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-   -   For the senior ladies, ? about hot flashes (http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=463372)

noinwi Sun, Nov-02-14 00:48

For the senior ladies, ? about hot flashes
 
Have any of you gotten past your hot flashes(I've always called them moisties), and then have them start again at a later date? I had a hysterectomy at 30, but still had my ovaries. I'm 63 now and I took low doses of HRT for the years after my ovaries shriveled on their own. I weaned myself off slowly and finally stopped two years ago. I've been fairly flash free since, but recently they've started again. Not dripping wet, but clammy all over and several times a day and during the night. I'm recently back on the wagon after carb binging for a couple of months, but the heat started a while before I got back to this WOE.
Have any of you experienced a recurrence like this? I can't see my PCP as she's on maternity leave until Jan, so I thought I'd ask here. I don't know if going back on HRT would help or cause other problems, although my maintenance :( doses were very small(.5mg).

noinwi Wed, Nov-05-14 11:44

I'll move this on down.

kelly77 Tue, Dec-02-14 09:23

in the last month as I've been losing, the hot flashes/nite sweats have gone from literally zero to CRAZY! This is so nuts. after a few years of dealing with hot flashes, they mostly had gone and I was so relieved. But when I started back on Atkins, they started up again almost immediately and with a vengence. I used to only be bothered by them in the evening and while trying to sleep, but now they are all freakin' day long - in fact I just had one as I'm writing this!

Coconut oil and MCT oil bring them on so fiercely that I had to cut both out. Even putting on coconut oil or lotion containing coconut oil start the flashes immediately. This is a major bummer because I've always used c.o. for cooking, in coffee, skin and hair care, etc.

I know this is related to the release of estrogen in body fat as I lose it. But seriously, this is beginning to become a real problem as they are intensifying with the more weight that I lose. Done HRT before and won't go back to that. Tried all the herbal remedies. None work consistently.

I know I will just have to push on through, but I wonder if anyone else has experienced an increase in hot flashes as you are losing? I understand that they are suppose to decrease or stop once you get to your goal weight and are no longer shedding fat, but how bout during?

I am so thankful that it is winter and can step outside occasionally for relief. Still not much help. :(

PilotGal Tue, Dec-02-14 09:39

Hi, and good morning.

i'll be 60, next year.
in 2006 i discovered zero carb eating. i went from Atkins and 40 gr of net carbs per day, since 1973 to zero carb (<20) in 2006.
in 2004, i was diagnosed with severe PMS. they called it PMDD (pre menstrual disphoric disorder) or something like that. my PMS was so bad, and one episode was so bad (lots of wine drinking and a split from a relationship) that my daughter had me committed.. Baker Acted.
when i spoke to psychiatrists they said my PMS was so bad, they needed to put me on all kinds of anti depressants, valium, sleep aids, you name it.. they pumped me up good.

as the zero carb started to take affect and i started seeing all kinds of healing going on.. hair growing, face and skin smoothing out, gum pockets healing, nails growing... all the miracles you see when you remove carbohydrates..
i began to see another thing.. my PMDD started disappearing. No more craziness, lunacy, madness, depression, insomnia, night sweats.. it all began to disappear. then i went off all the medication they put me on. each cycle became easier and easier until i no longer knew when i was going to get my period.

i began dropping weight and inches.
when my period stopped, i had no menopause symptoms.
the night sweats disappeared, no hot flashes, no insomnia, no nothing..
my period gently went away and there were no side affects of going into the next phase of my life.

i took no HRT, i didn't dump coconut oil into my system, no vitamins.. nothing.
all i did was remove carbohydrates, HFCS, grains... everything went.

i was zero carb up until 2012.
as i said, i will be 60, next year and i never experienced the horrible menopause symptoms my best friends experienced.
they told me horrible menopause skips generations..

my mother went mad.
my sister went mad.
my cousins all went mad.
i was mad until i went zero carb.

that's the only thing that changed in my life.
my skin is still smooth, my hair has grown down the middle of my back, my nails are strong, my gums have no pockets, i grew cartilage in my left hip socket, avoiding a hip replacement...
tons of wonderful things happened and the only thing i can come up with is that all the gluten, the HFCS and carbohydrates did not agree with my aging process...

i have never been on medication since 2006.
i sleep like a baby.
my breasts are huge and have grown ridiculously.
and i think i slowed the aging process down because my skin is so smooth,
my hair is so long and i don't look like i'm going to be 60, next year.

i cannot explain it any other way.
i hope this gives hope to some of you. :thup:

*** edited to add, my memory is sharp as a tack now, too.
before, my kids used to tease me and say, "Oh mom, you're getting alzheimers."

Nancy LC Tue, Dec-02-14 10:59

That's a wonderful story, Lynne!

I've been LC for a loooong time now and I did have (do have) mild meno symptoms. I have some really odd ones like a tingling sensation in my body at night sometimes. Kind of like that one. I also had horrid palpitations for about a year. I found out my splitting awful nails are another symptom as is my muscle soreness and stiffness. Bleargh.

Inability to adjust to temperature changes seems to be another one. For me that means I go from being freezing to too hot with a tiny shift in temperatures. Rather annoying!

kelly77 Tue, Dec-02-14 11:02

Good for you! You're lucky not to be having the experience I describe. I too have had many good consequences of going low carb (too many to mention here). However, increased hot flashes is not one of them, and it is a doozy! Hopefully, they will subside as I get closer to goal.

I'm interested in hearing if anyone else is having this same experience?

Zuleikaa Tue, Dec-02-14 13:03

I took red clover which I found out later was good for treating hot flashes. I had some warmth but no hot flashes.

omablue Tue, Dec-02-14 13:32

The perimenopause years were awful for me. I had such awful pms it nearly ruined my life. At that time the doctors offered me nothing but diuretics. I lost my job at age 52 and never had another TOM. A year later I was prescribed Zoloft for depression. I still take it. My doc assured me that hrt was the best thing for my heart. I did that for 7 years until I got tired of the same old feeling of being pregnant all the time. I quit cold turkey against my doctor's advice. That was 10 years ago. I don't have any symptoms at all now. I started lchf 3 months ago and I feel so great. I love my brain on high fat. I had no idea that would happen. The only time I get hot flashes now is if I let myself get really hungry and my blood sugar gets low. I am now 72.

kelly77 Tue, Dec-02-14 14:18

Well dang! Why are my hot flashes getting so bad when everyone else's seems to have improved with lc? This is absolutely NOT what I expected to happen. Back in the peri days, I had a horrible, long drawn out experience of worst case scenario symptoms that went on for years. Its when I gained a ton of weight, relationships suffered, found it very hard to hold a job. So when that all finally evened out and hit menopause, then came the hot flashes from hell for a couple of years. So that finally ended too and I thought I was about done with the whole shebang. So set about trying to lose the weight, and BAM! Back with the hot flashes, worse than they ever were before. This is so unfair!! Its hard enough to change my whole way of life to accomplish this goal, but then to have to deal with THIS again, especially when everyone is telling me lc woe actually got RID of their hot flashes. I just don't get it.

It's not enough to make me want to stay fat to avoid these flashes, but boy it's very tempting sometimes.

Okay, rant over. grrr... just one of those days. <sigh>

PilotGal Tue, Dec-02-14 18:20

i have a dear friend that is 2 yrs older than myself.
she eats a lot of carbs, very little red meat.
skinless, boneless protein.
soy products.
she keeps fat to a very minimum.

she soaks the bed so badly with night sweats, she has to get up and change the sheets.
her hot flashes make her rosacea look like a sunburn.

we were standing in line, one afternoon, getting coffee and as i watched her go into her wallet to pull out money, i noticed drips of water hitting her wallet.
i looked up to see drips of sweat, falling off her nose. they were coming off her scalp, down her nose and falling into her purse.

when we sat down, i asked her what on earth happened to her and she said to me, "That, my dear, was a hot flash. Something you will be getting any time, now."
i was horrified!!!
i was not looking forward to menopause..

quietone Wed, Feb-24-16 08:32

I think it depends on the person.

Hot flashes are related to serotonin, which is related to estrogen. And for some of us, the lack of estrogen creates a serious serotonin problem.

Low carb can also create a serotonin problem for some people. Some of us just never get to the good feeling that others have low carb. Weight loss - yes; glowing skin - yes; healing body - yes. Mentally a whole other story.

My memory got so bad the last time I went full-on Atkins (less than 20 g carbs) that it was like I had Alzheimer's already. A the time I was still have TOM, and that got terrible. I was a raging witch. PMS became horrific as well.

I try to make it a point not to go that low any more. It makes the loss slower, but keeps me sane. But I am still on a very, very low dose of estrogen, so that might also be keeping that at bay.

I read MDA and I recall one of the older women on there in her success story, stated that since going primal/low carb she's had a difficult time keeping her hormones leveled out and was having hot flashes again.

So, it might be worthwhile for you to try a very small maintenance dose to see if it helps. I don't mind hot flashes, but I do mind the night sweats and the lack of mental acuity. That part isn't acceptable to me.

MickiSue Wed, Feb-24-16 09:32

This is an old thread. But, reading the narratives, I noticed that, if one enters menopause already well keto-adapted, as Lynne did, then the hot flashes are controlled.

But if one is actively losing, they are exacerbated, as the stored estrogen from the fat cells enters the system, further disrupting the already uneven flow of estrogen that characterizes menopause.

I am well past menopause. I went through it early, and was nearly done by the time I was 51.

Bio identical hormones helped, especially when I added a wild yam/progesterone cream.

The worst hot flashes EVER were when I contracted a viral infection in my thyroid. I'd be beet red, sweating and miserable for an hour at a time.

Today, though, even though I'm losing, I haven't had an issue. My guess is that, because i was already post menopausal for a LONG time, my fat cells just didn't have that much stored estrogen in the first place.

For any women of any stage of life, from young to post menopausal, ask yourself this: is it worth experiencing hot flashes, to balance out the hormones in your body? Hot flashes are a symptom, not a disease. And they are a symptom of estrogen imbalance. The fact that they occur as the fat cells are emptying signifies that there was TOO MUCH estrogen stored there.

For me, hot flashes were no.fun. But they were not painful, just a pain in the butt. And knowing that they're leading to better balance in our bodies' biochemistry could be exciting enough to offset that pain in the butt.

Nancy LC Wed, Feb-24-16 09:36

My Mom swore by vit. E and it seemed to help me too. Actually, 4 years into it mine are getting a tad bit worse, but they were never all that bad.

Moje Tue, Jun-21-16 11:14

This is an old thread but I will share an interesting improvement with my hot flashes. A small weight loss of 10# caused my pre "menopausing" body to kick into hyper hot flashes. Every hour, on the hour. For other health reasons, as well as wanting to start some indoor herbs and veggies, I happen to install a full spectrum light bulb over an indoor window box but also an area I sit frequently. I tend to be indoors a lot of the time. Full spectrum bulbs help our bodies generate vitamin D I have since learned. Suddenly, not only did I get a period, but the hot flashes have disappeared. Is more sun exposure why Asian women are said to do perimenopause less woefully than Western women of the world? I'm not sure but I do know nothing else worked for me until I provided the artificial sun light in my home.

Nancy LC Tue, Jun-21-16 11:23

Maybe the weight loss released estrogen stored in fat cells, which kicked in the hot flashes.


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