In the Heat of the Night... Sweats!

IN LENA DUNHAM'S 2010 FILM TINY Furniture — the movie that would lead to HBO’s watershed series Girls—Dunham’s just-out-of-college character Aura invites a twentysomething couchsurfer/aspiring filmmaker named Jed (Alex Karpovsky) to bunk up in her room when the rest of her family goes out of town. Though the invitation is not a sexual proposition (at least not at face value), he declines. Why? “Girls sweat up the bed,” he explains matter of factly. Let us repeat this line more slowly so you can really soak it in: Giiiirrrrls. Sweeeeat. Uuuup. The. Bedddddd. To Jed it’s a throwaway comment. To viewers like us, it’s a huge red flag and a portal into the guy’s juvenile soul beyond his wildest comprehension. At a bare minimum, kid’s got a lot of learning to do. Well, that or he’ll never have a lasting relationship with a grown-ass woman. Because if in Jed’s view, chickadees like Dunham’s character dampen the sheets, his experience sharing a bed with us would be akin to waking up amid a tumble down Niagara Falls.

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WE SWEAT. AT NIGHT. A LOT. AND OUR version of sweating looks a tad different than Kate Upton’s. Ours ranges from more of a young, played-his-lil-heart-out Paul McCartney look—cute on a 20-year-old boy, less so on a fiftysomething w-o-m-a-n —to a full on Adam Sandler-playing- basketball vibe. In short, it ain’t pretty. And more importantly, it ain’t pleasant. To put a finer point on it: Night sweating is disruptive: to our sleep, to our laundry rhythms—don’t ask us how much hard- earned dough we’ve invested in linens since “the change” (and puh-lease with that euphemism, by the way) hit us—and to our relationships. Don’t even get us started on the turbulence the night sweats have caused to our hair-washing schedule. It’s also often one of the most pervasive menopausal symptoms and among the first symptoms to strike unsuspecting perimenopausal women: A whopping 96 percent of women in menopause experience these Niagara nights. TO UNPACK THIS SOGGY PHENOMENON, let’s peek through a window to our “thermoneutral zone,” shall we? Estrogen is the hormone that tells our brain how to regulate our internal thermometer; as estrogen shifts—as it does during menopause and perimenopause—our internal thermometers go beserk, overreacting at the slightest change in temperature. And suddenly you’re soaked through your pajamas, looking as if you’ve just sleepwalked into a running shower fully clothed.

ALLOY CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER Sharon Malone, M.D., FACOG, NCMP, to the rescue. According to Malone, meditation and a change in diet (no acidic foods or spicy stuff, for starters) can dial down night sweats—to an extent. Tackling the estrogen issue that interferes with our interior thermometer, however, may yield significantly better results. Alloy’s estrogen products—which come in patch, cream, evamist®/estrogen spray, gel, and pill form—as well as our probiotics are biodentical, plant-based, and FDA- approved and can be in your hot little hand in a few day’s notice. If with this news of possible relief a cool breeze flowed over you (or hey, even if it didn’t), consider taking Alloy’s medical assessment, the first step for the hormonal hookup. The whole shebang takes about five minutes, which you well know is a tiny fraction of the time it takes to wash and blowdry your hair again. Sending warm wishes and cool, dry nights your way, Alloy