The giant of heart diseases is slowly creeping into the continent and taking away lots of people especially women who are past menopause. This has led to many people assuming that there could be a close link between menopausal symptoms and heart problems. Among the symptoms, it is the hot flushes that have been mostly connected to this problem. More and more people assume that they could have something to do with this risk.
Related Issues
The assumption that hot flushes can increase heart risk has sparked the never ending debate on whether the hot flashes that occur during menopause can lead to heart problems. Many scholars have tried to unravel this mystery with little success. Hot flashes happen when the blood vessels near the skin dilate to cool down. The end result of this is a red face and sometimes sweating. On the extreme this can lead to difficulty in sleeping or a disruption of the normal working. They are especially common in women undergoing menopause due to hormonal changes in the body.
These flushes happen at different times. Some women get them early as menopause creeps in, others after a few years after the menopause while others get them at a much later stage. All these stages have been proven to have a bearing on the risk of heart problems.
Studies
However, despite the thorough and numerous researches done, none has been able to fully link early menopausal hot flashes with heart disease. This is to say that women who get these flashes early are at a lower risk of getting heart problems. The risk increases in women who get flushes at an advanced stage of menopause.
However, as much as the risk of heart diseases is high with women who are past menopause, there are no enough grounds to show that it is actually the menopause symptoms that caused the hearts problems. I mean, how can you ascertain that it is the hot flushes that happened a decade ago that caused the heart disease? It is also difficult to get reliable information on when these flushes appeared to the woman. For all we know they could have started early, later in life or never happened at all.
This has however not stopped some researchers from concluding that women who get hot flushes early into their menopause are at a lower risk of getting heart disease. This should however not be taken to mean that hot flashes at the onset of menopause are a sure guarantee that you will never get heart problems or that because you had your flushes later in your menopause now you are destined to die of heart failure. This is not what we are saying: It does not happen that way.
There are numerous factors that increase the risk of heart problems, menopause aside. Factors like high cholesterol levels, smoking and blood pressure can all lead to heart failure even for people who are not undergoing menopause.
Healthy Lifestyle
It is in this regard that you who are on the threshold of menopause or already in should embark on a healthy lifestyle in order to reduce this risk. Proper dieting will for instance keep your weight in check while still ensuring that your cholesterol levels are not high. I know menopause can comes with stress that calls for overeating, but resist it. It can be detrimental to your body and more so to your heart should you become overweight. You should also exercise regularly to burn those calories that usually build up with the onset of menopause. It has been proven that hot flushes are more common in women who are overweight and hence if you are to avoid heart disease after menopause, you have to keep a close tab on your weight.
Conclusion
There is a lot of hullaballoo around hot flushes in menopause. Most people take them as a red flag signaling the impending disaster in the form of heart diseases. Their assumptions are not all wrong because it has been noted that these flushes can actually increase heart risk, especially if they appear after menopause has already started. It is in this light that we can conclude that flashes which start early as menopause creeps in reduce the risk while those that come later on increase it. Therefore, if you get your flashes very early in your menopause, then you are less likely to suffer heart problems in the future. However, early onset of flushes is not a foolproof guarantee of heart diseases never happening. This is because heart problems are caused by a variety of factors and menopausal symptoms are just a tip of the iceberg. This is why you should take a keen interest on your health by eating healthily and exercising in order to fully scrap this risk.
References
https://www.glozine.com/lifestyle/health
https://www.consumerhealthdigest.com/menopause-center/what-is-menopause.html
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