How to Deal with Night Sweats

If you’ve experienced night sweats before you know how irritating and debilitating they can be. Consistent disrupted sleep can lead to daytime drowsiness or fatigue, irritability, sudden mood swings, and an uncontrollable appetite. So you can see just how important getting a good night’s sleep can be!

Night sweats, or sleeper hyperhidrosis, is plainly defined as excessive sweating during sleep. The most commonly affected body parts are the head, legs, and back, which is ironic because the majority of your 2-4 million sweat glands are found in your underarms, feet, and the palms of your hands. Although women have more sweat glands on their bodies, men’s glands are more active…until middle-age, that is. Women experiencing frequent hormonal changes, increased doses of medication, or metabolism changes are subject to more sweat production, especially during the night.

Here are a few tips that can help you deal with night sweats:

1. Avoid alcohol, caffeine, and spicy foods for an hour leading up to bedtime. Your doctor has told you this a thousand times, but it’s true and worth repeating! Foods and drinks that affect your hormone levels, and therefore your heart rate, will inevitably make you feel warmer-inside and out. If it’s too late and you couldn’t avoid the spicy stuff, don’t panic. Drink a cup of cold milk to soothe the inflammation in your stomach and esophagus and it should counteract the spiciness.
2. No social media before bed! Psychologists and sleep experts say that viewing emotionally arousing content just prior to bedtime can cause equally emotionally arousing dreams. These dreams can lead to increased hormone production during sleep and therefore, increased sweat production. You want be in a relaxed state before it’s time to hit the pillow, so avoid reading or watching anything that might disturb you and your sleep states. Try taking 10 deep breaths in and out before you close your eyes, bringing your heart rate down and allowing your body to relax.
3. Increase cool air circulation in and around your bed. Either by turning the air conditioner down during the night or by placing an oscillating fan next to your bed, air circulating in and out of your bedding is very important in staying cool. Especially if you’re sleeping on a memory foam mattress that traps the heat that your body produces, you’ll need to have cooler air blowing your way to avoid over-heating.
4. Shed layers! If you are prone to night sweats, or sleep next to a sweaty spouse, you should be sleeping with the least amount of clothes on that still makes you feel comfortable. Loose-fitting clothing with either a cooling or wicking component is the best fabric type for over-heating sleepers.
5. Shed layers! No, this isn’t a typo. Just as important to shedding layers of clothing, you should be shedding layers of bedding. Some sleepers like the weight of their comforters on top of their bodies, but if you have night sweats you are just making your situation worse. You should sleep with, at most, a light-weight, wicking or cooling top sheet and if necessary a light-weight coverlet or quilt. This goes back to our second suggestion about air-flow. You have to increase cool air-flow in and around your bed because the heat your body produces during the night can get trapped in your mattress and make you feel warmer.
6. Choose your layers wisely. From your mattress, to your mattress pad, to your sheets and your comforter, you need to set yourself up for sleep success. Choose function over fashion! There are so many options in bedding today that can help you master sleep, so make the right decision for your situation. Night sweats require a wicking or a cooling fabric to keep you and your bed cool and dry while you sleep. New-age polyester, nylon blends, and light bamboos are great suggestions for both bed sheets and coverlets or quilts. These fabrics absorb moisture and allow you to sleep through the night without waking up to that wet the bed feeling.
7. Talk to your doctor. Night sweats can be the result of various health issues or non-issues, for that matter. Either way, if you feel as though your body and sleep patterns are out of whack as a result of night sweats, ask your doctor to run some tests to rule out any infections, medication errors, or hormone irregularities faut il une ordonnance pour viagra. One in four patients report experiencing night sweats at their doctor’s visits, so you’re not alone.

–Alli Truttmann, CEO and owner