Page 6

What Causes Hot Flashes And How To Stop Them!

They hit at the most inconvenient times: during business meetings, out with friends. Your face flushes. Your heart rate accelerates. Your body feels like a steam vent, and perspiration washes all over you.

You’re having hot flashes, and for more than 70 percent of women, they’re an ill-timed, uncomfortable, and often embarrassing reality of menopause.

So what’s the cause?

Ask that question, even to doctors, and you won’t get a straight answer. They’ll say “we don’t know,” or “it’s not clear what triggers hot flashes,” or the common answer: “declining estrogen.”

Well, this is true as there appears to be many reasons and factors as to why some women have more hot flashes and some less. Certainly bioidentical estrogen and progesterone helps, but there is one main overlooked reason that must be addressed.

In two words: “insulin resistance.”

Insulin is a hormone that delivers glucose, or blood sugar, from the bloodstream into cells, where it’s burned for energy. Insulin resistance means that the insulin is less efficient at “making the delivery,” like the mail person who can’t make it to your house to give you your letters … so sugar levels rise in the blood. Insulin resistance lurks beneath many of most common symptoms one experiences during menopause – not only hot flashes, but also fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and weight gain.

Once you know the real cause of something – in this case, insulin resistance – then you can stop the problem in its tracks, and not mask it with drugs.

Stop snacking.

Do not eat between meals and do not snack. That advice might seem to fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but here’s the truth: if you’re over forty, snacking can be destructive to your goals. It can cause insulin resistance, weight gain, hot flashes, and inflammation. If you feel hunger pangs during the day, add more healthy fats, oils, and nuts to your meals. The hunger pangs will soon disappear. Eventually you’ll retrain your body to not desire snacks.

Douse the fire with Maca.

Maca is an adaptogen, which means it can help support your adrenals, especially against the impact of burnout and chronic stress. Additionally, maca helps keep the body from being too acidic (stress is extremely acidifying by itself) because it is very alkalinizing. Maca also supports hormone balance, sex drive, and mood, and it decreases hot flashes. Take one to two scoops of my Mighty Maca Plus in smoothies, teas, or water. This contains organic Peruvian maca plus over 30 superfoods I combined to naturally support our body and hormone balance and it really works for hot flashes!

Supplement with Omega-3 fish oil.

I’m a big believer in the power of this supplement, made up of two components of fish oil, EPA and DHA. In a 2009 study conducted in Canada, 120 women going through menopause were given either a fish oil supplement providing 1,200 milligrams of EPA and DHA or a placebo for two months. Prior to the study, these women averaged about 2.8 hot flashes daily. But after eight weeks, their hot flashes decreased by 55 percent in the EPA and DHA group, but by only 25 percent in the placebo group.

You can’t go wrong by including this supplement in your daily regimen. A good omega-3 will have 360 milligrams EPA and 240 milligrams DHA per 1,000-milligram capsule.