Adults take 1-3 capsules, 1-5 times daily depending on flash frequency and severity

Health Canada License (NPN): 80024458

Not all women experience hot flashes, but most women experience them at some point before or after menopause. Three out of every four menopausal women have hot flashes. For those of you lucky enough not to have them, they’re characterized by the sudden onset of heat which seems to come from nowhere and radiate rapidly through your body. They can include sweating, palpitations and a red flush (body blush). Hot flashes vary in severity and intensity from woman.

Some women only have occasional hot flashes which don’t really bother them at all, while others report over 20 a day. Some women have brief mild ones that are just bothersome while other women report long severe ones that are debilitating, uncomfortable, disruptive and embarrassing. There are women with flashes all along the continuum; from mildly annoying to downright awful. Additionally some women have very predictable flashes, for example within a fixed time after waking up / after a meal / before bedtime, while others have completely random ones with no rhyme, reason or warning before they strike.

Hot flashes usually start around menopause. Researchers though that for most women they ended a couple of years after they began. Over the past decade the research has shown that to be (unfortunately) false. Multiple large studies found that over 30% of women still had hot flashes 10-19 years after menopause and over 20% had them over 20 years past menopause. The situation is even worse for women who began to experience hot flashes before menopause. For these women, the hot flashes persisted in nearly 70% of them 12 years after menopause.

While doctors are still searching for a complete understanding of why hot flashes occur, we do know that in the brain the hypothalamus is responsible for regulating body temperature. During the transition through perimenopause and menopause, the hypothalamus sends signals that cause women to get hot. It starts out as an ascending flush in the chest, goes up the neck, into the face and turns your face red. There is no rhyme or reason as to which woman will have a mild flash and which woman will have a severe one. Genetics can play a part, though. There is a relationship between when our mothers and sisters transition and the severity of their symptoms.

Hot flashes vs Hot flushes, is there any difference?
In North America (Canada & USA), the term used is Hot Flashes. In the UK (England) the term Hot Flushes is used. Both mean exactly the same thing – the most common symptom experienced by women during the menopause.

What happens internally during a hot flash?

• Your levels of estrogen (female reproductive hormones drop)
• Your hypothalamus thinks (incorrectly) that your body temperature is too high and needs to cool down. Reduced estrogen causes your body to release more of two reproductive hormones, Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) and Luteinizing Hormone (LH).
• The higher the levels of FSH and LH, the more the blood vessels dilate, or enlarge, increasing blood flow to the skin, which in turn raises its temperature.
• Your upper body begins to feel hot. You may feel dizzy as your heart begins pumping faster to move blood through your enlarged blood vessels.
• Your sweat glands prepare to open so that you can sweat to get rid of your extra heat.
• Heat escapes out the dilated blood vessels as blood rushes across your neck, chest and face.
• You begin to sweat (in some cases profusely).
• Your hypothalamus believes you have cooled down sufficiently. It constricts your blood vessels and closes your sweat glands.
• You are a wet, tired and sticky mess

Conventional treatment
Up until January 13, 2010, if you went to your doctor and complained about hot flashes they would more than likely prescribe Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). This is where you would take female hormones (usually manufactured from pregnant horse urine) to supplement the hormones you had lost through menopause. They were prescribed because studies had shown that in most women they reduced the duration and severity of hot flashes. On January 14, 2010 most women stopped asking for HRT and began asking about the risks of HRT and alternatives.

On that Wednesday, the United States National Institutes of Health released the findings of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Postmenopausal Hormone Therapy Trials which followed over 160,000 generally healthy postmenopausal women for almost 20 years. The study found HRT use resulted in;

• Increased risk of heart attack
• Increased risk of stroke
• Increased risk of blood clots
• Increased risk of breast cancer
• Reduced risk of colorectal cancer
• Fewer fractures
• No protection against mild cognitive impairment and increased risk of dementia (study included only women 65 and older)

The findings that HRT increased the risk of heart attack, stroke, breast and colorectal cancer was enough to make most women stop that day, with many doctors stopping prescriptions as well.

Natural Prevention and relief
Pure-lē Natural Hot Flash Fix is the safe, gentle yet potent combination of two time honored herbs specifically targeting hot flashes; medicinal sage (Salvia officinalis) and vitex (Vitex agnus-castus). Together they offer sufferers the ability to take back control of their bodies and their lives. Hot Flash Fix is safe. It has absolutely no hormones, pseudo-hormones (hormone like substances) or phyto-hormones (plant based hormones).

Medicinal Sage
The key to Hot Flash Fix’s power is primarily due to its high content of medicinal sage. We use highly concentrated medicinal sage oil, so that we can get as much as possible in each capsule.
For centuries sage has been used for treatment of menopausal symptoms including hot flashes, night sweats, excessive sweating and hormonal imbalance. Herbalists believe that sage worked to reduce the body’s sensitivity (temporarily) to the increase in hormones (FSH & LH), reducing the need for the hypothalamus to take action causing hot flashes. Sage’s effectiveness however was for the most part scientifically unproven.
That changed in late 2010, with the publication of a Swiss study evaluating the effects of daily sage supplementation on 71 postmenopausal women. The researchers found that the average number of hot flashes dropped by half within 4 weeks and by 64% within 8 weeks.  Women with severe and very severe hot flashes had even greater benefits, with 79% and 100%, respectively, seeing improvements. Frequency of hot flashes was also found to be reduced for all women week after week. Since then more research has confirmed the efficacy and safety of sage.

Vitex
Vitex berries have been used traditionally used in the treatment of many female conditions, including menstrual disorders, infertility, acne, hot flashes, menopause, breast pain and inflammatory conditions.
Vitex has been clinically proven to relieve hot flashes. It also has many hormone-balancing properties, helping to regulate hormones tied to sleep problems, fibroids, skin changes, menopause and irregular periods. Research shows that vitex increases Luteinizing Hormone (LH), modulates prolactin and aids in the inhibition of the release of Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH), which all helps balance out the ratio of progesterone to estrogen, slightly raising the levels of progesterone  helping to reduce frequency and intensity of hot flashes.