Natural Remedies for Hot Flashes, Brain Fog & Sleepless Nights

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0:41And a good source of fiber in every bowl. Helping you turn that rhythm into your soundtrack for a great day. Fuel to start whatever's next. Quaker, official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26. I-O, let's go! I-O, let's go! This episode is all about natural remedies for hot flashes, brain fog, and sleepless nights, and we're going to get right into solutions. I have lots of other episodes I will link to from the Dr. Brighton show that are all about the whys and what is going on. But in this episode, we're just going to talk solutions and lots of them to help you get relief. And I'm going to go a step further.

1:23If you go to drbrighton.com, you hit the show notes. I am going to have a handout for you that you can add to your toolkit to navigate perimenopause and menopausal symptoms that you would rather just not have. Welcome back to the Dr. Brighton Show. If you've been waking up drenched in sweat at 2 a.m., forgetting words mid-sentence, slogging through brain fog day after day, you're definitely not alone. These are super common symptoms, but we don't have to normalize and just accept them. In fact, hot flashes, brain fog, sleepless nights, these are three of some of the most common complaints, concerns, if you will, I hear from women who are in perimenopause and menopause.

2:07And again, while they're common, right, they're really common, that doesn't mean we just have to push through, we just have to deal with it. Just because something is experienced by lots of people doesn't mean we don't ask, well, why is that and can we do something about it. And the great news is, yes, there are natural science box strategies that can make a big difference. I've talked in other episodes about hormone replacement therapy. I've gotten your feedback. Many of you are like, yes, HRT, we've heard it, love it, great that it's an option, but can you do an episode on just natural therapies?

2:42I got you. Let's do that. So today I will share remedies that are well-studied, how much to use, how long to give them a try for. I will include all the citations of any studies I talk about. As usual, drbrighton.com, go to the show notes. You can access them all there. And because I want you to leave this episode with real, actual steps, that's what we're going to focus on. Now, before we get into it, I just want to like shout out this review I got because it's epic. It says, I'm a primary care practitioner dual trained in functional medicine, and this information is so helpful to learn from not only a patient perspective, but a professional one as well.

3:24As a primary care, I have been told I do too much. It's like the story of women's lives, right? But I want to be able to offer my patients more before I send them out. Thank you for this. Thank you for leaving this amazing review. I know that sometimes my episodes are so deep and they are really clinical at times. I try to always make them accessible to you. But I do that because I know I have a lot of practitioners who are listening. I'm a doctor who teaches doctors. I am literally at conferences, sometimes every other month, teaching practitioners how to prescribe hormone replacement therapy, how to use natural therapies, how to understand how to give women better support with their hormones and their life overall.

4:10And I want that to also translate through, in a way I can't do it at conferences through this podcast. And if you've been listening to this podcast, could you please just take like 30 seconds and leave me a review? Because being a woman podcaster, oh boy, I never knew what I was in for. And it's a lot of noise to overcome and to make sure that we're constantly centering women's voices in topics about women's health. And the most impactful way that we're able to do this is with your support, sharing it with people who need it and leaving a review. So thank you if you've already done that. And let's get you some solutions because that's why you're here.

4:52Let's kick this off with hot flashes. Now, we don't totally know exactly why every single woman is getting hot flashes, but they coincide with a dip in estrogen. Well, fluctuating estrogen, actually. And it's that fluctuating estrogen that we think makes the hypothalamus in the brain, which is part of your thermostat system, overly sensitive. We also believe that there's a role of mitochondrial dysfunction to play in that. So it's complex. But what is a hot flash? A hot flash is when you have a sudden surge of heat. Sometimes so bad you break a sweat. You definitely feel uncomfortable. And when they are extreme, they can be coming very frequently.

5:36They can be lasting a long time and they are so disruptive that you can't even finish your sentence when you're talking. So let's talk about what you can do. One of my favorite natural supports here is saffron. And you may have heard of saffron for libido or for mood, but it's also been studied with hot flashes. So clinical trials have used about 30 milligrams a day, which is in a huge dose. And that's great. We love that. And that showed not only fewer hot flashes, but there were the better moods and the sleep quality too. So I love a supplement that stacks things. So hot flashes, better moods, sleep quality, sign me up.

6:19Love that. So saffron, something that you need to know. So there's been like an explosion of saffron. Everyone's talking about saffron, right? Okay, you got to be picky about this. So one has specifically been backed up by most clinical trials is an extract called Afron. So you want to make sure that one, you're getting quality saffron and an extract that is clinically backed because otherwise you're just wasting your time and your money. The other thing that you want to look for is that it is third party tested. I can't even tell you how many supplements out there. Their label isn't even actually what's in them.

6:59It's why I'm super picky about supplements that I take, but also in my company, which is Dr. Brighton Essentials, we third-party test and we also manufacture at pharmaceutical grade manufacturing. That means the same standard that drugs that are highly FDA regulated have to adhere to, we're doing that with our supplements. And you probably heard that I formulated Radiant Mind, which is my new favorite bestie of supplements. And I definitely used Afron in it. Again, you want what is actually going to work, not just being able to put saffron on the bottle. Okay, that's my saffron seal because there is not a moment I don't open up the social media app these days and I don't get an ad for saffron.

7:46And I look at those and I look at those supplements and I'm like, no, pass. Absolute pass. another option you may have heard of is black cohosh. And some people will say it acts just like estrogen. That's not true. Okay. It doesn't act just like estrogen. What it seems to do is it works on the serotonin pathways. And there have been multiple reviews that support its use for hot flashes. Now, just like saffron can be sketchy, black cohosh can be sketchy. And so again, we want to look for third-party testing. We want to make sure that we are using supplements that have the GMP stamp. They are getting the most quality manufacturing and that what they say it is, is actually that because there have been reports of liver toxicity.

8:38And when you look back at the black cohosh that was being cited for that, it probably wasn't actually black cohosh. Now, most studies, when they're looking at block cohosh, they're using standardized extracts that are around 20 to 40 milligrams twice daily. And like most supplements, this isn't an overnight fix. You are going to have to commit one, two, sometimes three months before deciding if the supplement is helping you. Hormone-influenced symptoms take more time because it takes your hormones time to shift with natural therapies. Now, another thing to consider for hot flashes are soy isoflavones.

9:21These are plant-based phytoestrogens. And you're going to, this is not eat like all the tofu that you can. This is actually supplements. So they do an extract in this. They have been shown to possibly reduce hot flash frequency. It's not, again, not an overnight effect. It's a slower, more gradual effects. So that's what people tend to report is that it gets better over time, little by little. There have been meta-analyses that show about 20 to 30 % reduction in hot flashes when people are taking 50 milligrams per day. And that's the supplement side of things, which can be really helpful for actually reducing hot flashes and their intensity.

10:06but if you've tried everything, you're still really bothered by hot flashes. You can't do estrogen hormone replacement therapy. It might be a good idea to think about cognitive behavioral therapy. So mind-body therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy or hypnosis have been shown to reduce how much hot flashes actually interfere with your life. The frequency might not change, So you may still have frequent hot flashes, but them hijacking your life is happening far less. And cognitive behavioral therapy can be partnered with pretty much everything we're going to talk about today. But also if you are using hormone therapy and you are like, I'm still not getting the effects I would expect, whatever the changes you were hoping for, and you're doing the diet and you're doing the lifestyle, cognitive behavioral therapy can be a nice added layer to that.

11:01Okay, that's our hot flash section. We're jumping into brain fog now. This is not just getting older, okay? We're not just going to be like, oh, you're forgetting words, so you're just older. We don't say that around here, okay? So estrogen normally is supporting neurotransmitters like dopamine and acetylcholine, which are key for focus and memory and mood because it also interplays with serotonin as well, but we're talking about brain fog here. But it's just really important to know. Estrogen is really important. All of your hormones are really important for your brain health. Now, when estrogen is fluctuating in perimenopause and it's having its dips, its little troughs there, your mental sharpness can dip as well.

11:41And you can find yourself struggling to recall words, dropping them mid-sentence. You may walk into a room, not know why you're there. It feels like you're like, what did I do? Would I just warp speed into dementia, and that can feel really scary. And so if you feel that way, you should definitely talk to your provider. But let's get into what can help with brain fog. Now, there's one really well-studied option, which is bacopa. At about 300 milligrams a day, bacopa has been shown to support memory, processing speed, so how quickly you're thinking and attention. It's why it gets a lot of attention, actually, in ADHD people because they report it actually does help them with their focus, their attention, and their brain's capacity for all of the input coming in.

12:36Now, in our Radiant Mind product, I used a standardized extract, Bacognes. I don't even know if I'm saying that right. I literally keep Googling how to say that. And it's Bacopa, I'm like, maybe it's Bokogni's. If you know, could you let me know? I have been so insecure to not want to talk about this because I can't nail it down. And all of the videos that I find that use it are AI. Who knows if AI is saying it right? Anyhow, I have to get over my insecurity of talking about this because you deserve to know about it. And just because I feel uncomfortable about like, am I pronouncing this right?

13:16But I just have to recognize there's a lot of words I don't say right. So this I will add to the list and not gatekeep from you. So anyhow, Bacogniz, Bacogniz, the full clinical dose, I threw that in Radiant Mind. I selfishly made Radiant Mind for myself. But knowing you probably need it too, I'm sharing it with you. So with Bacopa, But the key is patience here. So some people feel better after a month. Some people, 8 to 12 weeks is what it really takes to notice a big shift. And that's what the clinical trials show as well. By the way, no pressure to ever buy my supplements, which is why I'm giving you dosages and telling you about the specific benefits so that you can seek that out if you want to do that for yourself.

14:04If you do want to grab Radiant Mind, if you're listening to this right now, we're actually running this special where you can also get a free bottle of Magnesium Plus, which is our magnesium glycinate, and you can use the code POD15 for 15 % off your first order. Another nutrient I'm really excited about, and when I went through my Lupron, lose my mind moment of my life, I found that cetylcholine was helpful. It's funny because everything I put in Rating Mine I found was helpful, but nobody was doing it at clinical dosages that actually were backed by science to help. So it was like having to take double the dosages, which got like really expensive fast.

14:45But citicholine is seriously one that nobody is talking enough about. So this nutrient boosts brain energy and it helps support attention. The dose that the clinical research is using is anywhere from 250 to 500 milligrams a day. 500 milligrams is a lot. You would have to take that completely on its own as a supplement because it's just so much material to put in a supplement. But that's the range that you would be looking for. I included the amount that is in the clinical range, but I could also partner it with the benefits of saffron, but copa and zinc. So what some people notice is improvements in focus, mental energy, sometimes in as little as four to six weeks.

15:31So that's nice about citicoline. It doesn't have like that kind of long period that Bacopa can have. And that's why it's nice to pair it with Bacopa because Bacopa also has other benefits like anti-inflammatory effects. Now we can't overlook zinc. I just mentioned it. Even a mild deficiency in zinc can contribute to brain fog. It's super important for your neurotransmitters, for your thyroid. It does so much. And we're going to have an entire episode just going through brain fog, several because I've had so many brain-focused requests. So more is coming. Make sure you're subscribed. So good energy in.

16:10Good energy out.

16:15Storm, zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine and immunity support. Storm, energy for life.

16:49of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy. When you're looking at zinc, we want to make sure that we're not going high dose. So like when you are passing 15, 20, 30 milligrams and you're doing that daily, you need to make sure that you have that partnered with copper. Now, at dosages of like 8 to 10 milligrams, that's a little bit safer. But we don't, just because they say zinc is good doesn't mean we want to do high dose because if you overdo it, you can displace copper and that can lead to some adverse cardiovascular events. We don't want that. We want zinc coming in, but we don't want to be overdoing it.

17:26Now, here's the supplement you might not expect, and that's creatine. And why you might not expect it is because most people think about it or hear about it because it is often a gym-related supplement. But your brain can use it to help recycle energy. There's been research that shows that about 5 grams of creatine monohydrate daily you have to be consistent with it. All of these things, you have to be consistent with it. But this can improve working memory and executive function, especially when we're under stress or we're not sleeping well. And executive function are the things like planning, being able to remember things, you not interrupting people because you can hold the thought and be able to have the conversation and then be able to interject it.

18:15It's also emotional regulation. Now, women in particular, they often benefit because we naturally store less creatine than men do. With creatine, it's usually going to take four to six weeks of consistent use. That means every single day before you see results. So I like to set up expectations. If you've read my books, you know I set up expectations because when you come from the paradigm of the way that we often address things in conventional medicine, you have a headache, you take ibuprofen, 20 minutes later, things are starting to get better. Natural therapies take more time. Now, of course, we have to talk about omega-3 fatty acids because those are so integral to brain health as well.

19:02When we're using omega-3 fatty acids, we're looking at a combination of EPA and DHA one to two grams daily. That's what's been shown to support executive function and mood. If you are buying your fish oil and it smells like bad fish, it's bad fish oil. It's oxidated. It's bad. It's not doing what you want it to do. If you're buying it in a tub of a thousand, I can already tell you it's not good. You don't want that. You want to make sure that you're getting third-party tested, that it is high quality, and it is being extracted in a sustainable way as well. We don't want to just go out there and kill a bunch of fish just for fish oil.

19:41Okay, like that isn't a deal breaker in your health, but ethically, I just think that we should be doing sustainable fishing practices. Now, on top of supplements, we of course need to be doing all the nutrition and lifestyle, like both aerobic and resistance training when it comes to exercise. These things can literally remodel the brain, increase your hippocampal volume, and support memory. So if you have brain fog, you've got to move your body. Now, I have other episodes where I talk about exercise in perimenopause. I talk about best nutrition approaches for anti-inflammatory diet. If you go to drbrighton.com slash plan, P-L-A-N, you can grab an anti-inflammatory meal plan, and these things will also help with brain fog.

20:28All right, let's roll into sleepless nights. Remember, we did a two-part sleep series. If you want a deeper dive, you do that. If you want, just give me the cliff notes, here we go. Okay, so nothing derails your health or your brain faster than having a bad night of sleep, feeling poorly rested, and we don't talk enough about how poor quality sleep in perimenopause due to declining progesterone is at the crux of so many of our symptoms, feeling more irritable, more emotionally dysregulated, having more brain fog, more mental fatigue, feeling like you can't build muscle mass, feeling achy. You know, there's so many things that a poor night's sleep can do to you.

21:11And if you're listening to this right now, you're probably like, yes, I know. So just like dish the goods already. Okay, so let's do that. On top of all the sleep hygiene that we've talked about in other episodes, one of the simplest things you can try is magnesium glycinate. So in studies, it has improved sleep efficiency, so how well you are getting sleep when you're actually in bed, and reduced early morning waking, which is part of that low progesterone, low allopregnenolone, low GABA problem that we face in perimenopause. Now, magnesium glycinate, that is something that typically we're using 150 to 300 milligrams nightly.

21:51Migraine suffers, might be doing more like 600 milligrams daily. It's best if you're taking this in the evening, like 30, 60 minutes before bed. And I just like to take it with dinner. Like after I eat, I go into the kitchen, I take my supplements because that's when I'll remember. I can link to my sleep stock that I take at night to get good sleep because one of the things that's included in that is ashwagandha. You may have heard of it. So ashwagandha, you know, it really varies. So clinical trials, Some of them have used 600 milligrams to improve sleep quality and to reduce night waking. We also see people do really good on one to 200 milligrams.

22:29And it just really depends on how your body responds. I don't necessarily always like to go really high dose. So there are people that will use like a thousand milligrams sometimes. I just don't see that you get much more benefit at those really high doses. and it honestly, it just ends up usually costing a lot more money. So ideally with ashwagandha, it's going to have to be about eight weeks of consistent use to start to see improvement. But if you're stacking that with other nutrients, so like L-theanine, I definitely want to talk to you about that one, and phosphatidylserine, and you are doing sleep hygiene, then it may not be eight week.

23:14So when the studies look at the intervention, they're just looking at the single intervention and what does it do. But you can hack that by making sure that you are wearing amber glasses at night and turning off your screens and reading before bed or doing things to wind yourself down or taking a hot shower and dropping the temperature in your room and getting into some cool sheets. You can do extra things that might shave off that eight weeks. Now, if your issue is you can't shut your mind off. I feel this. I've definitely been there. It's why I take L-theanine. So L-theanine, 200 milligrams seems to be like the sweet spot for promoting relaxation and decreasing nighttime waking.

23:57And people will take this sometimes when they feel anxious, but if you're using it for sleep, again, it's part of that dinner bedtime routine time of day. And usually it takes about an hour to fill the calming effect. So I love L-theanine. It's in our adrenal calm. If you saw my, if you, we should put a video, we should put a picture on YouTube of me in the hot air balloon. I'm terrified of heights. I use adrenal calm when I travel because I get anxiety when I fly, not because of the plane, but because of the way people behave on planes. And it makes me really, really anxious. But I went up in a hot air balloon.

24:37My family was like, we want to do this. Let's go. I was like, I'm terrified. I used Adrenal Calm. I was so scared. I was like, I'm just going to take the full dose. It worked. I could feel I wanted to get stressed out, but that my physiology couldn't mount a response. I was like, I know this is scary. And my cortisol was like, cool. We don't have to freak out about it. It was actually pretty epic. The hot air balloon was epic. And not freaking out was epic. I wouldn't recommend taking three caps during the day, though, because I was so tired the rest of the day because it's very, very effective for sleep.

25:11Usually when I fly, I take like one, maybe two caps right before I'm going to the airport so that it's got like an hour. So I go through TSA, I do all the stuff. And by the time I'm getting on the plane, you know, when everyone lines up and then it's just like chaos at the bags and that's when I get anxious. So that's how to time things. Okay. That's kind of the side of like how else to use L-theanine, but it works really well for chilling out your nervous system. Another one I mentioned before was phosphatidylserine. If you are waking up in the middle of the night, you know that your cortisol is up in the evening.

25:51You feel like your brain is spinning at like 2, 3 a.m. There's these signs where like, I'm tired, but my brain is very wired. That's where phosphatidylserine can help because it can help blunt the nighttime cortisol surge. And typically, that's being used in anywhere from 50 to 100 milligrams a day. And that really is one of the best supplements for helping with the tired and wired pattern that we see when there's HPA dysregulation. Now, of course, we want to work on stress. We want to work on inflammation. We want to work on whatever is just heightening up that stress response. but sometimes you need to have tools that you leverage while you're also doing those things.

26:36We talked about cognitive behavioral therapy, but there's actually a form for insomnia. So CBTI, cognitive behavioral therapy insomnia, this is especially helpful if you've had stubborn insomnia and it's been going on for months. You've been trying everything. So cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is considered one of the gold standard treatments in menopausal women for helping with true insomnia. When you are doing the sleep hygiene, you are like, I literally, everything you've said, I have done it. Probably time to look at cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. Now, remember, I am going to be putting this all on drbrayton.com so that you can have a little freebie download that you can keep with you if that is helpful for you to have it on hand and not have to like go back into the podcast and listen again.

27:34I hope that this was helpful for you. Let's do like a little recap actually before I end this. So four hot flashes, saffron, black cohosh, soy isoflavones, they have some pretty solid evidence, and consider cognitive behavioral therapy. I'm not saying it's all in your head, okay? That's not why I'm saying going to therapy. I'm saying that it can help you with how you experience the hot flashes. And so they're annoying. If you've ever had a hot flash, when I was on Lupron, I had hot flashes. I was like, man, I thought I knew. I did not know. I would be doing something and I'd be like, stop everything.