Over the past decade, women’s health has emerged as a rapidly expanding field of scientific inquiry and knowledge with important implications for clinical practice. Women’s health can be viewed broadly as the study of the effect of sex and gender on health and disease that occurs across the spectrum of the biologic, behavioral, and social sciences.

Today I am going to study an important issue of women health- that is HOT FLUSH. Although hot flush can be found very occasionally in case of male.

It is not a disease actually; symptom of a disease – the compositions of some problems which raise out at the commencement of menopause (the cessation of menstrual cycle) and perimenopause (the junction between two time spans of the end stage menstruation and the cessation of menstruation). As we are just talking regarding menstrual cycle, you can understand this is a common feature among the women at their end stage of reproductive life. Excessive feelings of severe heat along with profuse production of sweat followed by fast pulse rate are common features.

Duration of each episode of attack lasts for few seconds to several minutes usually; but sometimes can be lasted for more than half an hour. Lower chin to upper part of the front and back of the chest, whole face, back of the neck, top of the scalp these are usually the trigger points. Then the whole area of the body starts to feel heated. Losing consciousness is not uncommon by the harsh episode of attack in case of some very ill health women. The extreme expression of hot flushes is the flaring of skin of the face to raised temperature followed by blushing or redness. It can be easily felt the raised temperature, if you touch the face of the patient and the redness is easily visible in naked eye.

Hot flushes usually found in menopausal women- it is a general idea. You will find many women yet to menopause (what we can say perimenopausal women) is showing the features of hot flushes very severely. Again many women will show very uneventful cool menopause. Never complains of hot flushes. In most of the common cases the hot flushes appears just few years of menopause and prevails over a long period; even after many years of menopause. In these types of cases the episodes of hot flushes are usually within the tolerable limit and occasional. The worst lucked women can face even more than 12 attacks per day. Another thing we can take in considers, that is environmental temperature or surrounding temperature. Women in cold countries usually suffer less by this. Because excessive hot weather can increase the hot flushes to a harsh form.

Sleep disturbance or insomnia is very common problem among the patients with hot flushes. Then what happens? In the day time it can effect on the performance of the person. She may become less productive in her job place. not only that regular sleep disturbance creates bad effect on physical environment leading to rise of various problem like hypertension, diabetes, bowel discomfort etc. among  these women rate of road traffic accidents are very high. Why?-you can understand easily…

Post menopausal women may face usually two types of hot flush episodes. The Sudden severe short form and the gradual long form. First one is characterized by sudden attack of hot flush rise to the peak within few seconds to few minutes; then slowly decreases. The second form usually the most painful. It appears very slowly, never goes so peak but can remain even throughout the day. This type of patients may suffer for years together. When sufferings for several years then the severity of the sudden attack usually decreases.

So only menopausal women are suffers from hotflush? No, not exactly, it is always not true only menopausal or per menopausal women are the main sufferer. There are a lot of causes which can cause hot flush. Among which some are normal physiological and some are disease conditions.physiologiacl hot flush occurs when the estrogen level of the body is decreased any way. This only occurs during menstruation or just before menstruation. Young girls feels hot and cold wave like feelings alternately but for very few minutes. Again same type of features can be found other than menstruation- which indicates the pituitary hormone regulating dysfunction due to trouble of the pituitary gland. But one thing is important- if young girls starts to suffer from hot flush it can be turned into more severe form than the menopausal women. Duration is also longer even after long time of regular menopause.

Hot flushes are an early and acute symptom of estrogen deficiency. The absence of estrogen can result in symptomatic as well as physiologic changes. Estrogen is important for blood flow, synaptic activity, neuronal growth, the survival of cholinergic neurons, and many other functions, including cognition. In general, estrogen has a positive effect on mood and contributes to a sense of well-being. In an estrogen-deficient state such as occurs after the menopause, a higher incidence of depression (clinical or sub clinical) is manifest. Some of this trend may be related to estrogen deficiency. Estrogen is also thought to have an overall positive effect on verbal memory. So main objective of treatment of hot flush is hormone replacement.

Hormone replacement has a tremendous affect on menopausal symptoms. Thus hot flush is cured with it. Just after two or three doses you will find a vigorous change in the physical environment of the patient. But no benefit is uneventful. If you take long time of hormone replacement therapy, you may develop some other problems, like atherosclerosis(deposition of atheromatous plaque inside the wall of blood vessel specially due  to increase of cholesterol in blood.) which leads to Coronary(heart) Vessel disease, stroke, peripheral vascular diseases, loss of memory for short or long form, cancer in breast, cancer in the uterus etc. this long term effect may be due to increase amount of estrogen hormone level in blood due to direct uptake of hormone.

As direct raise of hormone level creates some long term complications, some drugs are now being used to raise the estrogen sensitivity. They are Selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs).  Beside this plant source of natural estrogen phytoestrogen can be taken.

Last of all lets know about some life style modifications. Avoid drinks containing caffeine. Change of spicy food intake habit into less spicy. Try to take soy rich diet. Smart exercise practice not to build up strong muscles but to burn fat smoothly.

So that’s all the basics from hot flush…