RedCatWaves

This is very unscientific, but I'm wondering if exposure to men causes hot flashes.

I'm menopausal, and have been having regular hot flashes for about a year. However, when my husband is traveling, I don't seem to have them. He's been traveling a LOT in the past 5 months, usually for several weeks at a time, and I don't seem to have any flashes when he's not home. I mean NONE. Then, when he comes back..BOOM, I'm flashing again. He got home yesterday, and I wasn't even thinking about the flashes...I had completely forgotten about them. I slept in our bed with him, and I was flashing by 5am, and I hadn't had any since he left 3 weeks ago. This has happened repeatedly over the last 5 months.

I don't have a job outside the home, so I don't hang out with a lot of men other than him. I go shopping and to the gym, and there are men at those places, of course, but I'm not spending much time with them. I have an adult son who lives at home, but we're not in the same room very much. I've been looking for medical studies or observations about this proximity-to-men phenomenon I've been experiencing, but can't find anything. Am I crazy? Has anyone else experienced this missing-flashes-when-men-aren't around thing?

Starmie

Haven't got there myself yet but a friend at work has been having terrible flashes for a good couple of years. She has them at work regularly and whilst there are men around they're in bed and we have minimal contact with them (that sounds dodgy but we're night nurses in a small psych hospital!). The staff she works with are all female so the lack of men around doesn't affect her flashes, they're pretty vicious at times.

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3b in South Australia.