Menopause can suck . . . am I right? For many women, from the moment our ovaries stop producing hormones, our bodies betray us in the most heinous of ways, one of the most pervasive being the dreaded hot flashes. 

© 2018 Valerie Albarda

How many different ways can you say ‘hot flash’?I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been sitting around, minding my own business, when all of a sudden, without the slightest hint or warning, my body felt like it had spontaneously combusted into a fit of raging flames. Nothing quite matches the intensity of feeling as if you’re burning to cinders from the inside out. Hot flashes anger me.

My husband has become quite accustomed to frequent bouts of my spur-of-the-moment strip tease routine as I frantically rip off articles of clothing in an attempt to quell the human roasting. I’ve been to doctors, nurse practitioners, menopause specialists and, once, I even considered an exorcist.

I’ve tried a plethora of ways to combat the freakin’ flashes, including:

• estrogen (very sparingly)
• watching what I eat
• meditating (well, actually, I was daydreaming that I was lying in a tub full of ice cubes, but still…)
• Vitamin E
• ginseng
• evening primrose oil
• avoiding caffeine
• using frozen washcloths as a cold compress
• crying (let me be the first to tell you this is of absolutely no use)
• praying (this I do between gut-wrenching sobs)
• eating popsicles (cooled me off a teensy bit, but I gained 5 pounds in the aftermath)
• streaking through my neighborhood in the middle of the night (full disclosure: I didn’t actually do this, but I certainly gave it serious thought)
• wearing wicking PJs
• keeping a folding hand fan in every room of the house and in every purse in my arsenal
• dressing in layers (this can be fruitless when you end up in your bra and panties in the middle of Wal-Mart)
• snapping at my husband because I’m miserable (and I end up feeling even more pathetic for taking my frustrations out on him)
• eating chocolate (those small doses of anadamide, phenylethlyamine and tryptophan in chocolate do diddlysquat for hot flashes, but they make me happy as hell…)

My next step on the road to a hot-flash-free existence is to try a 90% body transplant – plop my head on someone else’s non-menopausal frame (preferably, a humanoid with a smokin’ hot bod [and not ‘hot’ as in ‘flashes’]). 

But I digress.

I suspect I shall never fully be rid of this nuisance for quite some time. With the way my luck has been going, that’ll be roughly 20 years from now. Sigh.

I say all of this to say I turn to you, oh Wise Woman of Midlife, and ask, “How do you cope with hot flashes?” I’d love to hear how you combat the Midlife Woman’s No. 1 Nemesis. Let me know in the comments.