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Horrible Night Sweats?


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I've been having really bad night sweats for a while now. I will wake up 3+ times a night drenched in sweat to the point where I actually have to change clothes every time. It's super uncomfortable, and I feel like it can't possibly be good for me to be sweating out so much water when I already have difficulties with dehydration. Right now I'm without A/C so that's obviously a factor, but I'm fairly certain I've been having this issue before losing A/C. 

 

Does anyone else struggle with this, and is there anything you've found to help?

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Please note I'm not yet diagnosed with anything but I suspect POTS.

I sometimes get this. It seems to come in phases but I can't work out what triggers it (the weather/room can be hot or cold - it doesn't seem to matter). It's more common shortly before and during my period but that's not the only time it will happen. It's horrible - I wake up absolutely soaked. I know how you feel :( 

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Ack, I saw your thread title and was immediately like, heck yes! It completely sucks, right? I started having drenching night sweats when I was about 25 (eight years ago), and I'm sorry to say they haven't let up since. Every single night. Drenched. I've had to get a mattress protector because the sweat was totally ruining my mattress. It ruins all my pyjamas, too, and I have to do laundry much more often than I otherwise would. And when my sheets and blankets are drenched in the middle of the night, I have to lay a dry blanket on top of the wet sheet, because I can't change my sheets multiple times a night. Then I air the wet ones out in the daytime.

Have you noticed any contributing factors other than heat? I still get drenched in winter sleeping with my window open, but I've recently realized that I only have night sweats in connection with dreams. I have vivid dreams (usually neutral-to-stressful) almost every night. One time I half-awoke from a dream because a rivulet of sweat was streaming down my back and tickling me, but the dream kept going, so I had to force myself awake, and the stream instantly stopped, like a tap was turned off. And on the very rare occasion when I don't remember any dreams, I wake up not sweaty at all. 

I've mentioned the night sweats to my doctors several times. They checked for rare causes of night sweats, like cancer or early-onset menopause, and when everything was normal, they just shrugged their shoulders and gave up. 

Hyperadrenergic POTS can cause excessively high heart rate at night, I've read, which might cause sweating. Do you have temperature-control problems during the day as well? Have you recently started any new medications that could be causing it? 

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We've discussed this topic in past threads, there is a search option above to type in this subject. This used to happen to me all the time. During this time I also had horrible insomnia and was miserable. I started Clonidine, which is a BP med that blocks norepinephrine (adrenaline) and the surges completely stopped. Ativan was helpful for a time to calm the central nervous system down, but I've been able to go off that. Hope you get some relief soon!

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On 2017-6-20 at 3:42 PM, SarahA33 said:

We've discussed this topic in past threads, there is a search option above to type in this subject. This used to happen to me all the time. During this time I also had horrible insomnia and was miserable. I started Clonidine, which is a BP med that blocks norepinephrine (adrenaline) and the surges completely stopped. Ativan was helpful for a time to calm the central nervous system down, but I've been able to go off that. Hope you get some relief soon!

Did you know you had adrenaline surges before you started Clonidine? As in, did you have that tested somehow, like an overnight sleep study? 

I think my doctor might have suggested that to me, but I didn't try it because he was worried that something used for high blood pressure would only exacerbate my low blood pressure and fainting. Maybe it would stop the night sweats, but make me even more exhausted during the day. 

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