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On Health with Houston Methodist
Night Sweats: Sleep Problem, Health Problem or Both?
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Waking up sweaty once in a while usually has an obvious explanation. But if you’re experiencing night sweats more frequently, you may be wondering whether your environment, daily habits or health is to blame. In this episode, we explore night sweats, including how to recognize meaningful patterns, the everyday triggers to consider and when they warrant a conversation with your doctor.
Expert: Dr. Michael Allen, primary care physician
Notable topics covered:
- Occasional sweating vs. drenching night sweats that soak your PJs and sheets
- The recommended (and perhaps surprising) room temperature for sleep
- Daily habits to track when looking for triggers of night sweats
- A night sweats trigger many people overlook
- How caffeine intake affects more than sleep quality
- Medications that may contribute to night sweats
- The connection between menopause, perimenopause and night sweats
- The signs it might be more than night sweats
If you enjoy these kinds of conversations, be sure to subscribe. And for more topics like this, visit our blog at houstonmethodist.org/blog.
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ZACH MOORE:Welcome to On Health with Houston Methodist. I'm Zach Moore. I'm a photographer and editor here, and I'm also a longtime podcaster.
KATIE MCCALLUM:I'm Katie McCallum, former researcher turned health writer, mostly writing for our blogs.
ZACH:Katie, do you ever wake up in the middle of the night sweating? KATIE: Not really. I have woken up sweaty, but it's not often, but I have noticed it more frequently than in the past. Okay.
KATIE:So, I'll say that's as far as I will take that.
ZACH:Okay.
KATIE:However, I do think it's probably just the temperature that we leave our house on. And then in summer, we are in Houston and it is hot. ZACH: Right. Look, I love sleeping under a blanket and getting all cozy, right? But I also run hot, right, my temperature, and the struggle is real, right? I cannot be under a blanket in the middle of summer.
ZACH:Yeah.
KATIE:Not here, not in this city. Because yeah, then I will wake up sweaty, but that to me is not particularly surprising because I'm wrapping myself in a blanket.
ZACH:That's the thing. I think there's certain circumstances where you understand why you wake up and you've been sweating. You're either -- maybe you're sick, you have a fever, you're breaking a fever, right? That's a whole nother category. Also, obviously, if you wrap yourself up like a burrito, unless it's winter, you're probably gonna wake up, you know, with a little sweat on you, right? And that's totally understandable. But situations where it's a"normal" night, you go to sleep, you wake up either in the middle of the night or when your alarm clock wakes you up in the morning and you're all damp and you're like,"What's this about?" Right? That's what we're talking about today. Night sweats. KATIE: Mm-hmm. So who did we talk to? We talked to Dr. Michael Allen. He's a primary care physician here at Houston Methodist. Night sweats, right? In my research, I found that 41% of primary care patients suffer from night sweats with the highest rates coming from the ages 41 to 55. Now 41% seems pretty high to me, but in your experience, is that accurate, at least ballpark wise?
DR. MICHAEL ALLEN:That's a good question. You know, 41% is pretty high. I think it's likely because of the definition that they're using for what night sweats is. So I can believe a 41% more if the question was, have you ever sweated at night? Then like, yeah, definitely. Now if the question was, have you experienced sweating that results in drenching sweats where you need to change your clothes and sheets, that number is probably gonna be a lot less. And then that latter one is the one that's a bit more concerning when patients tell me about that. So yeah, 41%. Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, you know, have some spicy food, you're probably going to sweat that night, but that recurrent drenching night sweats without an obvious reason, that's more concerning and I think that percentage is gonna be lower in that case. When patients ask me, you know, when to be concerned about it, it's more so a pattern, like a one-time night sweat, especially if there's an obvious reason, like the A/C went out and it's July in Texas, it's just Texas being Texas, right? But if it's more, yeah, the room's cool, you know, I've got light clothes on and repeatedly I'm sweating every night, even light sweats, I would still kind of be concerned. It's like, why is this happening? No obvious reason, but most definitely the kind of classic definition is drenching night sweats to where your clothes are soaked, your sheets are soaked. And then I ask, the one question I always ask is, do you have to get up and change your clothes and sheets? If the answer is yes, then I'm gonna definitely be digging in a lot more about what could be going on.
ZACH:Okay. Okay. Yeah, for me, thinking back, my own personal experience, every now and then, sure, I've woken up and I'm like,"Oh, I'm sweating for some reason," right? Most of the time it's really been when I'm sick. Obviously, that's a whole nother factor there. But you talk about frequency, like how frequent would someone need to be waking up and having to change -- If we're using that as the litmus test, did you have to change your clothes or your pajamas? How often would you need to experience that to seek medical help?
DR. ALLEN:Another great question. I say there's no, all right, three times and get in here, right? It's more the pattern of it. Smoke alarm going off because you burned some food, that makes sense. Smoke alarm going off every night for no reason, more concerning. So you kind of look at, okay, having night sweats, what's the pattern? What's happening around those night sweats? One single night of a drenching night sweat where you're having to change clothes, no obvious reason. Okay, maybe once. Two on that, I definitely would probably want to talk to somebody. But if you can identify some kind of common reasons as to why people get night sweats, address that and they go away, less concerning. I would definitely tell people, you know, I tell patients a lot too, like trust your gut. If your gut's telling you something's not right, like go to the doctor, like get checked out, see your doc. But especially if you're having these night sweats and you're having weight loss, maybe swollen lymph nodes, no appetite, fevers that aren't explained by much else, then I'm getting even more concerned. That would definitely be come in to see me. So simple night sweat, you know, you're wrapped up like a burrito with the A/C off, like okay. But nothing else going on and more kind of symptoms that are more suspicious, yeah, come see me.
ZACH:Okay. And, you know, the studies showed people like in their 40s and 50s suffer from it more. Have you noticed that as well? Like is age a factor in night sweats?
DR. ALLEN:Yeah, definitely. I think that kind of comes into play because of the more common reasons that cause night sweats being like menopause, perimenopause, that falls in that age range. As we get older, a little more sensitive to temperatures. People tend to be on more medicines as they get older, might have other chronic conditions. So younger folks, not so much because they don't have all these other confounding factors that are along with it. So yeah, night sweats commonly I'll see like 35 up, definitely 40 plus is where I hear a lot of people talking to me about night sweats.
ZACH:Okay. So there are a lot of culprits that contribute to night sweats. I kind of want to go down some of them with you and we can kind of talk about what causes them and how to avoid them, prevent them. So your environment, you know, we already touched on some of these, but like your environment, your room temperature, your pajamas, your sheets, that sort of thing. So these are things -- I lump these all together because these are things that you can control for the most part. You decide what you wear to bed. You decide how many blankets you want to put on. Now if you live with somebody, you might have a battle of the thermostat. You know, we've all experienced that sometime in our lives, I'm sure. Well let's start with that, right? Is there an ideal temperature that you should sleep in? Like you should put your thermostat on in order to sleep in the room you're in? DR. ALLEN: Yeah, there is. There's been a lot of research behind this. You can look at Mayo Clinic, American Sleep Society, but essentially it's gonna be mid-60s. I tell patients anywhere from like 60 to 67. That sounds good to me. Yeah. My wife would not like to hear that, but I'm gonna tell her this.
DR. ALLEN:Believe it or not, yeah. So because our bodies, when we go to sleep, naturally our body temperature goes down. So if you have a warm room that's gonna keep your body warm, you'll get poor sleep. You might even sweat because the body's gonna try to cool itself down to sleep. So yeah, the optimal temperature, I typically tell patients 65, kind of easy number to remember. That's a good, reliable. I do 67, 66 myself. Anything over that, I'm definitely kind of waking up sweaty a few times.
ZACH:Yeah. DR. ALLEN: So yeah, mid-60s. So with that in mind, again, let's talk about this thermostat thing a little more. You're not keeping your house at that temperature all day, right? You're talking, okay, it's bedtime and crank it down a little bit. DR. ALLEN: Oh yeah. Because obviously, like, we live here in Texas, you keep it at 60. Even me who likes it cold…
DR. ALLEN:Yeah.
ZACH:I can't keep my house at 60. I mean, I would enjoy it, but I really can't afford to keep my house at 65 degrees all day.
DR. ALLEN:You'd have to have a pretty sizable income to keep your house at like 60 during the day.
ZACH:Okay. DR. ALLEN: Yeah. Only nighttime, right? So start cutting it. And the thing is, a lot of people, they'll start bedtime like when they want to go to bed. They're like, oh, it's 10 o'clock, it's time to go to bed. Now I'm gonna turn down the temperature and now I'm gonna get in the bed. It's like -- Don't, set yourself up for success, start a little earlier. I tell patients, typically your bedtime routine should start at like 30 minutes prior. And that's gonna set you up for success, right? So start cooling the house down. Have a normal routine to kind of cue your brain into like, all right, you know, sleep's coming. Start downregulating the temperature. Kind of enter that, what we call that parasympathetic mode, the rest and digest. I describe it to patients like this. It's like, you can't safely land a plane by just cutting off the engines and just falling out of the sky. Like you need to land it. So you gotta do the same thing for your brain. You gotta say, "Hey, we need a landing strip." Say, "We're getting ready to go to sleep so prepare for that." That can help a lot of people's nights sweats, just having a good, what we call sleep hygiene, which is a lot of what we talked about. Cool room, good routine before you go to sleep. Don't be wrapped in like 10 million blankets, right? Right.
DR. ALLEN:Loose pajamas, if any. Some people don't do it at all.
ZACH:Well, I've heard this about pajamas, right? Now, I heard this -- This is like an anecdote I heard like on a podcast once years ago and it stuck with me. And they described like, it's like when you cook a baked potato. This sounds silly. Bear with me here, right? But you put a baked potato in the oven and you wrap it in tinfoil. And the tinfoil protects like a potato from overheating, right? And they use that analogy to you as a person. You are the baked potato. And the tinfoil is like your clothes. Does that make any sense? Like I --
DR. ALLEN:Not so much because you're not sleeping in an oven. So it's like not protecting against the heat.
ZACH:It was such a visual that stuck with me.
DR. ALLEN:It's an odd thing to say. I don't think many people appreciate being called a baked potato too. But yeah, I would say that makes more sense. Pajamas are more so -- Some people just don't like sleeping without clothes on. Or just to keep their sheets cleaner. I mean, I don't know if there's a study on the particular usefulness of pajamas. Or if there's a benefit to wearing them. But generally, I'm gonna go for like light pajamas. Not big, heavy, bulky things. Unless your room is freezing because you're up north and it's the 30s or something. But generally, light pajamas. I do a t-shirt and some shorts, right? But yeah, that can be a culprit. I've said to some folks that are wearing knitted wool pajamas. I'm like, "Don't do that. You'll get hot." ZACH: Yeah, no. And I think that analogy stuck with me because… The potato one.
ZACH:Because the explanation was intuitively like "Well, I'm hot. Let me take my shirt off. And I won't sweat at night." DR. ALLEN: Yeah. Right? But it's like no, actually the shirt protects you. So that's a no on that?
DR. ALLEN:Yeah, I'd give that one a no.
ZACH:I'm gonna purge that from my memory.
DR. ALLEN:That's another layer, right? So it's more so remove layers. I even say, if you have bedding make it to where its layers are easy to move. So if you're at night and get a little warm, kick that off. If you're cold, put it back on. That's definitely me a few times depending on the temp. And also for our spouses that particularly might not be able to handle cooler temperatures well, you can always put more blankets on. Right? So, you know, they can always find an in-between.
ZACH:Absolutely.
DR. ALLEN:My wife and I, we just have two completely separate comforters. We don't even share one. It's like, "This is my comforter." So she can have as much as she wants and I can just take mine off and I don't have to bug her.
ZACH:Yeah, no. Look, I like sleeping under blankets, but I also get warm very quickly. So that's the struggle. Alright, so that's that. Food, right? You mentioned spicy food earlier. Heavy or spicy foods like -- We know it's not good to eat heavy meals late in the day or right before bed, obviously, for digestion, but that can contribute to night sweats as well. DR. ALLEN: Yeah, absolutely. Digestion is work. Your body is churning up this food, processing it. It's a metabolic load. Blood flow goes to what we call the splanchnic system to really get everything digested. So that creates heat. So if you eat right before going to bed and your stomach starts digesting that while you're sleeping, you're gonna be generating some heat. And we also know eating late can contribute to reflux. And we know reflux also can cause people to have night sweats. One of the common questions I'll ask folks that are saying they're having night sweats, I was like,"Are you also having heartburn at the same time?" They're like, "Oh, yeah. How did you know?" I'm like, yes. ZACH: It's all connected.
DR. ALLEN:Definitely the eating, the timing of eating, and then what you're eating. So yes, probably like hot wings, margherita pizza an hour before bed. If you're gonna wake up sweaty, I'm not gonna be too surprised by that. But eating not a heavy spicy meal, not a heavy fatty meal, three hours before you've gone to bed and you're having night sweats, okay, that's different. That's not quite the trigger. So yeah, food can definitely matter, especially alcohol, like, definitely alcohol. And I can segue into the alcohol.
ZACH:Yeah, let's do it.
DR. ALLEN:Because this is probably the more common one. A lot of people like to use alcohol to go to sleep, right? It makes you tired, feel sleepy. But then, sure, you fall asleep, but then the later effects of alcohol is what makes people wake up sweaty. It's gonna increase your heart rate, so now your metabolism and heart's working harder. It messes with temperature regulation as well. That's why folks that, if they use alcohol a lot and they suddenly stop, withdrawals include temperature fluctuations where they'll have drenching sweats and they'll feel clammy cold because the thermostat in the brain just is dysregulated. So even small shifts in temperature changes result in a large response from the body. And not to mention, like, it just makes sleep quality bad. So bad sleep just makes for bad everything else. But when I have folks that are having their nightcap regularly, but they're talking about night sweats, I say do a two-week trial of not drinking three to four hours before bedtime and see if it goes away. A lot of times it'll go away.
ZACH:So the three to four hours is a generally good cut-off time.
DR. ALLEN:That's if you had one drink. Now if you had a six-pack of beer or something, it's gonna take longer. It takes about an hour for your liver to process an ounce of alcohol. ZACH: Okay. Standard drink, if it's liquor, is an ounce and a half. So you're looking at an hour and a half until it's out.
ZACH:Okay.
DR. ALLEN:So if you have one drink, three hours is a very safe number, because people can metabolize it at different rates, that it's out of your system and you're not having those kind of after effects of the alcohol. ZACH: Okay. You know, speaking of drinking, then caffeine. So caffeine obviously helps keep us awake, right? But does that also contribute to night sweats, if you drink like a soda too late at night? Yeah, it definitely can. So it's a stimulant. That's what caffeine is. That's why it keeps you awake. It hits the stimulating parts of your brain which activates the sympathetic response. That's that keyed up, fight or flight. So you're gonna have more cortisol released. Your muscles are gonna be tenser, generating more heat. And yes, that can result in night sweats. And also just kind of like garbage sleep too. One of the most common causes of poor sleep or not getting sleep is people having caffeine too close to bed. And you'd be surprised at like what too close to bedtime means. A lot of people think, oh no, two hours, three hours. That's like six to eight hours. Because some folks can metabolize it really slowly. So you have -- I mean the half-life of caffeine is like four hours. So I generally will tell folks don't drink caffeine after 4 p.m. for sure and pretty much not after lunch if you're having sleep issues. Because yeah, that metabolism, it'll stick around.
ZACH:I know a lot of people that treat coffee that way. But soda, I don't think anyone thinks it in those terms. It's just like because you have dinner, people have sodas.
DR. ALLEN:And they forget there's caffeine in those, right? ZACH: Yeah. So drink a caffeine-free soda. You shouldn't be drinking soda probably, but if you've got to drink it, drink caffeine-free soda....just don't drink soda at all. But you know, it's okay to indulge and have a soda here and there. ZACH: That's right, everybody. So that's one of my struggles is soda. That's my thing. DR. ALLEN: I'm the same. I like it too. But it's like, okay, don't have like 10 sodas a day, right? But yeah, have you noticed that there's this pattern of every time I'm having soda with dinner, night sweats, and it kind of alludes back to what I talked about -- patterns matter. Because often patterns, they're gonna give you the answer. That's why I always ask patients questions. When did this start? What were you doing? What were you eating? What did you do before this? What happened after? Instead of like, "Doc, I'm sweating every night." It's like, "All right, what else? What's the whole context behind it?" So I always tell folks, you know, if you're gonna go in with a complaint, it's good to like, have you noticed associations with that especially? Now sometimes, they're like,"I have no idea. It's happened every night." That kind of triggers me a bit more. This is more, something more maybe serious or that warrants a bit more investigation. ZACH: Yeah, absolutely. So, going down the list here still with the culprits, right? Medication, right? A lot of medications can lead to this. Now, are there alternatives for these medications? Because obviously, if you're taking a medication, you're taking it for a reason and you want to, you know, use it to keep that other health issue from happening. So you don't want to sacrifice that, but you also don't want to sweat at night. So like, what's the compromise there? Yeah, good quality sleep makes for healthy life and makes a lot of chronic conditions better. Poor sleep makes a lot of chronic conditions worse. In terms of meds, yeah, there's lots of medicines that are very common. A lot of antidepressant medicines, anxiety medicines like SSRIs, very common to cause sweating at night. Certain diabetes medicines, especially if it's causing your glucose to get low at night, that can be the cause. Even hormonal medicines like thyroid, if you're too high on the dose, or hormone replacement therapy that folks do, is the dose adequate, or is it not enough, can be another as well. So yeah, lots of different kinds of medicines can cause this, not uncommon. So, to answer the question, yeah, we -- Often people are on medicines for a reason. The best thing to do is talk to your doc about, well, is there an alternative or can we just change the timing of it? Should we take it earlier in the day, in the morning, reduce the dose, or should we take it with something else? Usually you can figure out something to get it to work.
ZACH:Mm-hmm.
DR. ALLEN:But sometimes you can't, and it's still happening, so then you can look for an alternative. I've yet to run into an issue where I've had a medicine that's causing night sweats, and we haven't been able to either pick something new or change it to where that goes away. ZACH: Mm-hmm. Now, you mentioned menopause before, and hormones here, it's all kind of tied together, right? So, 75% of perimenopausal women experience night sweats. So, is there something, in addition to just medicine, right, but is there something they could do or not do, like avoid, in order to alleviate that? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, I say this to my patients. For women, menopause is mandatory, but having it disrupt your sleep and your life is not mandatory, like, we can definitely do things about it. So, the foundation that we talked about earlier, right? Cool room, light clothes, don't drink before bed, don't eat a whole bunch of spicy food right before bed, make sure you have a good bedtime routine. So, you know, set your foundation up for success, but if you're still having those issues afterwards, then for a lot of women, hormone replacement therapy is very appropriate. You know, first-line therapy for hot flashes, what we call vasomotor symptoms, hot flash being basically because the estrogen levels are changing, the thermostat in the brain gets really sensitive. That's why women will wake up all of a sudden hot and hot flash because their blood vessels all dilate to try to dissipate heat, and then they'll go to being cold afterwards a lot of times. So, hormone therapy is the first-line treatment for that. Now, not all women can take that, either due to perhaps history of breast cancer, or they don't tolerate it, or costs, whatever it might be, or other, there's definitely a few other things that can preclude them, but then there's other non-hormonal medicines too, like Vioza is a good one you can use, or even some types of antidepressants or gabapentin, there's a lot of meds out there you can use to treat these vasomotor symptoms for menopause and perimenopause.
ZACH:Okay. Now, in my research, I found stress was another contributing factor, and it's not something that I had really thought of, like, you know, you see in movies and TV shows, like, people are sweating, like, "Which wire do I cut?" that sort of thing. I don't think I've ever been in that kind of situation. I mean, when I'm, you know, sweating, I'm outside, and so maybe it all ties together. I don't think about, maybe I'm under stress while I'm outside and already sweating. So, it wasn't the first thing I thought of, but, you know, mindset and stress and all that, that can affect you while you sleep, and that can cause night sweats, huh?
DR. ALLEN:It can, yeah. So, stress is a threat response from your brain, and it can be useful. Stress can be really useful in acute situations."I got a deadline coming up." You can be a bit more effective, get it done, like, good short-term stress is good. Long-term stress is not good. You've got kind of chronic increased cortisol levels. I mean, you're in that fight-or-flight state, kind of chronically there. ZACH: Mm-hmm. With stress, a lot of people, this kind of alludes back to the bedtime routine, right? They're laying in bed, and now they're trying to solve the day's problems while they're laying there thinking about something."Did I say that earlier? I've got to do this tomorrow. Wake up, do this time, all right, I'mma do this." And they're trying to plan out when they've -- but also trying to sleep at the same time. So, the brain's active and responding to threats,
and threats nowadays:"I've got a deadline, I've got a doctor's appointment, my mom's sick, my kid's got to go to school," right? Things that don't go away we have to deal with. The time to deal with them is not when you're trying to go to sleep though. So, if we can signal to the brain, "Hey, let's move away from the stress and start our routine for sleep," that can help a lot. I'll even tell folks, I have my sleep hygiene handout. One of it is -- A lot of times the reason people will tell me that they have their night sweats or can't sleep is their brain won't turn off. It's just going. And they're ruminating. Thinking about the same thing. That's usually because your brain's not wanting to forget it. Sometimes it can be as simple as having a journal and writing down the thought that's in your head, and your brain will stop thinking about it. And then the stress will come down, and sleep, and no waking up sweaty. So, absolutely reducing stress can help a lot, just by doing a simple routine before bed can help, but also other things like meditation, Tai Chi, exercise, healthy eating, all of that comes into play with it.
ZACH:Yeah, and this is universal too, not just for people suffering from night sweats, but just good, like you said, sleep hygiene. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Hyperhidrosis, is something I found in my research, and rare medical condition, less than 3% of the population have it, and it's where your body generates more sweat than it should. How can people know that they don't have it? That's the right way to ask it. Because you start, get online, and you diagnose yourself, and always find the worst case scenario.
DR. ALLEN:How sweaty am I?
ZACH:Right, so like, how can you just determine that, you know, it's not that, it's one of these other factors we've already talked about.
DR. ALLEN:I'll tell you one thing, if you will not shake someone's hand because your hand is so sweaty all the time, maybe, you might have hyperhidrosis. So hyperhidrosis is excessive sweating, like beyond what's normal. Usually people can pick up on it, they're like,"This is a lot." And it can happen to different parts of the body, it's usually not the entire body that you'll experience it. Commonly, palms, soles of your feet, armpits, face. So if it's, you know, pits, they'll be definitely, like, sweating out their shirts. Even if they're putting on, like, deodorants or things, they'll still, like, go through that. Hands will be, like, dripping sweat. It's not just, like, a moist hand, but actually, like, drops of sweat coming off. People might explain, like, sweat running down their arms from their pits, or even just in, like, a regular room, too, not like you're outside and it's 110 degrees, yeah, you're gonna drip sweat. But, you know, if we're sitting here, and unless you're particularly nervous about doing interviews, right, and you're pouring sweat, if that's happening, then, yeah, it's probably hyperhidrosis.
ZACH:Mm-hmm. DR. ALLEN: Not too common. I see it here and there. Pretty easy ways to treat it. There's topicals you can put on to stop it. Even Botox can help sometimes, too. Yeah?
DR. ALLEN:So now everyone's gonna be like,"Do I have to Botox for hyperhidrosis? But, yeah, it's -- And it'll happen at any time, right? It's not only exclusively at night. So, yeah, definitely people with hyperhidrosis are gonna have night sweats, but they have day sweats, too.
ZACH:Okay. So, look, we covered a lot of the culprits here. Are there any other medical issues or anything like that that can contribute to night sweats?
DR. ALLEN:I could give you the list, yeah.
ZACH:How much time do you have?
DR. ALLEN:Night sweats is one of those, it's like, when patients come in with dizziness, it's like, oh, there's a lot. Night sweats, I mean, we talked, it could be medicines, it can be diabetes, you've got low sugar, high sugar, reflux, mood disorders, anxiety, menopause, perimenopause, those are kind of the first things. Poor sleep hygiene, those are common. Then we kind of start digging in a bit more. HIV, tuberculosis, lymphoma, leukemia, you know, those kind of cancers that everyone gets worried about. Everyone thinks, "I have night sweats, so I have cancer." Like, when you Google it, that's the first thing that's gonna come up. It's very uncommonly that. It's rare that I ever find that it's actually a cancer. I've found sneaky infections before that have been hiding for a long time. Most often it's just, like, lifestyle or medicine or it's normal. They just need to change what they're doing. But, yeah, the list can get pretty long. And when you start talking about the list, people start to get -- sweat a little bit more because they're a little nervous about it. But the biggest thing is those kind of later diagnoses, like, the more -- the scarier ones, like cancer and HIV, TB, those kind of things, those are, I'm often gonna see, it's not just like light night sweating. It's -- those tend to be those drenching sweats and other symptoms, too. They feel sick, maybe fevers, weight loss, that they're not trying to lose weight, but they're just losing weight. Those are gonna kind of set off alarm bells a little bit more for me to say,"Let's be a bit more aggressive about figuring out what's going on." Of course, address our foundation, but let's also look at this too at the same time. Now, simple, I go foundation first. Still not better, then come back and we'll dig in more. ZACH: Okay. And, you know, to kind of wrap up here on a hopeful note, it sounds like for the most part, night sweats are a pretty treatable thing. Yeah. Yeah, the vast majority. The vast majority of night sweats are addressed either through, mostly changing habits is a big one. I can't tell you how many people try to go to sleep with it being 73 degrees. I'm like, that's very warm.
ZACH:See, I agree. DR. ALLEN: So turn it down. So, yeah, most are gonna be treatable. And even those scarier ones, you can still treat those, too. It's not like you get leukemia and you can't treat it. In a lot of those, you can. You can treat tuberculosis. It goes away. So even the kind of more things that make people scared, you can still treat those. But, like I said, most of them are either gonna be medicine, behavior, or what you're eating, reflux. You can treat reflux with medicines or changing what you're doing. So, yeah. If you're having night sweats, I wouldn't be too worried about, like, this being the rest of your life. Excellent. Excellent. Well, anything we didn't touch on you want to mention here or any last thought you want to leave the listeners with today?
DR. ALLEN:I think the biggest thing I've kind of said it throughout is it's patterns that matter. Right? So one night sweats, I wouldn't be too worried. Seeing it happen recurrently without any kind of clear explanation or if you haven't figured one out, like, look to see if there's a correlation. Keep track. I usually tell patients, you know, for two weeks keep track of what you're doing. Like, when are you eating? What are you eating? When is it happening? What did you do before? And a lot of times that'll give you the answer right away just to see the pattern. Like, "Oh, look. Every time I have a soda with dinner, I sweat at night." And it can be that easy. So I would say patterns matter. ZACH: All right. Patterns matter. DR. ALLEN: Yeah.
ZACH:Alrighty. Well, thanks so much for being on the podcast.
DR. ALLEN:Yeah, it was absolutely -- It was great.
KATIE:So Zach, do you feel better about maybe your mysterious sweating at night?
ZACH:Yeah. I mean, honestly, if you really take a hard look at, you know, the things you've been eating or drinking.
KATIE:Yeah I started making a list here and I was like, yeah, a couple of those things.
ZACH:Yeah, maybe I did eat that whole pizza myself. Maybe that's why I woke up in a pool of sweat.
KATIE:Those hot wings pretty close to bed.
ZACH:Yes. Yeah.
KATIE:You know, if we're gonna point the finger, perhaps that. Something he said that I really liked that I wrote down is patterns matter because they give you answers.
ZACH:Yes.
KATIE:I loved it because, first of all, in this scenario of night sweats, it makes a ton of sense because I think sometimes when you wake up and you have a very different experience than usual, you're very sweaty… ZACH: Mm-hmm. You can kind of go to a negative head space. But I like the point of find the pattern first. If this is just once and never again, that's not a pattern. ZACH: Right. Or if this is, you know, every time you have your hot wings too close to bedtime, there's your answer.
ZACH:Yeah.
KATIE:I like that it's kind of like keeping track of stuff. And he gave us quite a few things to consider…
ZACH:Mm-hmm.
KATIE:So that was helpful too.
ZACH:The drinking soft drinks late at night or coffee, right? But to me, it's always soft drinks as you guys know who listen to the podcast. You know, caffeine, yeah, that keeps you up, right? We all know that. So you shouldn't drink it too late. I didn't realize that would be a factor in having you, you know, sweat in your sleep, right?
KATIE:Yeah. I think for me the bigger surprise, it wasn't a surprise from this conversation because I had recently learned this, but how much alcohol revs your body up several hours after you drink. Because you know, we all, you have a drink, you have a glass of wine, it's relaxing, you feel relaxed, you feel sleepy. But like two or three hours later, like you said, your body gets revved up, which means the sweating starts. So like I could probably very easily trace a lot of my sweatiest nights back to some of these habits, that's for sure.
ZACH:No, it was encouraging that he pointed out, look, every now and then don't worry about it, right? But it's that, again, patterns matter, right? I love how he has that mantra. It's something about the alliteration of it, it just works so well. Put that above your door when you walk out the door.
KATIE:Yeah, that's a lot.[Laughing]
ZACH:But if you know what you're, you know, putting into your body, you can probably, you know, connect all the dots and figure out,"Oh, that's why I woke up and I was all sweaty," right?
KATIE:And if you can't, that is when it's time to go see someone like Dr. Allen. And yeah, there are some other things to consider. There's some things you can't fix, like, on your own. Like, maybe it's a medication you're taking, but like he said, they can change the timing of the medication maybe. So like, there's ways you can work with your doctor if one of the causes is more complicated and you can't find an answer through your habits. Or there's even some health conditions where, you know, they cause of night sweats and it's good to know. But yeah, I thought it was a really good message of like, looking for the pattern and not just kind of assuming something with one instance of sweating at night, because we're all gonna kind of keep sweating at night randomly. ZACH: Absolutely. And the battle of the thermostat, right? If you live with a significant other, a roommate, whoever, right? Chances are you've had a discussion about what number that thermostat should be on, especially when it comes to bedtime. KATIE: Yeah.
ZACH:And I was rather surprised and elated to know that we should be sleeping at 65 degrees Fahrenheit, Katie.
KATIE:Yeah, I mean, seems unrealistic, but definitely sends the message home that it needs to be cooler than you think. ZACH: Right, right. As cool as you can get it.
ZACH:Right, and look, Dr. Allen even said, I understand you cannot keep your house at 65 degrees all day long, but, you know, hour, 30 minutes before you go to sleep, put that thermostat a little lower. It can probably alleviate some of those night sweats.
KATIE:Yeah, and I think too, even if it's just to, like, get the answer to your question that your night sweats are just temperature related, and then you can work from there. Maybe the solution is a fan in the bedroom or something.
ZACH:Or two comforters like he said.
KATIE:Yeah, I loved him and his wife just have two different comforters. That's great. Because look, there's always someone who runs hot in the relationship and you just don't, you know,"Just go over there. You're hot." Like, "You're making me hot, like, get over there."
ZACH:Yeah.
KATIE:Take your own comforter with you. I don't even want to share the comforter space with you. I thought that was funny. That's cute.
ZACH:Yeah, so look, ultimately it's a very treatable thing, right? There is hope for you if you have night sweats. There's so many options of things you can stop doing, things you can start doing. And then if it's a deeper medical concern, go to your primary care physician and they can help you out too. So that's gonna do it for us this time on On Health<i> </i>with Houston Methodist. Be sure to share, like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We drop episodes Tuesday mornings. So until next time, stay tuned and stay healthy.♪ ♪