Reducing your hot flashes may seem near to impossible, but eliminating these 10 foods could really help!
Are you waking up in the middle of the night drenched? Are you needing to rip off the covers and feel exhausted in the morning from lack of sleep? You have come to the right place, my friend; I have your back. It can feel so hard to make it through the day when you haven’t slept because you are constantly waking up hot. You might feel fragile and alone, like you are the only woman in the world feeling this way.
Believe me, you are not alone, and you are not the only woman feeling this way.
In my experience in the clinic, if you have a good diet, you are hydrated and get proper circulation throughout the body by doing light exercise every day, you can really help the hot flashes and night sweats.
Let me define what I mean by exercise, you need to sweat every day but don’t over-exert yourself to the point of exhaustion. A fast walk, yoga or swimming are great exercises; you need to literally burn the heat off. You must move your blood and circulate it throughout your body and organs. Exercise is very important, but excessive exercise depletes the vital qi (energy), which descends the qi and yang and causes the heart fire hence the hot flashes.
If you can believe it what you eat does affect your hormones and your sleep. Becoming more aware of what you eat can change the way you feel.
If you are going through menopause, you might want to consider eliminating or eating these 10 foods less in your diet. All of these foods are really good for you and have many medicinal properties, but if you are peri-menopausal or right in the thick of menopause, I recommend that if you are consuming any of these foods on a daily bases, you cut back.
I am not one to tell people to eliminate foods from their diet, but minimizing these ones really can help reduce hot flashes.
1. Ginger
2. Cayenne
3. Cinnamon
4. Cloves
5. Garlic
6. Black pepper
7. Chiles
8. Green Onions
9. Red meat (including chicken and lamb)
10. Sugary processed foods and drinks ( including alcohol)
All of these foods in Chinese Medicine are warming in nature, so if you are eating them daily or often, then what you are doing ultimately is telling your body to warm up, and you are stoking the fire within, which is leading to the hot flashes and also anxiety and mood swings.
If you are eating these foods listed above late at night or just before you go to sleep, I can’t stress enough how this causes sleep disruption and makes your hot flashes at night worse. If you are doing this over and over again, it can cause insomnia and a bad sleeping pattern. Once you are in the habit of eating late, it does take time to notice the chance once you stop the late night eating.
This goes for any dietary changes that you make, you will not notice the changes right away it takes a few weeks to notice the results.
I know it might seem a bit overwhelming to make changes in your diet, and you might really love to a lot of the foods that I have listed, but sometimes the body needs a break from the same foods. It is important to vary your diet and not eat the same foods all the time. This is when an imbalance happens in the body. Always consuming the same foods isn’t good for the digestive system.
If you focus on your diet, don’t eat a lot of sugary processed foods, eat a variety of healthy foods and don’t eat just before you go to bed, I know that your hot flashes will diminish.
Especially as a woman going through menopause, it is very important that you create healthy eating and emotional habits so that you can breeze through menopause symptom-free or at the very least with minimal symptoms.
