Hot flashes are a well-known symptom of menopause—they’ve been jokingly referenced in movies and shows, and you may have even experienced them yourself. But for all the baseline awareness about hot flashes, most people don’t understand what they’re really like—and what to do if you experience one.
A hot flash, in case you’re fuzzy on the details, is a sudden feeling of heat that rushes to the upper body and face, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). (It’s also referred to as vasomotor symptoms or VMS.) Hot flashes can last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes and they can come on at any time of day or night. Some women have hot flashes a few times a month, while others can experience them several times a day, ACOG says. But what does it actually feel like to experience a hot flash? We asked six women to open up about their personal experiences with this common menopause symptom.
“I was drenched, literally dripping from head to toe.”
Caroline Labouchere, 59, started going through menopause when she was 50. “I don’t remember when I first started hot flashes, but I remember the most severe,” she says. “I was out for supper with my family and suddenly my heart began to race and I was drenched, literally dripping from head to toe. I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to tell my husband and children. My clothes were wet.” But Labouchere said the feeling subsided and she continued with dinner. “I don’t remember discussing it with them again until years later,” she says.
When hot flashes happen, Labouchere says she’ll often try to walk around and try to find a cold place, like a fridge. “I took ashwagandha, which did actually help,” she says. Labouchere says she also started hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a treatment available to menopausal women to supplement their declining hormones and ease symptoms of menopause. “I should have started HRT back then when I was 50—not waited five years,” Labouchere says.
“Hot flashes feel like an onset of anxiety.”
Monica Brooks, 42, started having hot flashes at age 37 when she was put into medical menopause after receiving a cancer diagnosis. At first, she says she didn’t know she had a hot flash until she talked to her doctor about why she had been feeling so overheated. “Then it all made sense and I had more awareness around what was happening and why,” she says.
“For me, hot flashes feel like an onset of anxiety,” Brooks says. “I feel it in my chest before my body starts to heat up. It’s like my body is sending an alarm that something is about to happen.”
Brooks says she used to feel “super irritable” during hot flashes. “It was like sitting in a sauna with the door locked and you can’t get out,” she says. “My family can literally feel the heat coming off my body when I’m in the middle of a hot flash.”
But once she realized what she was dealing with, Brooks says she learned to plan ahead. “I always carry ice water with me,” she says. “As soon as I know a hot flash is coming, I start drinking water profusely. When I’m in the kitchen, running my hands and wrists under cold water instantly helps.” She also keeps a small, handheld electric fan in her purse, as well as dressing in layers. “In the winter, I simply step outside to cool off,” she says. But, Brooks adds, “Being able to have relief at the moment definitely takes planning.”
Now, Brooks says she’s learned not to focus on hot flashes when they happen. “I think that made it worse,” she says. “I’ve learned to acknowledge it’s about to happen and then I just breathe, and continue what I’m doing. The less I pay attention to it, the less I allow it to bother me.”
“My face was beet red.”
Deanna Pizitz, 58, says she had her first hot flash during a barre class. “All of a sudden, I felt this heat all through my face,” she says. “I looked at my face in the mirror and my face was beet red. I really wasn’t sure if that was a hot flash but, after talking to other friends, it definitely was.” Pizitz says she’s been “lucky” that she hasn’t had many hot flashes. “I do think it helps not to eat too much sugar or drink too much caffeine,” she says, noting that seems to correlate with hot flashes for her. “You don’t have to just live with it,” Pizitz says. “There are things you can do about it.”
“I feel like someone has turned on an electric heater in my body.”
Nancy Slusser plays an Iowa housewife in Menopause the Musical 2: Cruising Through ‘The Change’ and she says she started having hot flashes in her mid-30s. Now 61, Slusser remembers struggling with hot flashes while living in a hotel room in Japan for a job. “I kept waking up drenched and my bedsheets were drenched,” she says. “I didn’t understand what was happening and thought I was too young to experience any of these symptoms.”
Slusser says hot flashes cause a very distinct feeling for her. “I feel like someone has turned on an electric heater in my body,” she says. “Sometimes I will have just taken a shower and it is so hard to dry off and get dressed because I still feel like I am in the hot shower. My body doesn’t want to cool off. It really feels out of whack. And it can suddenly appear out of the blue.”
Slusser says that turning up the air conditioning and sleeping in a cool room can help. She’s also learned to move on with her day after experiencing a hot flash. “The minute I feel like myself, I forget that I can feel otherwise,” she says. “I feel like my ‘normal’ and I go on with my day and my life.”
“They can last three to four minutes for me.”
Tami Nealy, 46, says she’s had “many” hot flashes in late perimenopause and menopause. “My first hot flash was in a Home Depot in July 2022 when I took my mom shopping for new flooring,” she says. “I quite literally sat down on the cold floor in hopes that the cement floor would cool off my legs.”
Nealy says she calls these moments of heat “hot phases, as they can last three to four minutes for me.” Nealy says her hot flashes typically start in her face, move to the back of her neck, and then down through her trunk. “I’ve been on video calls for work and have been asked before if I’m okay because it’s clear to others who see me that something is happening to me,” she says.
Nealy now tries to have a large glass of ice water with her at all times to combat hot flashes. “While it may not be a relief, it is a dramatic shift for my brain to immediately have to process a new temperature,” she says.
“It was more of a dry heat.”
Skylar Liberty Rose, 49, started having hot flashes when she was 46. “I wasn’t initially certain that what I was experiencing was actually a hot flash,” she says. “I’d always believed that hot flashes were accompanied by sweats, but that wasn’t happening to me. It was more of a dry heat.”
Rose says she’s learned that it’s important for her to stay calm when hot flashes happen. “Panicking simply made it worse,” she says. “I started carrying a cooling spray with me which helped, and I also noticed a decrease in this particular symptom when I began hormone therapy.”