Some women get far more hot flashes than they realize.
A new study finds women in mid-life underreport the number of hot flashes they get by 40 percent. The problem seems to be linked to memory.
Hot flashes are a symptom of menopause. Previous research indicates that about 40 percent of mid-life women report forgetfulness, the researchers point out. The new study is the first to explore the relationship between objectively measured hot flashes and memory performance.
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The researchers studied 29 midlife women with moderate to severe hot flashes. The women wore monitors that measured changes in skin conductance during a hot flash. Both subjective and objective hot flashes were recorded during a 24-hour period. The average number of objective hot flashes was 19.5 per day.
The researchers also measured memory performance — the recollection of words, names, word pairs, paragraphs and stories — using standard neuropsychological tests.
"When we looked at the relationship between the hot flashes that the women truly had — that is, the hot flashes that the monitor picked up — and memory performance on the cognitive tests, we found a very strong relationship," said Pauline Maki at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "So, the more true hot flashes a woman had, the worse her memory performance."
The results will be detailed in the September/October issue of the journal Menopause.
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