Hot flashes, a common and annoying rite of passage for many women entering menopause, may truly be something to sweat over.
Long seen as a nuisance, an unavoidable quality-of-life issue, hot flashes have been linked to insomnia, irritability and depressed mood, not to mention soaking bedsheets. But now there’s increasing evidence that hot flashes may have medical implications as well.
The habitual flushing and perspiration many women have come to dread may actually be a harbinger – a warning – of heart disease.
A series of studies has helped put some – but not all – of the pieces together on this puzzling physiological phenomenon.
- “A growing body of research has suggested that women who have severe hot flashes may also be experiencing underlying blood vessel changes.
- Estrogen withdrawal, which plays a role in the physiology of hot flashes, can harm blood vessels.
- Obesity and smoking, which may cause hot flashes in some women, are also associated with heart problems.
- Hot flashes appear to go hand-in-hand with high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease.
Scientists say that more research is needed to complete the picture. But what they know so far is certainly interesting.
“Our advice to older women who have persisting hot flashes and night sweats is that they try to get off of hormone therapy, and have themselves checked and treated for cardiovascular risk factors,” said Dr. Jacques Rossouw, chief of the Women’s Health Initiative at the National Institutes of Health, in a Newsweek article.
In their groundbreaking study on hormone replacement therapy and menopause, Rossouw and his team of researchers noticed that women with moderate or severe hot flashes had more risk factors for coronary heart disease, signaling the need for more aggressive heart disease screening in that subset of women.
In September, a separate study found that women with hot flashes were much more likely to have both coronary artery calcification and aortic calcification – buildups of calcium deposits in the heart. These can be early signs that heart disease is present, even if there have been no other symptoms.
Taken along with the Rossouw team’s research, “these findings suggest potential adverse vascular changes among women with hot flashes,” the scientists concluded.
Having severe hot flashes is not a cause for panic, nor are hot flashes always a bad thing. One new study, in fact, found that in women with breast cancer taking tamoxifen or anastrozole, hot flashes seem to have a protective effect. Women who had hot flashes and night sweats after they started one of the medications were less likely to have their breast cancer return than women who did not experience the symptoms.
But it may be prudent to discuss your hot flashes with your physician, along with any other cardiac risk factors you have so that appropriate evaluation and screening can be done. The Navigenics genetic risk assessment panel adds an additional dimension to classical cardiac risk assessment as well as to the evaluation of numerous other actionable conditions.
“Luckily, most risk factors are treatable, and presumably, you can lower your risk of heart disease by taking action,” Rossouw told Newsweek. “If you look at it that way, these symptoms could be seen as a useful clue.” Knowledge of increased risk is the first step to lowering that risk.