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You were shivering in your cardigan ten minutes after you'd torn it off.
At your daughter's soccer game, heat had rushed up your neck, and you'd flung the sweater onto the bleacher like it was on fire.
The heat passed in a few minutes. Then your teeth started to chatter, and you grabbed the sweater back with damp hands.
Two rows over, a mother in a puffer coat gave you a worried look. She thought you were sick.
Before the second half, you'd pulled that sweater off and on twice more.
Maybe you've wondered if you were fighting a flu you never caught… So here's what's happening inside that window.
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Your brain keeps your core temperature inside a comfort window, called the thermoneutral zone. Heat past the top edge makes you sweat. Cold past the bottom edge makes you shiver.
Picture a shower tap with almost no comfortable middle. A tiny turn sends the water scalding, so you twist hard the other way, and now it's freezing… In women with hot flashes, studies that measured sweating and shivering thresholds found a much smaller gap between the two than in women without them. Estrogen helps raise the sweating threshold, so when it falls, the window narrows.
Sweating and wide skin vessels cool you fast, and the cooling can overshoot. Your core temperature slips below the shivering line as the sweat evaporates, and the chills arrive.
Narrow window, big swings.
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Read this part twice
The chills are the second half of the flash. One narrow temperature window sends your body into heat, then overshoots into cold, and no bug is needed to explain it.
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No one warns you the cold half exists. Pamphlets say "hot flash," and the shivering leaves you checking a thermometer…
But researchers describe sweating, flushing, and chills as parts of one episode, usually lasting one to five minutes. Estimates of how many women get hot flashes run from about 50 to 80 percent.
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A few things that may help, starting tonight |
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| Wear thin layers you can shed in seconds. A cardigan or scarf that comes off fast beats a heavy sweater you're stuck in when the heat hits. |
| Pat sweat away right after a flash. Damp skin and clothes keep cooling you as they dry, which can deepen the chill. A small towel in your bag helps. |
| Try slow, paced breathing at the first hint of heat. Methods that calm the body's stress signal, like paced breathing, may ease flashes in studies. |
| Ask about treatment that widens the window. Estrogen raises the sweating threshold, and non-hormone options exist too. Ask your doctor which fits your history. |
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Your feed is pushing cold plunges and ice baths as the cure for hot flashes…
Here's the grain of truth. Cooling your skin can ease a flash while it's happening, and reviews list peripheral cooling among the things that help.
So a cool cloth may help. A body with a narrow window can overshoot into shivering, so extreme cold may backfire.
Cooling helps the heat. Extreme cold feeds the chill.
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The words to bring to your appointment
“My hot flashes end with shaking chills, and it's disrupting my day. Could this be vasomotor symptoms, and what treatments can widen my comfort zone?”
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Of course, I could be wrong about your case. Chills with a fever, or night sweats with weight loss, need a prompt check…
Dress in thin layers tomorrow.
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Do chills follow your hot flashes?
Just a quick poll. Your answer helps me choose what to cover next.
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We'll figure out the rest together.
— Diane
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P.S. Keep a small towel in your bag. Patting sweat away right after a flash can blunt the chill that follows.
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