Is Kickboxing Good for Hot Flashes During Perimenopause?
Kickboxing raises your core temperature during training, but regular exercise may reduce hot flash frequency and severity over time. Here is the nuanced answer every perimenopausal woman needs.
The Honest Complication with Hot Flashes and Exercise
If you experience hot flashes, the idea of doing vigorous exercise that raises your body temperature may feel counterintuitive. And it is true that a kickboxing session can trigger a hot flash in the moment, particularly in the first weeks of training. This is worth acknowledging honestly. However, the longer-term evidence suggests that regular aerobic exercise reduces the frequency and severity of hot flashes over time. The short-term and long-term effects point in different directions, which is why the answer is nuanced.
What Hot Flashes Actually Are
Hot flashes occur because falling estrogen disrupts the hypothalamus, the brain's thermostat. The thermostat becomes hypersensitive to small temperature increases, interpreting minor rises as a dangerous overheating event and triggering a sweating and vasodilation response to cool the body down. This response is disproportionate to the actual temperature change. Regular exercise appears to recalibrate this thermostat over time, making it less reactive to temperature fluctuations.
The Evidence for Exercise Reducing Hot Flashes
Multiple studies have found that women who exercise regularly report fewer and less intense hot flashes than sedentary women. The mechanism is not fully understood, but it likely involves improved cardiovascular fitness (which reduces resting heart rate and improves heat dissipation efficiency), better regulation of norepinephrine (which is involved in the hot flash response), and reduced overall anxiety, which is a common hot flash trigger. Kickboxing, as a sustained aerobic exercise, delivers all three of these effects.
Managing Hot Flashes During Kickboxing Sessions
Practical strategies during training make a real difference. Wearing moisture-wicking, loose-fitting clothing helps. Training in a cool or ventilated space is important. Keeping a cool water bottle nearby and pausing briefly if a hot flash occurs, rather than pushing through, is sensible. Some women find that training earlier in the day, before body temperature rises with the afternoon heat, reduces the likelihood of triggering flashes. Over time, as fitness improves, the thermoregulatory system often becomes more stable.
Pairing Exercise with Other Hot Flash Management
Exercise works best alongside other evidence-based strategies. Avoiding known triggers, alcohol, spicy food, caffeine, and stress, reduces baseline frequency. HRT is the most effective medical intervention for hot flashes and worth discussing with your GP if they are significantly affecting your life. Cognitive behavioural therapy for hot flashes has a strong evidence base. Kickboxing adds cardiovascular recalibration to this toolkit.
Giving It Time to Work
The hot flash reduction benefits of regular exercise tend to emerge over six to twelve weeks of consistent training, not after one or two sessions. Logging your workout frequency and tracking your hot flash experience in PeriPlan over that timeframe can reveal whether a reduction in frequency or severity is occurring. Progress with this symptom is often gradual and easy to miss without a record to look back on.
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