Curbing Your Menopause Night Sweats
Posted on May 31st, 2010 by admin
When treating sleep hyperhidrosis, we need to think about how our anatomy naturally disperses heat while we are sleeping.
To curb menopause night sweats, two of the methods our bodies employ to reduce heat are convection and radiation. This post will help you understand these mechanisms and better utilize them to minimize night sweating.
We have our hypothalamus to thank for sweating. Although we also must accuse it when we perspire too much. It is the part of our brain that adjusts our body temperature and signals it’s time to sweat. At times it functions very well, but sometimes it reacts too much.
Radiation is just a way your system lets out heat. For instance, put your hand close to a person who has just run some sprints in warm weather and you’ll probably feel heat radiating from his or her skin. This actually isn’t much different than the manner a fireplace radiates the warmth it produces.
As you are sleeping, your bed, sheets and blanket will soak up some of the warmth you radiate. However when they absorb enough heat so that their temperature matches your own body’s temperature, they cannot take in anymore. Thus that heat simply accumulates underneath the sheets and raises both your body temperature and the bed temperature.
It is best to release some of that heat and prevent it from collecting close to your body. This means wearing light, breathable clothing and utilizing some mechanism for moving air into your sleeping area to help disperse your radiating body heat.
If a ceiling or table fan blows air on you cooling you, you’re feeling your body’s use of convection. That fan probably isn’t blowing air that is much cooler than the surface temperature of your body, but it still elicits a a cooling feeling using convection.
To maximize convection, you should get a breeze moving around you while you are sleeping. A table fan pointed towards you might provide relief, but there are devices known as bed fans that will work even better by blowing a light breeze under your sheets and around your body.
This should help you do your best to utilize radiation and convection to help keep you cool and avoid triggering night sweating. Luckily these methods don’t call for expensive medicine or other remedies. Only a bit of common sense and maybe a bed fan.