Talking about Hot Flashes (潮热)

Abstract

Women worldwide are dealing with hot flashes (潮热), a perimenopausal feature that is often tiring, embarrassing, and energetically draining. Conventionally, Chinese medicine defines hot flashes as Kidney-yin deficiency and its clinical manifestations include red face, sweating, hot sensations in the palms and soles, mouth and nose dryness, constipation, insomnia, lumbar soreness, knee weakness, red tongue, etc. To obtain a broader perspective and understand the dynamics of hot flashes, we examined the mechanisms behind hot flashes based on both the knowledge from ancient Chinese medicinal texts, as well as novel research findings of Chinese and Western medicine. This perspective was the foundation for the acupuncture study of our traditional Chinese medicine conducted in 2018–2019 in Shanghai. This study, designed as a pragmatic randomized control trial with two parallel groups, focused on regulating and unblocking conception and governor vessels. The results confirmed that our acupuncture method could effectively reduce both the frequency and severity of hot flashes and improve life quality of middle-aged women.