Perimenopause - drenching sweats?

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elizzza811

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Assuming the periodic daytime 'hot flashes' and profuse night-time sweating episodes I've been having are indeed perimenopausal (or menopausal) in nature (as opposed to being seizure-related), would these episodes involve drenching sweats?

I ask because this is the third night in a row I've been awakened by these soaking sweats. In fact I've sweat so heavily the last 3 nights through a thick thermal shirt that, not only did I dampen the sheets to where they were uncomfortably wet, but even my husband's shirt was saturated. I turned the bedroom fan on and that did nothing except cause my husband to freeze.

Coincidentally, and I should probably add this to my solar/geomagnetic activity thread too, but Saturday morning Space Weather began mentioning an enormous magnetic filament stretching across the surface of the sun...and it's still there. Large prominences this morning too.

Monday morning, November 14th...
http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=14&month=11&year=2011

Saturday morning, November 12th...
http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=12&month=11&year=2011

I always had trouble with magnetic filaments on the sun with regards to my seizures. All of my symptoms, even with Lamictal, seem to escalate when these filaments are present. Could these also be responsible for these drenching sweats? Drenching sweats Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night...(and counting?)...
 
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Fun isn't it? NOT!

I get like that every so often, sweat so much the pillow has to be replaced. My symptoms have different origins, I'm (post-?)menopausal, have severe sleep apnea, and my medications causes excessive sweating.

Just another issue to deal with as there really aren't any other solutions.
 
Thanks! Now if I could just find a doctor willing to test these hormones since my family doctor wouldn't.
 
hello

Good times! I am on HRT and I get the hot flashes in spite of that. Yes they can be drenching, or minor. My hubby can feel mine just sitting close to me. Sometimes I get anxiety to go with it!! When it ends I am pooped out. God I miss my ovaries. Stress seems to aggravate the severity of them. Yoga is good since it has an overall calming effect on the body.

Managed care docs, depending on your insurance and the doctor will do the blood tests to determine what you are lacking. Some won't, they follow a protocol, which mostly involves their prescription pad. The real doctors that we need to regulate our hormones do not take insurance. With the former, it is all hit or miss because of the cookie cutter approach - the one size fits all approach. With the latter, it is more individualized. I had an endo. do my female hormones, but would not treat them! (go figure). So, I took the results to a new gyno. and we have been trying to balance out my hormones. (kinda) I understand that we are supposed to go off the HRT occasionally, but Not sure what to do about the symptoms in the interim!? So I try to help myself out with exercise and diet along with a few choice supplements. For the time being I am stuck with the provider from my limited insurance coverage.
 
There are other causes of drenching night sweats. Sleep apnea is very high on the list for those with Epilepsy. I have a severe form of sleep apnea so when, the apnea is bad, I'm soaking wet in the morning.

I also have a laundry list of other ailments, and the medications I take for them, cause drenching sweats. I'll be shopping and they hit. Hard to find the prices with sweat in your eyes. :crying:

Mine also seem cyclic. I never would have thought the sun would be a possible reason, now I'm going to start paying more attention to the sun's events to see if they match.:ponder:
 
See, even at 46 I'm reluctant to blame these drenching sweats on my hormones. I've been sweating like this since my late 30's, and back when I was like...41?...a gyn informed me he could not feel my remaining ovary, and therefore, pronounced me 'menopausal' at that time. I freaked..."At forty one?!" He fired back, "Well I've seen women go into menopause as early as 30!" I forget the number, but it was ridiculously young, and I was shocked that he would deem menopause at that young age 'normal' and wasn't looking for any reason to explain it. And if he accepted this as normal in a 30-year-old, why would I ever expect him to question it in (ancient) me? He never checked my hormone levels, didn't see the need to.

I was experiencing other symptoms around the time of this little story too, was skinny to begin with and had lost weight (I weighed 88 lbs), and was diagnosed with a bunch of killer infections later (staph and Lyme). And once these infections began to clear, just out of curiosity, I had a doctor check my hormones and he told me I was not in menopause.

So do you see where I'm coming from? After this experience I find myself wondering if menopause is ever 'normal' and if perhaps we ought to be treating it as a disease, rather than accepting it as part of the normal aging process. I mean, men produce sperm cells until death, so it would stand to reason that...? I also read somewhere that researchers might have been wrong in their assumptions that women were born with a finite supply of eggs, unlike their male counterparts who produce sperm cells until death. Here it is...

Ovaries may continue to produce new eggs
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=851
 
females

I think somewhere along the way whoever created women fell asleep during the planning process, the blueprints got highjacked and were left unfinished. Finding out the other causes for your drenching sweats can be time consuming and expensive, let alone "just" your hormones. Doctors are complacent, and want to treat symptoms w/o treating a root cause. I have had a belly full of that. I lost my ovaries in 03' and according to my blood tests, I am still menopausal. Eight years later? How is that possible. ugh. Like you say, maybe something else can be causing the sweats.
I think in the distant future, that medicine will be appalled at the treatment, or lack of when it comes to hormones that women are subjected to today. Modern day life has taken a toll on our hormones, how I wish for a quick fix, that includes my E. Hope you get some relief soon.
 
Thanks for your response. I really was beginning to wonder if I was the only woman out there questioning the theories of menopause and hormones. And yea, I do think one day they are all going to feel appalled about how they treated things. If only they would stop looking at the numbers and try to figure out 'why' they drop, then maybe they'd get somewhere. And other things can cause drenching sweats, you're right about that too.
 
Well. My doctors blame a lot of things on perimenopause too. Including periodic night sweats. But I had my doctor check my hormone levels checked and they'd be normal for a 25 year old. But I haven't had a period in over a year.

Docs in general don't seem to have a great handle on the perimenopause thing.

Do insist on a hormone test. Google for internet resources to help you understand the results, in addition to what your doctor tells you.

Here's an article on the over the counter hormone tests, which you can get in some drugstores:
http://www.womentowomen.com/menopause/fshtests.aspx
 
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