Hot flashes are old as the hills, and we hadn’t come across a quick way to cool down until we asked our friend Karen Roush, a nurse practitioner for 30 years, for her wisdom. The key to quelling hot flashes, Karen tells us, is something called paced respiration, or belly breathing. “Most of us breathe too shallowly,” Karen said. “Try breathing with your diaphragm instead, using the muscles of your abdomen. Put your hand on your stomach—you should feel your belly moving in and out.” We experimented, inhaling for three to five seconds, then exhaling for the same amount of time, per Karen’s instructions, while breathing deep from the abdomen. “Every time I get a hot flash, it comes with a wave of anxiety, and this can calm the flash and the anxiety at the same time,” Karen says. Plus, it’s more discreet than fanning your face at a meeting.
—Karen Roush, RN, was editorial director of the American Journal of Nursing. Her most recent book is What Nurses Know . . . Menopause.
