Every year thousands of women get hot flashes as they near
menopause the intense sweating can be a nuisance and embarrassing. Did you know
that men can get hot flashes - the problem is very common among men who've had treatment
for prostate cancer but a medication studied at Mayo Clinic is helping many men
find relief.
A couple of years ago Robert bomber had radiation therapy for
prostate cancer and because prostate cancers sometimes fuelled by testosterone,
he also took medication to block production of that male hormone in that week.
It is when he noticed and became a parent of the hot flashes they weren't
really brutal but he had broken out in a sweat which lasted 5-6 minutes.
There was such a thing as male hot flashes came to existence
at that point of time. Male hot flashes are a reality for many men going through
treatment for prostate cancer says dr. Charles laprincia. Women get hot flashes
around the time of menopause because their estrogen levels dramatically drop. The
same sort of thing happens in men when their testosterone levels dramatically
drop in hopes of finding relief from the hot flashes. Robert enrolled in a Mayo
Clinic study that tested a medication called gabapentin to see if it reduces
hot flashes in men it's already been proven to reduce hot flashes moderately in
women.
Results showed it worked!
The drug reduces male hot flashes by about 50%. The severity
and the duration of the hot flashes diminished. This medication does not
contain hormones and dr. laprincia says that's important because while hormone
therapy may stop hot flashes very well, it may also cause the cancer to grow. Gabapentin
does not promote cancer growth. Robert says he still has mild hot flashes now
and then but he is grateful for a medication that’s safe and that works this
medication is also used in the treatment of seizures and sometimes for pain
control for medical Edge.There are many common causes or what they are when we need to
be concerned? So this all started because I was having these night sweats and I
thought okay this is a little early for Magma's right what's going on here, turns
out this is an incredibly common occurrence so I spoke with my doctor about
this and he says there are so many things that can be causing this but we first
have to rule out the environment so your room can't be too hot. It can't be
that your duvets too heavy or you're wearing pajamas that are too hot so rule
that out.
First of all keep the temperature really cool in your room
and then if you're still having them then there's something here that we need
to investigate and here's what he says there's some of the most common causes.
I think the most common cause would probably be something that you ate so whether
that's a lot of protein at dinner time or some alcohol can cause night sweats
and then over-the-counter medications. Sleeping medications are really common
and one of the most common. I would say are ibuprofen which is Advil or motrin
and acetaminophen which is Tylenol, those have a very common side effect of
night sweats and people don't put those two together. If I take Advil or Tylenol before bed yes going on and I was
getting the night sweats so as soon as I stopped taking those specific pain medications
before bed magically just went away. Did you play with the other factors as well?
but we don't need to get it because night sweats were gone!
The other thing we actually have to do is define what we're
talking about when it comes to night sweats so again this isn't just like I'm
feeling a little bit hot, this is clinical that clinical diagnosis of is so
you've got full-on drenching sweat where you literally have to change your
pajamas or maybe even change the bed linens. Menopause can cause night sweats for sure that can happen but
the thing with menopause is you can easily rule out a lot of other things so if
you are too young or too old so a 40 year old or a 70 year old should not be
having night sweats during menopause so easy to rule out but of course those
are hormone changes that are causing those night sweats. When it comes to
menopause and certainly changes and hormones can cause night sweats and if
that's the case your doctor will investigate things like your thyroid or your
pituitary gland which control hormones in the body so that's definitely an
option.However there are a collection
of symptoms so when you come to a few different things together that can actually
be quite concerning and doctor explains why if you're having night sweats and
weight loss or unexplained fevers and remember fever is not just touching
yourself on the forehead or getting somebody to touch your forehead and say
hooey you have a fever.
No that's a temperature of a hundred degrees Fahrenheit or thirty-eight
degrees Celsius or higher so if you have fevers that are unexplained by
infection if you have weight loss that you're not trying to lose and night
sweats boy you should see your doctor sooner rather than later okay so of
course I had to ask why what could it be and actually the collection of those three
symptoms together can be an early sign of cancer. So you want to get those things
checked out right away and again let's be very clear that people who have night
sweats and weight loss and a fever they do not all have cancer.Yeah, let's be very clear about that they do not all have
cancer however those are some that's something you really want to rule out so
they're going to rule that out right away. We want to get rid of that for sure the
other thing you want to pay attention to are those hormonal fluctuations that
happen throughout the day. You know what like at 10 o'clock in the morning I'm
like geez I need another cup of coffee or at 3 o'clock in the afternoon you
just be I'm feeling so sluggish that happens at night too. You're having all of
these things, these hormonal fluctuations happening at Night.
Let's go back for a second the person who may be experiencing
both night sweats and extreme muscle pain is a person who is in one of two
places on their journey. In the first case they may be a person who is kind of
reaching the wall that they're about to slam into and have been training so
much without adequate recovery that they are headed down the path toward overreaching
in or overtraining. The second case may be a person who has already stopped
exercise and is now trying to recover from overtraining syndrome or again overreaching
syndrome and is still experiencing really bad symptoms. It tends to be a little
more difficult for the person in the second condition because once they've
stopped that heavy intense exercise they're trying to figure out like why is
this still a problem? So let's get sort of the easier one out of the way first muscle
soreness and muscle soreness is kind of like a cute phrase for what actually
feels like someone is drilling nails into your legs sometimes and it's not just
your legs! Bodybuilders or people who use their entire bodies in their sports
might feel pain all over the place. It's a dull persistent ache, it is sharp
pain. It can be many different things, I definitely experienced this more which
this may resonate with a lot of you. I experienced it more when I actually
stopped exercising, when I stopped running.
This is totally paradoxical, I
think this is what throws a lot of people off. This is pretty normal, here's
what you have to think about your body has been absolutely going through the
meat grinder for months maybe years especially if you're me you have been incurring
a ton of tissue and muscle damage. You are where you are because you have not
given your body adequate chance to recover from that damage. Now let's remember
that some damage is actually why you train, you create some damage so that the healing
makes you a stronger better athlete but not for us. We have already gone past
that healthy point to the point where our bodies are not able to keep up with
the amount of damage that we're doing. So you may experience this pain while
you're still training and you may also experience it when you stop you've got a
huge debt to pay back and this is your body's way of saying no more. The pain
can be excruciating, I remember laying in bed at night and feeling my legs like
someone beat them with hammers and trying to figure out why is this hurting so
badly. I didn't do anything that day all I did was maybe a walk or maybe less
than that but the pain was really incredible so without getting too deep into
the science let me see if I can possibly explain what's going on here.
You've
got these microscopic tears in the muscles and an inflammatory response is
created to clear up the damage the symptoms of pain that we get which you also
might know as Dom's or delayed onset muscle soreness come actually from that inflammatory
response the thing is when you're training so much and your body is being
pumped with stress hormones to support that training. Chances are you won't
feel the pain with that much stress hormone pumping through your body you
probably are not feeling or not allowing your body the chance to feel this pain.
Once you stop training and your body isn't being jacked up with cortisol and
adrenaline all the time your body has the chance to do a lot of things one of
which is feel the pain that it has been ignoring for a really long time. I know
this is kind of hard because it's frustrating and it makes us feel like we're
going backwards instead of forwards but you have to try to look at this as a
positive part of the process. This pain means healing it may take days weeks or
even longer for you to start feeling normal again. I know it took me a very
long time and I'm not going lie to you, a year and a half after I stopped
running the first time to try to recover I still get pretty severe pain if I overdo
it.
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