Women who experience frequent hot flashes and night sweats during and after their menopause are 50 per cent more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, a new study has warned. According to the research, published in the journal JAMA Open Network, middle-aged women regularly suffer the well-known symptoms of menopause a natural part of ageing that occurs when a woman's menstrual periods permanently stop, and she can no longer get pregnant.

Frequent hot flashes and night sweats happen due to a decline in estrogen levels and a loss of ovarian function.

“There’s a growing body of evidence that women who have these severe symptoms seem to have something else going on as well, in terms of health risks,” said lead investigator Monique Hedderson, a research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. “We need to do more research into understanding what is causing it.”

According to the researchers, who analyzed data from more than 2,700 women participating in a long-term national study on women’s health in the US, menopause leads to hormonal changes that affect how your body uses insulin and blood sugar. These changes include a drop in estrogen and progesterone levels, which can lead to weight gain, higher blood pressure, and fluctuating blood sugar levels.

For the research, women whose data was studied were around typical menopause age when first recruited in the mid-1990s, between 42 and 52, and they have been followed for about 17 years. Around 28 per cent of them reported menopause symptoms on one to five days during a two-week period, and 10 per cent reported symptoms six or more days a week.

Persistent hot flashes and night sweats – also known as vasomotor symptoms were caused in many women who have a 50 per cent increased risk of developing diabetes. “These findings add to the coalescing research about the importance of vasomotor symptoms to women’s cardiometabolic health, particularly when those symptoms are experienced over long periods of time,” said senior researcher Rebecca Thurston, director of the Center for Women’s Biobehavioral Health at the University of Pittsburgh. “Is a hot flash just a hot flash?”

Experts say that even though there is no clear explanation of how these symptoms would increase diabetes risk, other factors that spike type 2 diabetes risks include lipid problems, elevated LDL cholesterol, elevated triglycerides, and lowered HDL cholesterol – all of which also cause heart diseases.

Heart disease sometimes goes hand-in-hand with diabetes risk, as both conditions feature inflammation, poor sleep quality, and increased weight, the researchers noted. “Menopause has been historically understudied,” Hedderson said in a Kaiser Permanente news release. “More research is needed to clarify the mechanism underlying vasomotor symptoms and why -- when frequent and severe -- they associate with adverse health risk.”

Future research should focus on those women with more severe hot flashes and night sweats, the team said.

“While 70 per cent of women will experience vasomotor symptoms at some time during the menopause transition, we’re talking about the smaller proportion of women for whom this is a common and severe problem,” Hedderson said. They also plan to look at links between menopause symptoms and other health issues.

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