This Simple Mind-Body Practice Cuts Menopausal Hot Flashes in Half

Dr. Joseph Mercola - Take Control of Your Health

Briana Mercola

Health & Fitness, Alternative Health

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hot flashes occur when the hypothalamus becomes hypersensitive during menopause, triggering rapid blood vessel dilation and sweating. These vasomotor symptoms affect 80% of women and often persist for years
A recent randomized clinical trial found that a six-week self-hypnosis program reduced menopausal hot flash frequency and severity by about 53%, with sustained improvements at 12 weeks
About 90% of women using self-hypnosis reported noticeable relief, and those who practiced most consistently achieved the strongest reductions in hot flash frequency and daily interference
The therapy was especially effective for breast cancer survivors, a group unable to use hormone-based treatments, producing a 64% reduction in symptom severity without adverse effects
Beyond hypnosis, evidence also supports cognitive behavioral therapy to reduce how disruptive symptoms feel, relaxation practices to ease stress, and natural progesterone to help rebalance hormones during menopause

Transcript

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0:00.0	What if a 20-minute daily practice could cut your menopausal hot flashes in half without drugs or side effects?
0:06.0	Welcome to Dr. Mercola's cellular wisdom. Stay informed with quick, easy-to-listen summaries of our latest articles, perfect for when you're on the go. No reading required.
0:16.0	Subscribe for free at Mercola.com for the latest health insights.
0:20.0	Hello and welcome to Dr. Mercola's cellular wisdom. I'm Ethan Foster.
0:24.6	Today we're looking at how a simple self-hypnosis routine, meaningfully reduced hot flash frequency and severity in a randomized clinical trial,
0:33.6	with results that held up over 12 weeks and showed special promise for breast cancer survivors.
0:38.3	I'm Alara Sky. We'll explain why hot flashes happen, what the study actually tested,
0:44.3	how the results translate to your day-to-day life, and which additional non-hormonal options
0:50.3	have evidence for easing symptoms, or improving how disruptive they feel.
0:55.4	Hot flashes are vasomotor symptoms rooted in a hypersensitive hypothalamus during menopause.
1:01.4	When your internal thermostat overreacts to small temperature shifts, blood vessels rapidly dilate.
1:07.9	You heat up, you sweat, and you may feel chills as the episode resolves.
1:13.0	These events can last one to five minutes, strike multiple times a day, and affect about 80%
1:18.5	of women during and after the transition. Triggers matter. Warm rooms, spicy foods, caffeine,
1:25.6	alcohol, stress, and tight clothing can all amplify episodes.
1:30.3	Noticing your personal triggers helps you reduce frequency and intensity.
1:35.3	Night sweats are the same physiology during sleep, and they often erode energy, mood, and concentration over time.
1:42.3	There's a broader hormonal context, too.
1:45.0	Recent findings suggest many women don't have uniformly low estrogen in all tissues.
1:50.0	Instead, progesterone often declines more substantially.
1:54.0	That shift can create relative estrogen dominance, and it complicates the assumption that
1:59.0	adding estrogen always corrects the problem.
	...

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