Switching to linen sheets helped me quite a bit. I don't overheat during the night nearly as often as I used to.

I don't think the mattress or bedding makes that much of a difference. At least not to me. I've been having hot flashes on and off for 9 years. DH for almost the same amount of time (he has hormone therapy due to a medical condition). It can be annoying as hell (the waking up once an hour or for over an hour at a time) but I haven't noticed that changing bedding or buying a new mattress (which we've done) makes a difference.

An anecdote that might (or might not) give women going through menopause a chuckle. One of my SIL started about the same time I did. Six or so months later she smugly reported that her hot flashes were over, done with. "Good for you." I responded. Next time I spoke to her they were back. I hadn't had the heart to tell her that they can disappear for quite a long period and then THEYRE BACK. I have just come to accept them as a part of my current life.

Lots of my lady friends run a fan directed toward them which helps. I found being sure not to be dehydrated helped- so drink water during the day. Have you tried leaving the window open a crack? Wear cotton pajamas- polyester is hot. Is the mattress pad cotton?

I have a floor fan pointed at the ceiling to send just a light breeze over me. Different sheets or mattress made no difference. I also keep the bedroom as cold as my husband can stand it. Oh yeah, cotton pjs—actually I just wear a tshirt. And the hot flashes do disappear for sometimes quite a long period and then come back.

Look at a genuine latex mattress. They will not affect your temp, hot or cold. Mine is nearly 40 years old and like it was new. It's firm but not hard, with no low places, no kind of wear anywhere except the handles which have seen better days. Research Dunlop vs Talalay (which you can get organic). Mine is Dunlop, which I prefer for a mattress; my pillow, recommended by Tibbrix is Talalay latex foam, which I LOVE. I haven't had a pillow I loved this much since I was a child and had a foam pillow, but I think it would be too squishy for a mattress (although they probably make different firmnesses).

I just hate regular mattresses that are filled with poly fibers, etc. So uncomfortable compared to foam (not memory foam, which is HOT).

I, too, recommend all cotton or linen everything and a fan to keep the air moving. No matter what mattress you choose, be sure to use an all cotton (or some recommend wool) mattress pad. I was surgically slammed into menopause and the only thing that sort of helped was keeping an ice pack by my feet. I got so I could automatically put my feet on the ice pack which would cool me down without waking me up all the way. I also figured out the things that were sure to make the flashes worse and learned to avoid those. For me, the individual strongest triggers are humidity, alcohol and sugar.

BTW, Annie Deighnaugh, generally you will get chilled right before a hot flash. It's the chill that wakes you.

I would get hot flashes, then sweat and throw off all the covers. Then would come the "cold flash" and then on go the covers, and then off, and then on. I think a mattress might make a difference but I don't know the physics of it. I know when I got my hot flashes I would go sleep in the guest bedroom so as to not wake my SO with my tossing and turning and cover flipping. IT was colder than the master bedroom, and I didn't have the "human furnace" next to me. So I could schooch over to the cold side, of the double bed, and let the other side cool off for a while. I didn't sleep in there every night, just tor the worst times.

Fun2bhere, I've not had the chill prior to the flash...but I have had the chill afterward as the sweat turns cold and damp. I've also tried not moving through the hot flash and it does make it a lot worse. The sooner I respond to the heat, the faster it goes away. Not responding to it, I swear you could poach an egg on my back.

You might look into take DIM. It's a supplement made from cruciferous vegetables. I'm not sure it helped me or not, but I was taking it for quite awhile at bedtime and was able to get 6 hrs generally before having a flash wake me up.

All of the above comments are true for me also and there are variations within what you experience as time moves on. Natural fiber everything. I'm on year four. My sister just turned 70 - still flashing and my mom did too til mid 70's... I'm 58.

I found a little life saver though. A small vinyl pad about 12x18 inches that came with my heating pad. You can chill it apparently but I never do. It stays next to my pillow and when I get the pre-flash wakeup I just slide it on my pillow. REALLY HELPS!!! It immediately cools my face and neck. If is a drencher it will heat up then I flip it over and its cool on the other side.

I can't tell you how much that little pad has helped . I don't know the brand and I bought the heating pad years ago and it is in hiding at the moment.

What's so annoying is how the hot flash wakes you up before you
actually get hot. It's like, "wake up! we're going to have a hot flash
and don't want you to miss it!"

LOL, so true! I've also never experienced the pre-chill that Fun2 mentioned.

Bedding, clothing ... none of it matters. They're going to come regardless. Since mine are ongoing for almost 16 years now I've learned to accept them. At least the day time flashes seem to be history.

I'll be 62 soon and went through menopause around 52. I've never had hot flashes. I took French maritime bark, pycnogenol, that I got from Trader Joe's. I initially started taking it for swollen ankles while flying (750,000+ miles on American Airlines alone) and it worked well. Then, I discovered it worked for menopause. Everyone should look at side effects, interactions, talk with your doctor before taking any supplement.

My situation is exactly like CindyMac's, and unfortunately I already have a latex mattress, linen sheet, an open window and a fan.

I also laughed at Annie's comment!

I tried the Chillow which is a vinyl, water-filled pillow that is supposed to keep your head cooler. However, I discovered that the temperature of my feet was a better regulator for my whole-body temperature, hence the ice pack.

Annie Deighnaugh, thanks for the supplement recommendation. Luckily, I seem to be over the worst of the nighttime flashes (knock on wood).

Funny story, at least to me...when my grandmother would get daytime flashes, she would strip off her shirt and stand under a running hose outside. Poor woman...I had no idea how much she was suffering.

Happy with my fan and miserable without! Better now, though.

pinkmountain, I'm like you, constantly moving trying to find the cool spot. I can't tell you the last time I slept 5 hrs. straight. Honestly, 4 hours for that matter. The heat is so intense when it hits, ugh. The closest I could explain it to DH was......think about how hot your black car is after sitting in the sun, all day long, in July in Florida. And then you go out and get in it, shut the door and sit there. It's rough!

I have a fan right beside my bed.

I also don't think the sheets/mattress will matter ... I've been dealing with hot flashes/night sweats for the past 7-8 years. What helps me is an herbal supplement that has the following herbs: Dong Quai Root, Blessed Thistle, Licorice Root, Eleuthero Root, Sarsapailla Root, Black Cohosh Root & Rhizome Extract, Squawine and False Unicorn Root (reading from the bottle). For me, just Black Cohosh didn't do a thing to help, but this combination does.

I've had flashes for years. Being on bioidentical hormone therapy helped, but it came with risks that I wasn't willing to take so I went off it and just suffer through. I'll go through periods of a lot of flashing activity, and then long lulls. But they always return. My mother, in her mid 70s, still experiences them as well. I've never had a chill before a flash. I get an inner agitation that builds rapidly to the hot flash, and the chills come after. I think we all experience them in a different way, but we can probably all agree that they're hellish.

I sleep under layers of bedding, and perhaps this is TMI but I sleep nude because when I need to get relief in the middle of the night by throwing off everything that's on the bed, I don't want to have to fuss with getting a layer of clothing off my skin.

a fan to the face is what helps the most

I'm just starting to have hot flashes at night and I have a Dunlop King latex mattress. As comfortable as it is, it still gets very hot.

To tell you the truth, my extremely thick hair is more of a problem being hot than the hot flashes.

I bought a pillow from BB&B that you fill with water that I thought would help, but it leaked right away. I'm constantly flipping my pillow at night to the cool side. Wish there was a better way.

Definitely get a good fan.

Best thing I've found is OTC sleeping pills. I take a quarter of the recommended dosage 30 minutes before bed and sleep right through my hot flashes most nights. During the day, I dab a cold wet paper towel on my face, neck and chest under a fan til it passes.

This might sound crazy but I've had amazingly great results with using fresh ground sea salt once a day on food, eggs or salad or whatever. Just sprinkle about 1/2 a teaspoon after my egg is cooked or on the salad. If I skip a day or two I'll have a hot flash but on the days I use sea salt, nothing. This tip was passed on to me by my sister in law. I don't usually use salt in cooking.

I have no idea of any scientific basis for this but it works for me!

I'm not promoting their product, but the science does relate to what I have found using sea salt. I just use sea salt in a grinder that I found in the grocery store.

http://thechalkboardmag.com/alkalizing-101-the-truth-about-salt-for-your-health

We have a latex mattress too and the cover for it is a very thick cotton wool mix, it's the best thing we've ever slept on and love it! From what I've read here, my hot flashes were very mild compared to most. They were quick and I never sweated, and while I don't have flashes anymore, I continue to be heat sensitive. Anything over 63 degrees and I'm cooking. All of our bedding it 100% organic cotton and we sleep with a down comforter. I think the cotton helps too, but my saving grace was a fan and sub freezing winters. My husband was always amazed how I could lay there with no blankets on and the window wide open while it's 10 degrees outside. I'm just grateful he is as understanding as he is, because it gets cold and he's always the one to run downstairs and turn the heater back on! LOL (BTW, that's interesting about the sea salt, that's all we use so maybe it helped and I was unaware)

I'm going to be using more sea salt now. It's certainly worth trying!

I hesitate to say this because I'm afraid I'll jinx myself, but I don't have hot flashes. I have experienced them before (when taking prescrip hormones), so know how they feel. I am warm natured as it is and we always have our ceiling fan on - year round. Thankfully, we both like the bedroom cool. I like cotton mattress covers, etc.

Good to know about the sea salt!

It would be interesting to see if the sea salt truly does make a difference in those of you struggling with the hot flashes. My doctor sort of dismissed it and said some women just don't get them. But I was starting to get them two years ago when I was told about the sea salt. Table salt won't work.

I figure 1/2 teaspoon a day can't hurt and it hasn't. I don't salt our food at all other than that 1/2 tsp just on my serving of whatever once a day.

Maybe someone could start a sea salt hot flash thread if they have good results.

I feel for all of you who get bad hot flashes. I don't get flashes per se, but all night long I'm hot and then cold and will kick the covers off, and then pull them back on. DH is always cold. I have AC running almost year round. From May-Nov in NY and then the rest of the year in FL.

I have found cotton for all the bedding helps the most. Plus we have a cotton duvet but nothing inside the duvet (too hot for me), so we just have a top sheet with the empty cotton duvet on top.

You might try daily magnesium and fish oil supplements. I haven't had hot flashes since my doctor recommended this. I do start to have hot flashes again if I forget to take them! So it has truly worked for me.

I'm a decade past menopause (started early at 45) and still flashing, though not nearly as severe as it was for the first 7 or 8 years, I tried all the OTC stuff, nothing helped in the least, but will give the sea salt a try as I hadn't seen that.

I read an article a month or so ago saying women who meno early have symptoms/flashes that last much longer than if they'd begun at a 'normal time', 10/15 years or more of this is not unusual (I really thought I was lucky being done with all the cycle stuff so early, hah! lol).

We have always slept with a fan going all night so that helps, I also got one of those long hot/cold bead packs for backaches that you can either freeze or microwave, I kept it in the freezer and wrapped it around my head/neck when I laid down in bed (when flashing was nearly constant), it stayed quite cold for an hour or so and let me get to sleep but I also found putting it on my feet helped a lot too.

I now understand why many women of our age wear their hair short, I don't think I look good in short hair but man there are times when I want a buzz cut right to my scalp, my hair is so thick and heavy and heat-holding that a sheep-shear is very tempting.