How to Overcome Sweating While Sleeping

What is Night Sweating?

Night sweating or sleep hyperhidrosis is a condition where an individual wakes up from a deep slumber only to find him/her sweating excessively.

The condition can become so aggressive that it can drench your clothes as well as bed sheets. Though night sweats affect approximately 3 per cent of the world’s population, those who suffer from it,

yes they literally suffer..

Know how psychologically traumatizing the condition can be especially if the sufferers are with their partners at night.

Though night sweating is not a threat to life in the majority of the cases, some cases can be extremely critical. Hence, consulting a doctor is a must to help determine the exact underlying cause for the condition.

The amount of mental anxiety through which these individuals have to go every night before they sleep, is, usually, of severely high magnitude.

The constant thought process whether I will wake up in my own sweat in the morning or not keeps a person from taking his/her daily dose of sleep as well.

Night Sweating

As a consequence of this, daytime drowsiness becomes a regular phenomenon affecting the very quality of the individual’s life and may even lead to depression.

Please note that if you suffer from night sweats once in a long while, there is, absolutely, no reason to become tense as the majority of the times, simple reasons such as acid reflux and stress are behind it.

However, if you are experiencing night sweats that are persisting since last two or three months, it is very important that you don’t ignore the same and consult your doctor on an immediate basis.

If you are suffering from few days, don’t worry at all as this post will tell you the major causes behind night sweats as well as will outline the ways through which you can overcome it and reclaim your life.

What are the major causes behind night sweats?

1. Nightmares

If you tend to experience nightmares on a regular basis then your night sweat is the outcome of your body’s fight-or-flight response towards what you are experiencing in your dreams.

Stress is the biggest reason for having persistent nightmares. It is important that you relax and take a break from your daily hectic schedule to allow your body to recover from the stress that it has to undergo.

2. Menopause

Menopause comes with severely hot flashes which can occur at night as well. In fact, menopause is a very common reason for night sweats in women.

Night sweats can occur in women even while they are undergoing hormonal changes especially in the period of pregnancy.

3. Idiopathic Hyperhidrosis

This is a medical condition in which the body produces too much sweat and, as of now, there is no known recognizable medical cause for it.

4. Infections

Tuberculosis is the infection that majorly relates with night sweats. Even bacterial infections such as abscesses can be the culprit behind night sweats.

Hence, it becomes extremely important to consult a doctor if the episodes of night sweats are persisting. If you are suffering from tuberculosis night sweats will begin much before the episodes of persistent coughing coming up.

Consulting a doctor early can help you manage and get free from the infection easily.

5. Hypoglycaemia

Low blood sugar or hypoglycaemia is common in individuals who are suffering from diabetes. If their sugar goes too low, as a consequence of taking insulin, the episodes of night sweats might come up.

6. Anti-depressants

If you are going through an episode of depression and taking anti-depressant drugs, this could be the reason behind sever bouts of night sweat.

Depression can be extremely hard to deal with. The psychological trauma that an individual is already going through gets aggravated with night sweats.

Besides these other conditions which can cause episodes of night sweat are obesity, substance abuse, extreme stress, high room temperature, eating too much spicy food before bed, stress, hot drinks right before sleeping, side effects of pharmaceutical medications and supplements etc

Night Sweat

How to overcome night sweats?

1. If you have excessive sweating all the time and not particularly at night?

Chances are that you have developed a condition known as hyperhidrosis in which the body produces sweat persistently for no specific reason behind it. If this is the case with you, there is, absolutely, no need to worry as with certain inclusions in your life you will successfully overcome the case of excessive sweating.

2. Have you begun sweating at night all of a sudden?

If you are going through episodes of night sweat all of a sudden with no prior history of the same, look out for other symptoms along with. Chances are that you have developed an acute infection or undergoing a period of severe stress and anxiety. If former is the case, please don’t take it lightly as an infection can easily become life-threatening. Please consult your doctor immediately.

However, if you are undergoing an episode of depression and stress, it is important that you don’t rely on anti-depressant drugs as they will worsen the condition further.

Consult a psychologist who can help you get rid of depression. Meet people who have successfully overcome depression and speak to them.

There is no reason that you should feel embarrassed by confessing that you are undergoing depression. In fact, confession is your first step towards getting rid of it.

overcome sweating while sleeping

3. Are you sweating at night with no symptoms at all?

If this is the case then your environment might be the reason to blame. Come out of the covers and lower the room temperature. It is best that you strip down a bit of your clothing before you sleep to help your body stay ventilated and cool.

How naturally you stop night sweating

So what exactly are you to do to avoid sweating too much in your sleep?

Well, the first thing you can do is use a bed which is made of a natural breathable filling that allows air to circulate properly.

Why would you want to do that?

Well, when you go to sleep your body naturally heats up the air underneath it, which in turn heats up the bed. However, once you go to sleep, your body temperature drops while that of the bed still remains high, causing you to sweat. Having a bedding which has a proper air circulation ensures that the heat will escape.

Another easy trick you can implement for how to stop sweating while sleeping is using a fan or an air conditioner to keep your room temperature down.

As you can guess, simply sleeping in a cooler environment will heavily reduce your propensity to sweat. However, make sure that there is no breeze directly blowing at you, because if you do start to sweat, a cold breeze can very well make you sick.

As is mentioned in the list of causes above, eating certain foods and drinking hot beverages right before bed is going to make you sweat. This is because spicy foods tend to trick your brain into thinking your whole body is hot, subsequently triggering your sweat glands. I’m sure you can figure out why hot beverages would make you hot and sweaty. In any case, all you need to do is simply avoid eating spicy foods or drinking hot beverages two hours before sleeping. You can still eat cold foods and drink something cool.

As you can see, the problem of sweating while sleeping is actually quite easily fixable if only you follow the simple methods described above. Naturally, there are many more of them out there, so rest assured that something out there will work for you. If you are one of those rare people whose sweating problems originate from some kind of more serious problem, then I am afraid the best course of action would be to consult with the doctor and follow his or her recommendations.

Most importantly, don’t be in a habit of drinking too much coffee at night. Caffeine is a stimulant. First of all, you won’t get proper sleep because of excessive caffeine in your system and second it might increase your heart rate. As a consequence of this night, sweating drops in. Along with caffeine, if you are in a habit of taking recreational drugs, it is high time that you ditch them.

Get rid of this habit as it can send your heartbeat over the roof and you wake up in a river of sweat.

Conclusion

Night sweat is a condition which can have harmless causes as well as critical ones.So, if, even after correcting your room’s environment and your pre-sleep eating and drinking habits, you are not able to get rid of night sweat, it is important that you consult a doctor.

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