it out. I remember one cold winter my skin was so hot I didn't need cover. Even hormone replacement did no good.

I cut mine *shorter* because my long long golden poker-straight locks just looked a little out of place on a woman of my age - but I guess that's your question! Why did they look out of place?

Well, women of my age tend to not look like aging hippies slopping around in whatever they found on the hook that morning. When we do look like that, the image conveys poverty more than coolness. And there are times when I need to look definitely not poor. (Mind you, in situations where it doesn't have any effect on me, I find it amusing to look poor, like when art retailer clerks look at me in my non-label discount store duds and makeup-less visage and non-styled hair and non-designer shoulder bag and patronize me with the "if you have to ask then you can't afford it you fish out of water" look, and then I drop 5 grand on one of their items. Okay, I've only done that once, but it sure was amusing.)

Also, with age, one's face tends to get kind of dragged down, and one's neck looks even shorter (one having a short neck and long face to start with), so one realizes, in one's own case anyway, that one looks livelier with it chopped off at the shoulders. As I do for myself a few times a year, not having darkened a hairdresser's door since I was 16 and was devastated by what one of them did to me for my high school graduation ceremony (which I immediately undid to the extent possible).

So shorter hair, and some lipstick when called for, and my grandma's heavy gold chain necklace and a spiffy coat over a black top and trousers, are my defences against being treated like trailer trash.

I think Hilary Clinton's hair is absolutely dreadful, btw. Does nothing for her, and the flip is really kind of silly.

What I really wanted to do was boast. Never had one hot flash ever. You won't be impressed if I say I'm jealous -- just because after all those years of hearing about the whole rigamarole, it passed me completely by and I missed out on the experience.

So unfortunately, I have no advice to offer. Except that "homeopathic", specifically, is woo nonsense, but there may be herbal/food type estrogen sources that could help. I did buy some kind of supplement once, thinking that I might be having related depression/anxiety symptoms that could be helped, but I just find those things scary and I stuck them in a drawer.

This is a much better look:



She looks fab! Confident, strong, in control.


You said: "but I guess that's your question! Why did they look out of place?"

I'm 54 & my hair is long. I don't feel like I look out of place. My grandmother wore long hair until she was 70, so maybe that's why? If you're around it & see it, it's no big deal. ???

Now, when I put on the skirts I wore in my 20's & 30's, I definitely feel out of place in skirts that short.

women who wake up in a pool of sweat in the middle of the night and must get up and change the bed is not appreciated.

Everyone has a different 'Change.' And since the medical community could not give a shit about women's health and the misery some of them endure, many are stuck w/ hot flashes, loss of memory, and terrible depression....but go ahead and boast.

And I like HRC's hair.

I would NOT cut my hair for hot flashes....I'd pull it into a ponytail. When it's short, one's hair can look as if she has just stepped from the shower.

I've studied this topic and read many books. There are no single solutions to every woman's Change.

But don't go on Premarin. Do you know all about that? Horse stables in N. Dakota and other out of the way northern states are filled with mares (mar). They are artificially impregnated (Pre). Then the mares stand in a very small stall with a catheter that collects her urine (rin) until she has the foal. She is allowed to stay w/ the foal for a few days and then the foal is taken away for dog food.....and then the whole cycle starts all over again. A mare may live through 4 pregnancies until death.

This is what our great medical community has done since the 1950's. That is their answer to hot flashes. Millions of women ingested mare urine and didn't know it...until breast cancer rates went up earlier this decade.

Progesterone made by a Pharmacist will be the best thing for a woman to try during perimenopause. Natural progesterone, just like our bodies produce, is a very good answer. DO NOT BE CONNED WITH progesteRIN, OK? The pharmacist can COMPOUND the progesterone for you...then it's just finding the right dosage.

Women never run out of estrogen...usually goes to 20%, but we lose mostly all of the progesterone....and that is the hormone that makes us feel good. Oh, get the progesterone in CREAM form!!! Then it bypasses the liver.

'never had hot flashes.' That Karma will come back and get you....

Good luck to OP! I'm sorry for what you are going through. Of late, I have read of women....years after perimenopause....getting hot flashes all over again. And the medical community does NOTHING.

And I included the winkie intentionally.

But seriously - I do feel I missed out on a womanly experience. I simply have no idea what a hot flash feels like, and it's something I was supposed to get as part of the deal. And as you can see, it leaves me empathyless. .

I can pretty confidently say I got the depression/anxiety though ... but with endemic depression in the family and ups and downs of it of my own, and a good dose of ptsd, it can be hard to distinguish.

I recall reading some about estrogen/progesterone, and I am going to act on your advice and take a look. My doctor, a woman my age at a community clinic, is actually really good on just about everything going.

I have an 80 year old friend who still has them. Mine started about 5 years before menopause and I am now 6 years past that and I still have them although they have lessened in frequency.

Miserable aren't they? No suggestions, nothing seemed to work for me.

When I was growing up my mother and grandmother both told me that proper women did not have long hair unless it was very long and pulled back and up as in a bun. Well I am 58 and my hair is now long again. I don't wear it back or up and I AM a proper woman!

help me along with staying away from sugar. When I go to sleep, I keep a water by the bed. And when it does not work - I've been known to stick my head in the freezer or step outside in 40 degree weather (seriously). It's a terrible thing. I've been having flashes for about 10 years......

post #8. Compounded natural progesterone. It cannot be patented since it exists in nature so that's why Big Pharma had to torture the horses so to change the 'natural human' progesterone.

until then - water is the best defense for me.

Mulotiple times a day standing there in cold water trying to get my body to cool down.

Keep a bathtub full of cool water -- just make it tepid, and then the temperature it settles at is fine. Lie in it to cool off. Saves water if you have to do it more than once a day, and is more efficient at getting the heat out of your body.

I've done this in extraordinarily hot summers, like one year when I was having to paint my apartment. Fifteen minutes painting, five minutes in the tub ...

I am in the pre- stages of Menopause and I have no frigging internal heat regulation.

What's more.... out of the blue at the end of last summer I chopped off all my hair...