By Shannon Koehle
EmpowHer's Health Reporter

Menopause can be a stressful, irritable time in one’s life. Suffering from hot flashes, mood swings, decreased libido, low energy and more, some women’s symptoms are simply unbearable.

While there are medical treatments available to relieve symptoms, the International Hormone Society, made up of a collection of doctors worldwide, holds that bio-identical hormones may be safer than synthetic ones.

Night Sweats Resources

“Night Sweats—The Basics,” About.com article, 2006

“Night Sweats—Or Hyperhydrosis?” About.com article, 2003

Thankfully, my days of hot flashes and evenings of night sweats are a thing of the past.

For me, what finally worked was to get on the correct medications. Once my hormones were back in balance, these unpleasant (to put it mildly!) symptoms went away.

Have you ever heard the expression “men sweat, but women glow?”

Obviously, whoever coined that phrase wasn’t a woman dealing with menopause and night sweats.

Looking back, my night sweats were clearly part of my going through perimenopause in my early 40s. But at the time, neither my physician nor I were making that connection. He believed that it was a side effect of the medications I was taking for irritable bowel syndrome, also known as IBS.

(This is me, right after I had a complete hysterectomy. It's been several years, but this time in my life is indelibly imprinted in my mind....)

On the outside it appears as if I have everything a woman could possibly want. I'm living a fairy tale life with a wonderful husband, extraordinary daughter, and a beautiful home. But on the inside I am crumbling.

Disintegrating. And slowly. I'm trapped in a body that I no longer know, as if my mind and heart have been plucked from my old, familiar body and thrust into a new one that is not only foreign, it is falling apart.