as if a large wet paintbrush passed over your skin, but again, your core body temperature does not drop.

But in a cold flash, bundling up doesn't help, because you need an external source of heat in order to bring the body temperature back up to normal range. The time-tested method of wrapping your body around that of someone of normal temperature and covering the pair of you in blankets, or immersing yourself in hot water, or wrapping yourself in an electrically-heated blanket will work, but you need them close at hand. Some immediate external heat source will start to bring the body temperature up; when body temperature regains normal levels, the anxiety disappears (except for the residual shaky feeling of having been woken up to deal with an emergency).

It's unpleasant to wake up and find oneself in the situation of having a body temperature crisis. I wish someone would come up with a preventative, a way to prevent the body's control mechanism from going off-line.