No Sugar, No Gluten, No Hot Flashes

As a women in my mid-forties, I have the joy of feeling the roller coaster of hormone change, that is the hell of perimenopause.   This can be a 5 to 10 yeas period of hormone reduction before you actually stop menstruating. Your body slowly adjusts and stabilizes and adjusts and stabilizes, or at least mine seems to do this.  For me, this has been causing an unpredictability of cycle and various hot flashes never mind the mood swings.

Now, if you have never had a hot flash you don't have clue what it is.  You can think you know... but you don't.  You are sitting there in a meeting, calming doing your thing ... and you feel the rush of a hot flash starting inside your body.  It literally builds to a bursting, emanating, pulsing, exploding heat wave form inside your body.  It is not heat coming at your body, it is coming out of your body. It feels like heat, heat, sweat, sweat, building and it bursts. All of a sudden you have a fine layer of sweat everywhere. 

You may have seen a lady having a hot flash and seen her get a little sweat on her brow, or her lip.  What you don't know is she also sweating from the back of her knees, and on her arms, and back etc.  You can picture it, I am sure.  I am sure the hot flashes, or elevated thermal experiences ETE's as my mother termed them, are a necessary part of the adjustment process. The depth of the ETE's and the frequency is the issue.

So I had been getting them occasionally over the years.  At night a couple of times a night maybe, during the day once a day or maybe twice.  Certainly something that sucked but did not make me nuts.  Some times days or weeks go by with very few.    The depth of the ETE's were not so bad so I went on as if nothing had changed. 

Then things changed.  Over thanksgiving the stuffing was just too much of a temptation.   The food was just too good. Biscuits etc., you know the options available to you.  The left-overs bridged to holiday parties, then the gluttony of Hanukkah. This all culminated with a trip to Toronto - land of fantastic food. I was having a little sugar and a little wheat, and then a little more.   

Shortly after thanksgiving I started getting ETE's more frequently.  I thought it was odd, but some how in my stuffing induced haze, I did not make the connections.  I was getting a few during the day and a few at night.  By the time New Years came around I was in a hell of a state.  

I was getting 5 to 6 during the day, however the night was the problem.  I was getting them every hour to 45 minutes all night.  I was getting an hour or two of real sleep before it would start.  I am not the kind of person that can go without prolonged sleep.  I am a sleep pig.  I love sleep. It brings me much joy.  There is nothing like a nap.   Anyway, I digress.    

So, to say I was testy would have been kind.  I was down right angry all the time and not happy in the least.  So after New Years I did it.  I dropped the sugars and the wheat and went back to No Gluten and No Sugar.   Guess what, after about three days of decreasing hot flashes they went, almost completely away.   

I also added back the Hot Yoga.  I became determined to take my tim  for me and that is just the way it will be.   I started doing a 30 in 40 hot yoga challenge.  I am 10 for 14 having had a short back outage with my SI joint.  I am feeling much better and more in control of my body and breath. 

I am back to the one or two hot flashes a day and maybe one at night.  Some times none at all.  If am on it and don't have any alcohol, sugar, gluten, etc... I have better days and better nights.  I am not saying this way of eating is the fountain of youth, and I will never grow old,  I am just saying, if I am going to run this roller coaster anyways, I might as well pick the lazy river over the wave pool.  If this does not prove something to me I can't imagine what will.