What do Hot Flashes Feel Like?

Hot Flashes are a Sweaty Enemy

Ask 10 menopausal women what a hot flash feels like, and you'll get 10 different answers. Sad but true. Each woman feels the heat differently:

• A burning warmth across your face. 
• A crushing all over heat.
• Like baking your buns in an oven. 
• Pure de-Hell!

If you have hot flashes, you may be all too familiar with the discomfort. To me it feels like a tiny pilot light, igniting deep inside a furnace, then triggering a hellish inferno.

No matter how women describe it, the consensus forces you to visualize a spreading heat that gives way to a spontaneous rush of perspiration.

Do You Stand Your Ground?

If you're fully dressed when a hot flash begins, you may challenge what you know will be the end result. In an office situation, for instance, you might choose not to make a sweaty spectacle of yourself in front of your youthful staff. 

You may decide to stand your ground, ignoring the heat, refusing to remove a single 

stitch of clothing.

That's your inner young girl--that part of you that resists the inevitability of the menopausal state--is refusing to let the hot flash win. How admirable of you!

You may stare it down, endure the first few moments of heat... longer if dare to let it push you over the edge. Be warned! That game of hot flash chicken can quickly transition into a mad striptease. You finally concede to removing your clothing, if for no other reason than to save your expensive silks and wools from sweaty stains that refuse to be shouted out.

The Bad News

Unless the heat you're experiencing is mild, hot flashes usually win.

A few months of particularly hot episodes will sweat the fight out of you. You'll willingly undo your coat, sweater or any other garment you can easily release.

You'll pitch your best designer jacket to the floor. You'll unbutton your blouse, fully revealing your decolletage without embarrassment. Of course, if you live alone, all rules of decorum fly out the window.

You'll welcome solitude for its inherent opportunities to strip down to your personal comfort level. When you're alone, you can peel away every layer, run to the kitchen and stand naked before the open refrigerator.

Hot flashes are not pretty to watch. Which could be the reason why many middle-aged women finally come to the conclusion that having a man around the house is not that big a deal. Hot flashes are best endured alone.

But Grandma Never Had Hot Flashes!

So grandmother, great-grandmother, and mom never said a word about hot flashes. That doesn't mean they didn't have them. Previous generations simply didn't talk about such highly personal dilemmas.

It's different for Baby Boomers. We share everything and with social media the way it is, our daughters and their daughters will share even more.


Sharing is a good thing. Sharing teaches you how to cope.

Boomer ladies talk. We discuss natural menopause remedies like black cohosh and soy. We talk about traditional Chinese medicine. The internet has given aging issues wide exposure and motivation to tell all. So we tell all.

Women willingly turn to each other in forums like the WebMd Menopause community. They reveal the good and the bad, hoping someone else might have a cure that will help reduce their mutual hot flash misery.

There's Good News Too

If a friend tells you that she sailed through menopause and beyond without a single flash of heat, congratulate her. For whatever reason, some women never have to endure the fire.

Others may have only mild versions of the hardcore heat that makes you sweaty and miserable.

Will your hot flashes ever go away? Some women will know only a few fleeting years of searing heat, for others, it may last indefinitely.


Inspired by my article published originally on Helium.com