10 ways to cope with night sweats

By robin | Published: May 28, 2010

  1. Photo by ka tate. Licensed under a Creative Commons License.

    Keep dry shirts by your bed to change into.

  2. The minute you realize you are wet, change. Your sheets might not be soaked yet!
  3. Buy pajamas specifically designed to keep you dry during night sweats.
  4. Flip the pillow. Or keep another pillow beside your bed.
  5. Keep layers on your bed so that when you start to heat up you can kick one off. But once you are sweaty and cold you can pile more on.
  6. See if some things make them worse. Lots of carbs, spicy foods and red wine make night sweats worse for some people. Alcohol in general can make them worse. (Alcohol can cause night sweats.)
  7. Keep the room cool. If you are cold, use more blankets. Then when you get hot, you can take them off.
  8. Use a fan or open a window. It will help you dry off faster after a night sweat.
  9. Sleep in tank tops or tshirts. The less material, the less they will cling to you when they are wet.
  10. Reduce stress in your life. Stress may make night sweats worse. Try to reduce the stress in your life or add things like exercise, yoga and friends that help you cope with stress.

Any other good tips for folks?

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Postpartum night sweats

By robin | Published: May 26, 2010

Do you wake up soaked in the middle of the night now? Night sweats are a common post-partum symptom. For most women they disappear after a few weeks.

While it’s commonly thought that night sweats are your bodies way of getting rid of excess fluid, it’s more likely that it’s your body’s way of dealing with the hormone changes. (Night sweats are also common in perimenopause and menopause.)

Try keeping a pile of dry shirts next to your bed. Or even better buy a pair of pajamas made just for night sweats – they’ll help you make it through the night. And sleep is precious right now!

If they continue past a few months, consider asking your OB/GYN about going on the birth control pill. It can help regulate hormones and stop night sweats.

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Best Pajamas for Night Sweats Sleeping

By robin | Published: May 25, 2010

I have severe night sweats so I went on a quest to find the best pajamas to help me sleep through the night. While they were expensive compared to regular pajamas, some of them are worth their weight in gold. Being able to sleep through the night, even after you’ve soaked the pillow, the sheets and the comforter, is worth it!

BrandSweat proofAttractivenessComfortCommentsOverall Rating
Cool-Jams, http://www.cool-jams.com/

10/10. 100%. These pajamas wick away the sweat in minutes. I usually sleep right through night sweats when wearing them. They even make pillow cases.4/10. These look like old lady pajamas on. Many styles and sizes were out of stock. The colors were all pretty bland. But the ability to sleep through the night more than made up for it.10/10. Comfortable especially since I stay dry. They also are stretchy and styled for comfort.Buy a size smaller than normal. You'll want to buy $80 worth to get the free shipping because shipping is expensive.10/10. If I want to sleep all night for sure, these are the pajamas I wear. They are also the ones I bought more of.
NiteSweatz, http://www.nitesweatz.com/2/10. These pajamas soak up all the sweat and hold it. If you wake up after a night sweat, your skin is dry but the pajamas are gross feeling.9/10. These pajamas were the most attractive. My boyfriend comments on them every time I wear them.7/10. These aren't as stretchy as some of the others but still pretty comfortable.Free shipping but the cheapest pajamas would qualify for free shipping at Cool-Jams - they are expensive.4/10. Feeling wet in the middle of the night was a deal breaker for me. I bought these pajamas to be able to sleep through the night.
Lunar Radiance, http://www.lunarradiance.com/7/10. These pajamas take a little longer to dry than the Cool-Jams but they still do the job well. The sweat is wicked a way and dries relatively quickly allowing you to go back to sleep.7/10. These pajamas are cute. They are stylish if not sexy.9/10. Comfortable cotton.Very limited stock, I had to buy tops and bottoms separate to find a set my size. Very reasonable shipping, $59/10. If I want to sleep all night and my Cool-Jams are in the wash, or if I want to sleep all night and we have company over, these are the pajamas I wear.

Whether you suffer night sweats from menopause, illness or other causes, investing in a good pair of pajamas will help you sleep well which will ultimately help you feel better.

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What kind of doctor should you see if you have night sweats?

By robin | Published: January 3, 2010

Photo by Waldo Jaquith. Licensed under a Creative Commons license.

My journey to find out what causes my night sweats has been long and circular.

Since my night sweats first started out just during my period, I started with my ob/gyn. I saw her partner. She told me it might be early menopause and gave me two months worth of birth control pills. Supposedly if it was early menopause, the hormones in the pill would replace mine and the night sweats would go away. They didn’t.

She then told me I should go see a endocrinologist. But she did tell me that there wasn’t really anything they’d be able to do.

Turns out her advice was not very accurate – there are a lot of things other than hormones that can cause night sweats. After a lot of reading on the internet, I discovered that there were a lot of things that could cause night sweats (although the fact that they had started during my period pointed at hormones.) By this time I was sweating profusely every night at least once a night and it was interfering with my sleep and I was grouchy all day. So I went to my family doctor.

He took the problem very seriously and tested all sorts of things. Among other things, he did:

  • a chest xray to test for tuberculosis
  • a skin turberculosis test
  • thyroid hormone levels
  • mononucleosis
  • he said the blood tests showed that I didn’t have any of that and I didn’t have cancer
  • the blood tests also showed that I didn’t have a problem with alcohol (He said that if I had night sweats on days I didn’t drink, then alcohol wasn’t the cause.)

When he couldn’t find anything, he said I should go see an endocrinologist.

The endocrinologist said that if I didn’t have a problem with my thyroid there was nothing she could do. She thought the problem was one of three things:

  • perimenopause (early menopause or rather a phase that leads up to menopause)
  • alcohol (She said to give up all drinking for two months to be sure it wasn’t the problem.)
  • idiopathic hyperhidrosis (Meaning they don’t know what causes it but she said she’d expect this type to happen during the day to and affect mostly my palms and feet. This would be caused by stress and she spent a while drilling me on my life.)

In the end she seemed to think the problem was stress but that I should go back to my ob/gyn and get some estrogen. (And she thought I should get tested for other things that could cause night sweats like HIV.)

I went back to my ob/gyn, seeing my ob/gyn, not her partner, this time. She said that I should have taken the pill but skipped the placebo week. But before she was willing to call it perimenopause she wanted to test my follicle-stimulating hormones (FSH) levels.  Turns out they were normal, so it’s not perimenopause. (And I don’t have HIV – which I wasn’t worried about but I’m trying to rule out whatever possible in this quest to discover the cause for my night sweats.)

Some of the other advice the various doctors gave me was:

  • try not drinking alcohol for two months (which I’m going to try next)
  • avoid red wine (it makes night sweats worse for some reason)
  • avoid spicy food (it also makes sweat worse)
  • take sleeping pills (so you sleep through being soaked)
  • take botox (but this needs to be repeated every few months)

What would you do next?

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Alcohol induced hypoglycemia

By robin | Published: December 31, 2009

If your liver is busy processing alcohol, it can’t generate any more glucose for your cells. So if you run out of the glucose in your bloodstream while your liver is still processing alcohol, you’ll become hypoglycemic. This is actually dangerous.

What happens:

  • you drink a lot of alcohol one evening
  • you don’t eat much food
  • your liver gets to work processing the alcohol
  • your body uses up the glucose in your blood stream while your liver is still busy
  • you have to wait for your liver to finish with the alcohol before you can process any more glucose
  • you’re asleep, so you don’t realize you are hypoglycemic
  • you start sweating

Solutions:

  • Don’t drink alcohol (or at least not as much!)
  • Eat while you are drinking – your liver is busy processing alcohol so you need to make sure you have enough glucose in your blood stream.
  • Have a snack right before you go to bed – preferably a high protein one or at least not all simple carbs.

Tests:

  • Quit drinking for a while and see if your night sweats go away. One doctor told me if you didn’t drink that day and you had night sweats, alcohol was not the cause. Another told me you’d have to quit drinking for several months in order to tell for sure.
  • Try eating right before you go to bed – a long lasting snack with protein.
  • Pick up a glucose monitoring test at the pharmacy and when you wake up sweating, test your blood glucose level to see if you are hypoglycemic. You’ll have to get the timing just right though!
  • If you are someone who sometimes wakes up right before you have a night sweat, you could try a quick bedside snack.
  • Try different types of alcohol. One doctor told me red wine in particular causes night sweats to be worse.

Other thoughts?

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Posted in Uncategorized, alcohol, causes | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Why isn’t more testing done on night sweats?

By robin | Published: December 31, 2009

I started this site because I’ve been suffering from severe night sweats (soaking the bed with sweat at least once a night) for the past year and a half. I’ve had many tests to help determine the cause and doctors still don’t know why I suffer from night sweats.

Most doctors don’t seem to think it is worth pursuing any further as the night sweats aren’t harming me except for interfering with my sleep. Their solution to that is to give me sleeping pills!

I believe that doctors don’t spend more time studying night sweats because they don’t understand how many people night sweats affect and how severely it affects them. In addition, if someone suffering from night sweats doesn’t have one of the known causes, it is very hard to determine the severity and cause of their night sweats. It’s a lot of work for a very unsexy job.

That said, I’m willing to invest quite a bit to figure out what is causing my night sweats and I’m sure many others suffering from night sweats are too.

So this site is to document, collect and share information that people suffering from night sweats have discovered.

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What causes night sweats?

By robin | Published: December 31, 2009

While there are many known causes of night sweats, doctors don’t know everything that causes them yet, so feel free to add any other causes you have considered in the comments.

Here are some of the things that we know can cause night sweats:

  1. Menopause and perimenopause. If you are a woman, this is the first thing your doctor will want to check. They can check whether you are menopausal or perimenopausal with a blood test to test your Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) levels.
  2. Hypothyroidism. This can be checked with a blood test.
  3. Hyperthyroidism.
  4. Too much heat. Your room can be too hot or you might be sleeping with too many covers.
  5. Infections:
    • Tuberculosis
    • Endocarditis
    • Osteomyelitis
    • Abscesses like appendicitis, boils, tonsillitis, …
    • Mononucleosis
    • HIV
  6. Cancer. For some reason lymphoma is especially likely to cause night sweats. Cancer usually causes weight loss and fevers as well.
  7. Medication. Some medications cause night sweats like anitdepressants, acetaminophen, and asprin among others. (Note that antidepressants are sometimes used to treat night sweats too.)
  8. Postpartum. Many women have excessive night sweats for a few months after their baby is born.
  9. Hypoglycemia. You can test this with a home glucose monitoring kit that you can get for free from the pharmacy.
  10. Alcohol induced hypoglycemia. You can test this with a home glucose monitoring kit that you can get for free from the pharmacy.
  11. Alcohol. In particular red wine is known to make night sweats worse. You can test this by not drinking. Opinions vary on whether you need to stop drinking for two weeks to two months to really test this.
  12. Neurologic conditions such as autonomic dysreflexia, post-traumatic syringomyelia, stroke and autonomic neuropathy.
  13. Sleep apnea.
  14. Idiopathic hyperhidrosis. This basically means they don’t know what causes your night sweats but they think it’s stress. Idiopathic hyperhidrosis is most often associated with daytime sweating and excessive sweating on the palms of the heads but it can sometimes be associated with night sweats.
  15. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). (Thanks to Raindog.)

Have your doctors considered anything else or have you found anything else to cause night sweats or to make them worse?

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