Hot Flashes And Pregnancy: What Do You Really Know?

Hot flashes are a deeply unpleasant sensation and are traditionally associated with women in menopause. Yet like so many other things in the world of medicine, there is a host of misinformation on the topic, especially when it comes to hot flashes in women. Below are some questions for you to answer. Try this true or false quiz and see how much you really know about hot flashes and pregnancy.

1: True or False:
Hot flashes are only something that women in menopause must worry about as less than 5% of women who are pregnant suffer from them.

2: True or False:
Hot flashes only appear during the day and last for a very short period of time.

3: True or False:
All you need to do is change your diet and general lifestyle to gain relief from hot flashes.

4: True or False:
Hormone therapy is dangerous and should not be attempted when pregnant.

How do you think you did? Read the rest of this article for all the answers.

Answers:
1: Fluctuating hormones are the reason for hot flashes. This means that women whose hormones change rapidly for any reason are at risk. Obviously, women in menopause experience a major reduction in their level of hormone production but so do pregnant women. When you’re pregnant, your levels of progesterone and estrogen should increase dramatically.

On occasion, the level of progesterone does not rise enough and this deficiency causes problems with the body’s temperature gauge (hypothalamus). Hot flashes and pregnancy are the result with an estimated 75% of pregnant women suffering from this problem at some point during their pregnancy.

2: While it’s true that hot flashes may only appear for a few seconds, there is also the possibility that they will last for up to 5 minutes. Also, hot flashes don’t discriminate between day and night. You are as likely to experience them at 5am as 5pm.

3: As hot flashes and pregnancy is a hormonal problem, changing your diet and lifestyle will only have a slight effect. When you’re pregnant, you should of course be looking to eat healthily for the sake of the unborn child but don’t think this will affect your hot flashes.

4: The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study in 2002 was a damning indictment of synthetic hormone therapy. The WHI study showed that this form of hormone therapy was dangerous and could potentially cause breast cancer in women.

However, this does not take into account bioidentical hormone therapy. With the same molecular structure as hormones created in the body, bioidentical therapy has been proven to be safe with the WHI study not including it in its research at the time. Further research has shown that bio-identical hormones are in fact safe.

This means that progesterone creams are the ideal solution to hot flashes and pregnancy. The cream is applied to the skin once a day and involves no injections or other painful procedures. The ingredients are all-natural which makes it safe for mother and child.

Hopefully, your knowledge of hot flashes in pregnancy and hormone therapy has increased ever so slightly.