When hot flashes happen in 20s and 30s, not perimenopausal or menopausal ages
All women don't experience hot flashes at the same age, or at all
Menopause is weird. Perimenopause is weird. And I thought me and my mother were even stranger until I learned more about these two stages in a woman’s life. Throughout the majority of my teenage years, I would bring a coat with me if I was riding on the passenger side while my mother drove. Without fail, she rolled the windows down and was always hot. On my side of the car, I was just about shivering and wondering why on Earth this lady was acting like Chicago was Maui.
I was (and am) one of those people who is always cold. It’s not in a painful way like Raynaud's Syndrome, and I am not anemic. But I can count on one hand the number of times I’ll run my own air conditioner in a year, and the temperature outside will undoubtedly have to be in the 90s for me to do it. I only need ceiling fans in my home, even when it’s 80 degrees in Chicago, which I’m sure would be boiling hot to some women.
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If my dog minded, or if I had the kind of dog who would easily overheat, I’d certainly run my air conditioner more often. But my own dog Junee will bury her entire body in the corner of the human-sized dog bed, roll her entire body under blankets like a burrito or crawl under couch pillows while she sleeps. Both of us love to rest in pitch blackness and wrapped up like Christmas gifts, even when all the ceiling fans are on.
When I started getting hot flashes out of nowhere
Something weird happened in my mother’s 50s. She had a medical emergency, and she was suddenly mirroring me. She was cold all the time. Everywhere she went, she was carrying around a blanket and looking like the girl version of Linus from the Peanuts comic strip.
Shortly after that happened to her, while I was in my 30s, I started getting hot all the time. Neither of us used to sweat. We could go to a fitness club and exercise for an hour. Sometimes I’d trail off to a dance class studio to exercise on my own. I’d walk in and look exactly the same when I walked out, with maybe a few strands of hair out of place. No body odor. No nothing. We both used to look like we just walked to the mailbox and returned home.
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But around my mid-to-late 30s, my shirts started getting wet. I’d be walking to a local grocery store or the library, and I’d need a paper towel or a napkin to wipe my forehead. I needed to bring a bottle of water wherever I went. I started putting two and two together between the time my mother was always hot in her 30s and I was suddenly boiling hot in my 30s, and it hit me that both of us may have been having hot flashes without knowing it — because we were both too “young” to realize it was happening.
Outside of this sudden need to eat ice and hang out of the car window, the two of us had nothing else in common. She had heavy cramps. I don’t think I’ve had more than five cramps in my entire 44 years. Her menstrual cycles were irregular since she was a teen. Mine are every 25 days like clockwork — minus this hellish 17-day menstrual cycle one year. I have no children. She has two.
She is an omnivore. I’ve been a vegetarian since the early 2000s. I could eat a “Scandal” meal of popcorn and Merlot all week, with the occasional whiskey sour for a special event. My mother barely if ever drank her whole life and could get wasted from a wine cooler. I drink coffee every morning while she only likes tea with lemon juice. I love spicy food enough to be on “Hot Ones” while she can barely tolerate mild sauce without waving her hand over her tongue.
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Because everything about the rest of our cycles, diets and bodies are so different, I couldn’t even take notes from her to predict what was to come with perimenopause or menopause. We have nothing in common besides the same last name. We don’t even look alike! But those crazy hot flashes in our 30s made us bond in a different kind of way, demolishing ice cubes and carrying a towel around like we were getting ready to play basketball.
Is it possible that hot flashes can happen earlier for women even before they’re menopausal or perimenopausal?