Decoding Hot Flashes: The Stress Connection and Solutions That Work

In this episode of Joyful Menopause, host Lynda Enright, a functional nutritionist, discusses hot flashes and their connection to stress during perimenopause and menopause. 

She explains the physiological mechanisms behind hot flashes, focusing on the role of estrogen and the body's stress response. Lynda offers practical, science-based advice on reducing hot flashes, emphasizing the importance of an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle.  

Specific dietary recommendations include foods rich in nitric oxide, phytoestrogens, magnesium, and anti-inflammatory properties. Lynda also highlights the benefits of building resilience through mindfulness, moderate physical activity, and self-care. 

The episode concludes with a success story of one of her clients, Dawn, who saw significant improvements in her hot flashes by following these guidelines.

00:00 Introduction to Hot Flashes

00:25 Welcome to Joyful Menopause

01:23 Understanding Hot Flashes and Stress

02:36 The Role of Estrogen and Stress Response

04:17 Impact of Chronic Stress and Inflammation

05:22 Dietary Solutions for Hot Flashes

09:13 Managing Stress and Building Resilience

10:31 Client Success Story: Dawn's Journey

12:16 Conclusion and Resources

When you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you to feel your best during perimenopause and menopause:

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2. For more information about Lynda and how she supports women on their health journey, click here to learn more.

3. Interested in seeing if nutrition coaching with Lynda is right for you? Click here to book a free discovery call with Lynda.

Transcript

0:00

Imagine you are sitting in a meeting trying to focus on the discussion when a sudden wave of heat engulfs you. It starts deep in your chest and surges upward to your face, leaving your skin flushed and damp with sweat. Your heart races as though you've just sprinted a mile, and you feel a creeping sense of discomfort as beads of sweat gather at your temples. And then you realize you're having a hot flash. Welcome to Joyful Menopause, the show that helps women in perimenopause and menopause navigate this transformative time with clarity, confidence, and care. I'm Lynda Enright, a functional nutritionist with 25 years experience helping women achieve vibrant health. Today, we're diving into a topic that affects so many women. hot flashes, but more importantly, we'll explore what's behind them, your body's stress response, and most critically, what you can do to reduce their impact. And before we wrap up today, I will tell you about my client Dawn, who has seen significant improvements in her hot flashes that were driving her a bit crazy. So grab a cup of tea and let's get started. Menopause doesn't have to feel like you are living in someone else's body. Your host, Linda Enright, has spent the last 25 years helping women to thrive in midlife. Here you'll find science based practical advice that you can start using today to get real results for your health. Welcome to Joyful Menopause. Today we are talking about stress and hot flashes. So many women are experiencing hot flashes among other symptoms of menopause and are just being told that it's menopause and there's nothing you can do about it. Or sometimes put on medications that can unfortunately lead to other negative side effects. But I know there's a better way because I see this challenge every day in my practice and I see women getting better results. So first of all, I want to help understand what hot flashes are. They're not just random. They're closely tied to changes in your hormones and how those hormones affect your nervous system. Specifically, the sympathetic nervous system plays a significant role. That's the fight, flight, or freeze system, which you've probably heard of. This system controls your body's stress response. And during perimenopause and menopause, it can become overly reactive. I've talked about hot flashes before, and I will again, as they're one of the most common symptoms women experience during these years. They feel like that sudden wave of heat, often accompanied by sweating or redness or rapid heartbeat. And today I want to talk about what's really happening in your body during a hot flash and how your body's stress response is involved. As we age, levels of estrogen begin to decline. Estrogen is a key hormone in regulating many different systems in your body. Estrogen protects your blood vessels, keeping them more flexible, reducing your risk for high blood pressure and heart issues. Estrogen also helps to regulate the balance between the sympathetic, the fight, flight, or freeze system, and the parasympathetic, which is the rest and digest nervous system. When estrogen drops, this balance can get disrupted. leading to increased sensitivity in the stress response. Research shows that women with lower heart rate variability, which is a measure of your body's ability to adapt to stress, are more likely to experience frequent hot flashes. If your body is stuck in sort of a high alert mode, it becomes harder to regulate temperature. leading to those sudden waves of heat It is so common today that so many women are living in that high alert mode. Throughout evolution, we would be in high alert to stay alive, to run from the lion. But today, think about all the things that may put you there, sitting in traffic when you're late for a meeting. A stressful call from your boss. A family member may be making your life more difficult, or an aging parent who needs your support. It's pretty common for women through these years of midlife. And really, I think for most people in our world today, it's common to be living in an almost constant state of high alert. or living in your sympathetic nervous system much more of the time than our bodies were really designed for. Today we're talking about stress and hot flashes and I want to help you see what is going on with your body to create this disruption making you feel like you're burning up. Stress isn't just emotional, it's physical too. When your body experiences chronic stress, your HPA axis gets dysregulated. Your HPA axis is a system of organs that controls your stress response. So chronic stress upsets the system that regulates stress and then it can lead to persistent high cortisol levels. You can see how this can become a vicious cycle. Over time, these high cortisol levels can lead to weight gain, high blood sugar, muscle weakness, anxiety, and digestive issues. And these changes can trigger an immune response that will promote inflammation throughout your body. Chronic inflammation can impair blood vessel function and exacerbate the frequency and intensity of hot flashes. It's a systemic issue that underscores why managing stress and reducing inflammation are crucial during this phase of life. It's not simply that you need a colder home or lighter clothes, that can be helpful, but inflammation is making it harder for your body to cool down, again, exacerbating the frequency and intensity of hot flashes. So that's why an anti inflammatory diet and lifestyle are so critical during this phase of life. What can you do about it? In just a moment, I have four things that you can do with your diet and lifestyle to help reduce your hot flashes. But first, today, we're talking about perimenopause, stress, and hot flashes, what's going on in your body, and now we're going to get into what you can do about it. The first is simply to create excellent nourishment in your body. The first of the food choices is to choose foods that are building blocks for nitric oxide. Nitric oxide helps relax blood vessels and improve circulation, so it reduces vasoconstriction, that closing up of your blood vessels, that's linked to hot flashes and stress. Foods that are excellent sources are beets, arugula, and watercress. Beets help to promote blood flow and support vascular health, helping your body to regulate temperature more effectively. Arugula and watercress both are rich in antioxidants that combat oxidative stress and inflammation. Some ideas of how to do that. You could add arugula to salads. Roasted sweets and beets is one of my favorite. It's a mixture of sweet potatoes, beets, onions and garlic. Watercress has a peppery flavor, and you can add it to soups or sandwiches. And next we want to choose foods that are rich in phytoestrogens. These foods mimic estrogen's effects in your body, restoring the balance and reducing hot flashes. Ground flax seeds are a great choice because they bind estrogen receptors and they provide omega 3 fats that are also helpful to reduce inflammation. Whole soy foods are rich in isoflavones that help to stabilize hormone fluctuations. Chickpeas are also a good source of phytoestrogens and they're rich in B vitamins that are supportive for your nervous system. So some ideas of how to use these things. You could sprinkle ground flax seeds on yogurt, put it in a smoothie or sprinkle on a mixed dish. Chickpeas are great on a salad or in a soup or delicious in hummus. And edamame soybeans can be an easy and really tasty snack. Next, you can choose foods that are rich in magnesium. These are good choices because they help to calm your nervous system. They can regulate cortisol levels and improve your sleep. Some good magnesium sources include almonds, avocados, and spinach. You could snack on almonds, you could add spinach to smoothies, or mix into a salad with arugula too. Avocado toast is a great breakfast, and it goes great on salads too. The second is to reduce inflammation, because chronic inflammation, as we said, worsens stress and hot flashes. We can do a lot to reduce inflammation with food too. I recommend focusing on berries, fatty fish, and olive oil, top three things. Berries like blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries are rich in vitamin C and polyphenols that help to reduce oxidative stress, which damages your body's cells. Fatty fish like salmon, tuna, sardines are rich in omega 3s, which lower inflammation and support brain and heart health. And olive oil contains compounds that soothe your nervous system and reduce inflammation. Ideas of how to use, again, you could add berries to oatmeal or simply have them as a snack or a side. I recommend fatty fish maybe two to three times a week and olive oil is wonderful in salad dressings or I personally love it for dipping a delicious sourdough bread. And the third option for reducing inflammation is to include gut friendly foods. A healthy gut microbiome reduces inflammation and enhances your body's ability to manage stress. Fermented foods are great for your gut because they contain probiotics that are supportive for gut health. These might include good quality yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut, tempeh, or apple cider vinegar. And fiber rich vegetables are great for feeding the good bugs in your gut. So every time you eat, I recommend to look at your plate and see if you have one or two servings of vegetables. They all add up and are so good for your gut and inflammation. The third choice is to manage stress. Practicing deep breathing exercises to activate that parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest system. It can really help to reduce the frequency and intensity of your hot flashes. A good goal would be to incorporate mindfulness or meditation into your daily routine. Even just five or 10 minutes a day can make a really big difference. And lastly, build resilience. I talked earlier about this heart rate variability. Improving that variability will help to lower your stress and reduce your hot flashes. Things you can do engaging in moderate physical activity like a brisk walk, swimming, bike riding. They're helpful in so many ways to lower your stress, to improve your heart health. to regulate your blood sugars and to manage a healthy weight. For our purposes today, they're also very helpful to reduce hot flashes. Also, it doesn't hurt to free up space for self care for resilience as well. Maybe you can delegate some tasks, maybe you can simplify your life a little bit so you can build these practices into your life. Your body will thank you. Hot flashes are not just an inconvenience, they're a signal from your body that something is out of balance. By understanding the connection between stress, inflammation, and your nervous system, you can take steps to reduce their frequency and severity. Before we go, I'd like to tell you about my client Dawn. Among other symptoms she was experiencing as she moved into perimenopause, hot flashes were super frustrating for her. She felt embarrassed and worried that people at work would notice when she would be sweating. She felt old and like her body was not her own anymore, and it was really impacting her mental health. too. Her friends could understand, of course, what had happened, but she still hated making a big deal out of it. But she felt like it was constantly taking a sweater on and off from cold to hot and back all day long. Maybe you can relate. Dawn had a typical American diet. She ate a lot of convenience foods and products that were touted as quote unquote healthy. But when I started teaching Dawn about nutrition, we realized that a lot of the things that she was eating were lacking in nutrients and may have been increasing inflammation rather than decreasing it. She said she didn't feel like she had a lot of stress. She had a good life. She enjoyed her job. She had a really great family. But when we talked more, I found that she spent a lot of time feeling overwhelmed, trying to juggle all the pieces of her life. None of it felt bad, but it did feel challenging. I worked with Dawn to create an anti inflammatory diet. We added more vegetables, which was a great place to start. And though her family didn't love fish, we planned for meals that she could have for lunch that would add salmon or tuna into her diet more often. And we worked on resilience. The food was helping, but then this really helped her to turn the corner. Within a short time, she was noticing her hot flashes were getting less intense. and then she noticed them decreasing in frequency as well. She was so happy to finally feel more like herself again. The choices she made didn't create this feeling of overwhelm, but rather simplified her eating in a way that was so much more nourishing, but easy too. I want you to know that there are solutions. You can feel like yourself again and reduce or eliminate your hot flashes. It can be done and it absolutely does not have to be that complicated. It is all about creating the balance that's right for your body. I know what you desire is to feel like yourself again, and you maybe haven't gotten the answers yet. The tips I've given you today are a great place to start, and another good resource for you is my free guide, Five Natural Ways to Reduce Menopause Symptoms. You'll find more tips on navigating these years with confidence and clarity. The link to get access to this free guide is in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me today. Remember, menopause isn't something to fear. It's an opportunity to create a healthier, more empowered version of yourself. Until next time, take care of yourself and be well.