Lisa Snowdon details the symptoms of her early menopause
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Menopause is a natural part of getting older. It occurs as your ovaries stop producing the same amounts of oestrogen as they used to before. This change is associated with various symptoms, including hot flushes.
Hot flush describes a sudden feeling of warmth, usually intense in areas, such as the face, neck and chest.
Their intensity can vary and, in some cases, they might disrupt your everyday activities, the Mayo Clinic reports.
Women can often experience sleep disturbances due to this symptom, which can last for years.
It’s not quite clear what exactly causes them but they are thought to be associated with the oestrogen drop, the health portal explains.
Research suggests that hot flushes happen when lower oestrogen levels cause your body’s thermostat to be “more sensitive to slight changes” in body temperature.
However, there’s also one drink that could be triggering these uncomfortable problems as well. According to the National Library of Medicine, the problematic drink is coffee.
The effects of caffeine have been identified to cause mainly so-called vasomotor symptoms.
Vasomotor symptoms describe signs that happen due to the constriction or dilation of blood vessels.
They include hot flashes, night sweats, heart palpitations and changes in blood pressure.
Hot flashes and night sweats are two typical symptoms common for menopause.
One study, published in the journal Menopause, has found that postmenopausal women who regularly drank caffeinated drinks saw more troublesome vasomotor symptoms, compared to women who skipped caffeine.
The women in the study drank a variety of caffeinated beverages, including coffee, tea and soda.
However, the same link wasn’t observed in perimenopausal women.
Perimenopause defines a time during which your body starts making the transition to menopause.
More research is needed to ascertain the exact association between the hormonal change and the hot drink.
But according to the Mayo Clinic, if you’re a regular coffee drinker, struggling with hot flushes, you might want to cut back or ditch caffeine altogether.
If you’re experiencing troubling symptoms, you should speak to your GP, the NHS reminds.
Your doctor can confirm whether signs you’re experiencing are signalling menopause and advise how to ease them.
There are various treatments and lifestyle changes available to relieve severe symptoms.
One of the popular choices is hormone replacement therapy (HRT) which helps to replace oestrogen in your body.
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