Posts Tagged "hot flash"

Having a hot flash?

Posted by Liz on Jul 1, 2008 in hot flash | 5 comments

Why not try a cleavage cooler? I ran across this nifty product this afternoon.

All you do is take the paks, stick ’em in the freezer and then tote them around. When a hot flash hits, you simply take out a cooler pak and shove it in your bra. Voila! Instant cooling.

I think that the last thing I think I’d desire is an ice pack in my bra.  Sort of like rubber chickens for the menopausal set, right?!

News flash! A new alternative alternative therapy!

Posted by Liz on Jun 16, 2008 in hot flash | 4 comments

As promised in my post last week, I tracked down Denise Polacek, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Life Quality Technologies to learn more about the device for hot flashes that she is developing. We chatted about how and why she invented the product and more importantly, what it means for women in menopause who for one reason or another, don’t want to take hormone replacement therapy.

Her background? Denise has not spent her lifetime as a career inventor but she has spent years in a field called technology transfer (assisting scientists with patenting and commercial licensing of inventions). So she understands the ins and outs of development. What’s more, she has a broad scientific research background and a few patents under her belt already, although she says that these are based in cardiovascular genomics and not targeted to her current interests.

No stranger to hot flashes, a few years ago Denise found herself attacking the thermostat in meetings every time her internal thermostat rose a degree. “After about the fifth time, a colleague pulled me aside and suggested that the problem was me,” she explained. “So, I went to the gynecologist and immediately started hormone replacement therapy.”

While the hot flashes stopped within 24 hours, her interest in research didn’t. She felt that if she was going to take hormones, she better understand what she was taking. While delving deeper into the published literature, she learned about the association between HRT and incidence of blood clots and heart attacks. The cost-benefit ratio was not worth it, she says. So she stopped the drugs immediately. And became a guinea pig for her own experimentation with thermoelectric cooling.

Denise likens her own patented invention to a cooling fan in a computer; when the compressor starts overheating, the fan kicks in. She says that she soon realized that as soon as she got into the cold, her hot flashes would stop and that she could attenuate the symptoms within seconds. “I used those blue ice paks commonly reserved for injuries,” she says. And by experimenting on different parts of the body, she discovered that certain areas were more sensitive to cold than others and could literally halt the flash in a very short period of time.

Although the new device does not have a name or a final design as of yet, there is a prototype that’s been tested successfully on numerous colleagues. The results thus far have been exciting. “Cooling is mostly immediate and instantaneous” she says.

Denise expects the yet unnamed device to be on the market sometime in 2009. She emphasizes that the final product will be lightweight, portable, discreet, and worn under clothing near the waistline, “like lingerie.”

This is a lady who was not afraid to take some risks and follow her own path when the path in front of her has too many potholes. She’s networked like crazy and her efforts are paying off – not just for herself but those perimenopausal and menopausal women for whom drugs are not the answer. Denise told me that while she has a few other ideas for her new company, she is first and foremost dedicated to menopausal women and breast cancer sufferers plunged into premature menopause. “Menopause is not a disease,” she says, and “shouldn’t be treated like one.”

The possibilities are endless. And here’s a new pioneer who’s created innovative solution for millions of women who suffer from hot flashes. Cool!

Cool!

Posted by Liz on Jun 11, 2008 in hot flash | 1 comment

Hey Hot flashers! Big news! I mean really big!

I just read an article extolling the virtues of a new device in development that claims to “beat the heat of a hot flash.” Denise Polacek, PhD, founder of Life Quality Technologies, has designed a wearable device the size of a heart monitor that will track temperature on the surface of your skin and then automatically turn on a thermoelectric cooler when you need it. This is welcome news for those of you who don’t want to do the HRT shuffle. I don’t know much else but I’m going to try to track this story a bit deeper and see if I can locate Denise for an interview.

In the meantime, no surprise but evidently a hot flash heats up the skin by 1.5 degrees F in just 30 seconds. Yikes! No wonder we’re all sweating!

Spray that flash away

Posted by Liz on Jun 9, 2008 in estrogen, hot flash | 0 comments

The FDA just approved a low-dose estradiol spray to treat moderate-to-severe hot flashes. Approval was largely based on a study, published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, which showed significant declines in the frequency and severity of hot flushes after 4 to 12 weeks. Interestingly, women using the placebo spray also experienced declines in flush frequency although not to the extent as the prescription product, which is called Elestrin.

This form of estrogen carries the same risks as other forms, although delivery through the skin does bypass the liver and general metabolism to reduce some of the side effects of oral estrogen. Still, a key consideration remains the imbalance between estrogen and progesterone that I discussed in a previous post. This can become even worse with hormone replacement therapy (HRT) that focuses on the estrogen component at the expense of the progesterone component.

Clearly, I’m not huge advocate of HRT although I do believe that it is an individual decision that every woman must make for herself. I’ll be interested in monitoring responses to Elestrin. Has anybody tried it?

Needles anyone?

Posted by Liz on May 28, 2008 in hot flash, sleep disturbance | 0 comments

According to a study in Holistic Nursing Practice, acupuncture directed at menopausal-specific sites can substantially alleviate hot flashes and sleep disturbances. Too good to be true? I think that this is a topic that deserves a lot more attention. Stay tuned!