New Nerve Blocker Injection Stops Hot Flashes

Hot flashes (also known as hot flushes and vasomotor symptoms of menopause) are the best known and, for many women, most troublesome symptom of menopause. Hot flashes generate an intense sensation of heat, usually with profuse sweating, on the head, heck, chest, and upper back. Between 60 and 80% of women experience hot flashes starting a few years before their last menstrual period and continuing until a few years after it. Some women, however, experience hot flashes during periods of amenorrhea (failure to have periods) or dysmenorrhea (irregular periods) long before menopause, and some women continue to experience hot flashes for many years, into their sixties, seventies, and beyond.

Hot Flashes Particularly Unfair for Some Women

Not all women are equally at risk for hot flashes. Women who have African heritage are especially likely to experience hot flashes, as are Central American women, but hot flashes are less often experienced by women in Japan and Korea. Overweight women have more hot flashes and hot flashes of greater severity, especially if they have jiggly, subcutaneous fat, the kind of fat that makes "love handles." Gaining weight increases the severity of hot flashes. Women who smoke have more frequent and more severe hot flashes, because of the anti-estrogenic effects of nicotine.

Women who have hot flashes tend to experience anxiety, depression, and stress. Hot flashes and stress form a vicious cycle. Women who are under stress are more likely to have hot flashes, and hot flashes make women more likely to experience stress. 

Many of the psychological symptoms associated with hot flashes are due to loss of sleep. Women wake up "feeling on fire" with bed linens soaked with sweat. Hot flashes can also make it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep. The cumulative effects of sleep deprivation and emotional disturbance can go on for years and prove difficult to treat.

Hot flashes are also associated with serious later-life conditions. Medical reports for 3,302 women in the SWAN (Study of Women's Health Across the Nation) study found that women who have more hot flashes have lower bone density, that is, greater risk for osteoporosis, and greater incidence of heart disease.

Treatments for Hot Flashes

Many women who have hot flashes opt for hormone replacement therapy. There is no doubt that estrogen replacement will relieve hot flashes and vaginal dryness for most women, but women who take estrogen also have greater risk for blood clots, which can cause heart attack and stroke, and estrogen-stimulated cancers of the breast, cervix, uterus.

See Also: Chinese Herbal Mix EXD Cut Menopausal Hot Flashes By 60%

There are herbal remedies for hot flashes that actually work for most women who use them, Vitex agnus-castus (labeled as either vitex or agnus-castus in the herb shop), for example. Generally, herbal remedies do not have serious side effects. However, they typically take 3 to 4 months to begin to work, especially in women who are perimenopausal, who have not yet had their last periods.

And no woman wants to have to get up in the middle of the night to apply an ice pack to stop hot flashes. Fortunately, medicine may have found a more enduring solution to this common health problem.

Nerve Blocks For Hot Flashes

Many women are looking for non-hormonal and non-herbal treatments for hot flashes. They are concerned about the elevated risk of heart attacks and estrogen-stimulated cancers that comes with estrogen replacement therapy, and they do not want to wait 3 to 4 months to get a modest, not entirely reliable benefit from herbs.

For these women, the answer may be a treatment called a stellate ganglion block, in which a nerve-numbing agent is injected into a bundle of nerves in the neck. Recently a group of physicians at the University of Illinois at Chicago tried this method on a group of 40 women aged 30 to 70 who had mild to severe hot flashes, giving them either the nerve blocking agent or a placebo saline solution. In this study, a severe hot flash was defined as "raging furnace warmth," accompanied by weakness, feeling faint, extreme perspiration, and/or irregular heartbeat. Women in the study were asked to keep a diary of their hot flashes for six months, and for the first three months they also wore a monitor that recorded objective data about their hot flashes.

Senior researcher Dr. Pauline Maki, an associate professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, reported that the women who received the nerve block and the women who received the placebo saline solution had about the same numbers of hot flashes, but the women who received the actual nerve block reported fewer moderate to severe hot flashes, about 52% fewer moderate to severe hot flashes, compared to 4% moderate to severe hot flashes in the women who had received the placebo.

Of course, many women who do not want to receive estrogen replacement therapy are not especially keen to have injections in their necks, either. However, one group of women may be especially eager to try the new technique.

See Also: New Procedure Deactivates Overactive Nerves In The Kidneys And May Aid Stubborn High Blood Pressure

Hot flashes are a common and severe side effect for many women who take estrogen sequestering agents, such as Tamoxifen, after breast cancer. These women cannot receive estrogen replacement therapy, because it might stimulate growth of cancer cells missed during surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation. They usually also should not take herbal preparations because of a lower risk of the same effect. For these women, physically blocking nerves may be the only way to stop the hot flashes that make their recovery from cancer an even longer and more arduous task.

Nerve blocks are not especially risk, and they are usually covered by insurance. If you have hot flashes that simply will not go away, ask your doctor whether a nerve block is available for you.