bedding

One of the major symptoms of going through the menopause is night sweats. The body will heat up and start to sweat. Many people will remove their sheets, duvets or clothing to keep cool during the night since when the body sweats and evaporates it cools the skin down. The cooling of the skin will then cool your blood and therefore your whole body.

Recently, however, a variety of products to help ease these symptoms has become available. These products will draw the heat away from the body when it starts to heat up and will prevent it from sweating therefore helping to optimise the body temperature. These products include:

• Mattresses
• Mattress protectors
• Bed sheets
• Duvets
• Pillows
• Pillow cases

The fibres in some of these products will adjust to your body temperature by expanding when they get too hot (which produces a cooling effect) and then shrinking again as they cool down (which releases stored up heat). Alternatively some of these products will contain fibres that form a transport system that pulls moisture away from the skin (wicking) to the outer layer of the fabric. This will then dry the moisture faster than other fabrics thereby thermo regulating the body by evaporative cooling.

By using these types of bedding products it will help establish a constant sleeping temperature thereby allowing better and more comfortable sleep.

Information written by the talkhealth medical panel

Last Reviewed: 15 February 2011
Next Review Date: 15 February 2013