Hi, I've been suffering from regular (almost every night) night sweats but do not seem to get an answer as to the cause. The GP did some blood tests but nothing that explains the sweats. The only abnormal results was my serum calcium at 2.18 (2.2-2.6) but the corrected level was 2.27. I do have cold hands and feet and am often intolerant to cold but do not sweat excessively during the day. I have noted very recently on a couple of occasions that I seem to have a hot flush when others are fine. I'm in late 30s but regular (28 days or less) and so menopause would be rather unlikely?
Have you had regular night sweats that were not a result of medication, and were not explained by any other condition? Is it possible that the natural tsh fluctuations at night could be causing this?
Many thanks for your help!
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Sybilla14
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well this can be menopause for some, but since i had this also in my early 30s this can be sign of low thyroid!! this points to clear hormonal imbalances....try to fix it with food, somewhat eat fatty stuff and dont go to sleep hungry
then you have low t3 in blood wich is responsible for making sex hormons too, so you experience such things!!
One possibility is that you have high cortisol during the night. Do you find it hard to get off to sleep? Or do you find yourself waking early? Either could be caused by high cortisol. I should also point out that low and high cortisol have a lot of symptoms in common so don't make assumptions - it needs to be tested to be sure.
Thank you humanbean. Most of my life I tended to have difficulties dropping off to sleep and then I am a light sleeper and wake up early too. With these sweats, when I wake up and change my pjs I tend to stay awake for an hour or so before I go back to sleep. I'm not going through any stressful events, which would be keeping me awake.
Is cortisol tested through blood? Is it something an endo does or is it back to the GP?
The NHS will test cortisol via a single blood test done in the morning. It isn't something I know anything about, and I don't know under what circumstances they agree to do it.
However, the best way of testing cortisol is to use saliva testing which is done at four separate times during the day. Sadly, the NHS isn't interested in doing this, and it has to be done privately. I've done this test, and so have many other people with thyroid disorders.
The Stop The Thyroid Madness site has quite a lot on adrenals and cortisol - using the site map is probably the easiest way to find the adrenal related stuff :
I had terrible night sweats for 2 years while undermedicated on synthetic t4. Fobbed off by the nhs - told i t was menopause. Once i switched to ndt, thankfully the night sweats stopped.
Sybilla, ask your GP for a menopause blood test. I had early menopause <42.
I too have what can best be described as hot flushes, mostly at night. They wake me up, but they only last for at most a minute or so. Sweat literally runs off me. Of late I've started to get them during the day as well but not very often, maybe 2 or 3 times. I'm on 100mg of Thyroxine but I've only started getting them since being on a bunch of heart medicines (atorvastatin 10mg, aspirin 30mg, Cardicor 2.5mg, Ramipril 5mg, and Omeprazole 20mg). I'm male and 69 yrs and I had a heart attack a couple of years ago and have two stents. Elsewise, I'm pretty healthy, not over weight, have a healthy diet, blah,blah, blah. Asked my doc about it but got no response. I read somewhere that it could be down a malfunctioning adrenal gland which is connected somehow to my thyroid I believe.
BTW, my corrected serum Calcium is 2.30 mmol/L (2.15 - 2.55mmol/L) and I take my thyroxine at night, around 9:30.
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