How do you get hot flashes when you are post menopause?

Question

My mom is having hot flashes and she hasn't had a period for over 3 years, how is this possible?

Answer 1

It can occur because the body is no longer making the hormones. I have the link to another site that may be able to give you even more information. The link is at: http://forums.obgyn.net/womens-health

Answer 2

No, that's not what's going on. When you take your temperature, you always take it internally--mouth, rectum, etc. You don't just press the thermometer against your skin. The reason is that internal temperature stays pretty consistent (it varies by about a degree depending on the time of day, time of the month, your own personal chemistry, and a few other things, but it's basically the same). But SKIN temperature varies by quite a lot based on a lot of different things. What's going on when you get a hot flash is that your body is having the blood vessels near the surface of your skin dilate, meaning that more blood flows into them, meaning that your skin gets warmer. See, your body is constantly working hard to regulate your temperature. If you're in a cooler environment, your body constricts blood vessels near the skin, especially in the extremities, shunting blood to your core and keeping your core temperature at the appropriate level, conserving heat. If you're in a hot environment, or you're hot due to exercise or something, your body opens up those blood vessels at the surface to cool you down--you rapidly lose heat to the outside due to heat conduction, and you cool down. This is why someone who has just gone for a run is flushed--the blood vessels near the skin have opened up, meaning more blood near the surface, redder skin, and more heat loss, so you cool down.You can do some things that will cause your surface blood vessels to dilate--drinking alcohol will do this. This is why alcoholics tend to have big bulbous red noses and lots of broken capillaries on their face--their surface blood vessels are constantly dilating, increasing possibility of them breaking. So when you have menopausal hot flashes (called hot flushes in England), your surface blood vessels are dilating, making your skin redder, and bringing lots of heat to the surface of your body. That heat can make your windows steam up, your glasses fog up and the heat can be felt radiating off of your body, annoying your cat, because your body never otherwise dilates your surface vessels to that extent, except when it's 100 degrees or you've just sprinted somewhere. It also makes you personally feel like you are hotter, because there are a lot more temperature-detecting nerves at your surface than internally, so you generally perceive your temperature to be whatever is detected at the surface, not at your core. But in reality, if you took your temperature via thermometer in your mouth at that point, the temp wouldn't have changed. Because it's not affecting your internal temp, just your skin temp. There's nothing to investigate, as you will see if you test your temp yourself.