Women who go through menopause may experience hot flashes and night sweats but contrary to long-held theories that these symptoms are often short-lived, findings of a new study revealed that these problems can last for seven years or more.
For the study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Feb. 16, Nancy Avis, from Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, and colleagues looked at the data of nearly 1,500 women who participated in the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation from 1996 to 2013 and who experience frequent hot flashes and night sweats.
Avis and colleagues found that these menopausal symptoms tend to last 7.4 years on average. Some women even experience the symptoms for as long as 14 years.
Women who exhibited earlier symptoms tend to experience these problems longer. The researchers also observed that women who experienced menopausal symptoms prior to their transition to menopause suffered longer at 11.8 years on average and those who had early menopause had the symptoms for about 9.4 years.
The researchers likewise found that the women whose menopausal symptoms started after menopause tend to fare better than their counterparts reporting symptoms for just over 3 years on average.
"If you don't have hot flashes until you've stopped menses, then you won't have them as long," Avis said. "If you start later, it's a shorter total duration and it's shorter from the last period on."
It also appeared that race and ethnicity influence the duration of the symptoms. Black women tend to suffer the longest from symptoms at about 10 years. Japanese and Chinese women, on the other hand, suffer the shortest at 4.8 and 5.4 years respectively. The average length of symptom duration in white women was 6.5 years while Hispanic women experience the symptoms for 8.9 years.
Hot flashes and night sweats are linked with lower levels of hormones particularly estrogen. Experts recommend that women who experience these symptoms avoid spicy foods. They can also stop smoking and do yoga to reduce the symptoms.
The researchers said that doctors should inform women that the menopausal symptoms that they experience may not be short term and could last long.
"The expected duration of menopausal vasomotor symptoms (VMS) is important to women making decisions about possible treatments," the researchers wrote. "Health care professionals should counsel women to expect that frequent VMS could last more than 7 years, and they may last longer for African American women."
