I Sweat Every Night in My Sleep: Is Menopause the Culprit?

Most of your days are busy ones, and you look forward to falling into bed each night to reset and recharge. Unfortunately, menopause has other plans for your good night’s sleep. Instead of getting the restorative sleep you want and need, you spend the night dealing with a cycle of night sweats and chills.

Night sweats are part of a group of menopause side effects called vasomotor symptoms, which include hot flashes. In reality, night sweats and hot flashes are the same thing, just at different times of the day, and they affect 80% of women during and after menopause.

No matter when they strike, hot flashes and night sweats are never welcome. To help explain this byproduct of menopause, we turn to the team at Women’s Wellness MD, with menopause expert Dr. Chetanna Okasi. Here’s what we want you to know about night sweats and menopause.

Menopause and night sweats

Each year in the United States, about two million women begin their transition through menopause. This transition marks the end of the reproductive stage and occurs when the ovaries shut down and no longer release eggs. 

With the shutdown of the ovaries also comes a sudden drop in female reproductive hormones, including progesterone and estrogen. This hormonal drop is what drives most of the side effects of menopause, including hot flashes and night sweats.

Many women experience sudden changes in body temperature due to estrogen’s influence on their overall body temperature regulation, which happens in the region of the brain called the hypothalamus. 

When women lose estrogen during and after menopause, the hypothalamus registers the loss and tries to adjust. Unfortunately, in adjusting, your body temperature regulation becomes more sensitive and overreactive.

How this plays out is that your body registers a drop in body temperature and turns up the heat. The heat-up is strong enough to create an equally aggressive cooling action — blood vessels near the surface of your skin dilate, and your sweat glands go into overdrive. 

As if the night sweats weren't bad enough, you can swing from overheating to overcooling in minutes, and you’re left shivering in cold sweat for the rest of the night.

Night sweats are not always related to menopause

If you’re female, in your late 40s or beyond, and you’re experiencing night sweats, the odds are very good that menopause is driving the issue. 

Still, there are other culprits behind sweating at night, such as:

• Infections and viruses
• Thyroid issues
• Certain medications or treatments
• Anxiety or panic disorder
• Certain cancers

In some instances, it might just be an issue caused by too many blankets.

Turn down the heat on your night sweats

If we find that your night sweats are likely attributable to menopause and the drop in estrogen, the good news is that we can resolve the issue through hormone replacement therapy. As the name suggests, with this approach, we replenish low levels of reproductive hormones to restore metabolic balance in your body.

There are also prescription medications that target night sweats and hot flashes alone and that don’t influence your hormones.

So, if you’re losing sleep to disruptive night sweats, it’s time to talk with us about solutions for your vasomotor symptoms. To set that in motion, contact us by calling one of our offices in Columbia or Greenbelt, Maryland, or by using our online booking feature today.