Heidi Davis is co-founder of Peri and a scientist with over a decade of experience across nutrition, molecular medicine, and health technology. She is focused on closing the gender health data gap by translating rigorous science and real-world biometric data into meaningful, personalized insights that help women navigate perimenopause with clarity and confidence.
February 10, 2026
Why Understanding Your Hot Flushes and Night Sweats Matters for Long Term Health
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Hot flushes and night sweats are often treated as aninconvenience of perimenopause. Something to tolerate, push through, or writeoff as “just hormones.” But growing scientific understanding is changing how wethink about midlife symptoms and long-term health. Diseases like Alzheimer’shave traditionally been thought of as diseases of old age, yet researchincreasingly shows that many of the underlying changes in the brain begin muchearlier, during midlife, long before symptoms appear. This matters especiallyfor women, who have around twice the risk of developing Alzheimer’s compared tomen. Perimenopause represents a critical window to pay attention to what’shappening in the body and brain, understand the signals being sent, and takeadvantage of an opportunity for earlier awareness, prevention, andbetter-informed care.
More Than a Moment of Heat
Vasomotor symptoms are not isolated events. They often occur alongside sleep disruption, increased emotional stress, and changes in how the body regulates blood flow, especially at night.
Large scale research shows that sleep disturbance is extremely common during perimenopause and is linked to poorer wellbeing and mental health, whether or not hot flushes are consciously noticed. Poor sleep does not just affect how you feel the next day. Over time, it can influence stress recovery, immune function, and vascular regulation.
Night sweats are particularly important because many episodes happen during sleep and go unnoticed or unremembered. In fact, real world data from women wearing Peri shows that nearly half of hot flushes and night sweats are missed by self report alone, often because they occur overnight. This means many women are experiencing more physiological disruption than they realise.
The Link to Heart and Brain Health
Research does not suggest that hot flushes or night sweats cause heart disease or dementia. But studies increasingly show associations between frequent or severe vasomotor symptoms and markers related to cardiovascular and brain health.
Women’s cardiovascular risk does not always look like men’s. During midlife, changes in hormones can affect blood vessels, metabolism, sleep, and stress systems all at once. These are the same systems involved in vasomotor symptoms. This overlap is why perimenopause is now recognized as a key window for earlier awareness and prevention, rather than something to address years later.
Groundbreaking research has also found associations between nighttime vasomotor symptoms and Alzheimer’s related blood biomarkers. This does not mean night sweats lead to cognitive disease. But it does suggest that paying attention to these symptoms may offer early insights into how the brain and vascular system are responding during midlife.
Why This Window Matters
Perimenopause is not just a transition to get through. It is an opportunity.
This is a time when patterns are emerging, not fixed. When sleep, stress, activity, and symptoms interact in ways that can either strain or support long term health. Understanding what is happening in your body during this window allows you to make informed choices, have better conversations with clinicians, and focus on prevention rather than reaction.
The challenge has always been visibility. Symptoms change week to week. Many happen at night. Memory is unreliable. And traditional healthcare snapshots miss the full picture.
Turning Symptoms Into Insight
This is why objective, continuous tracking matters. By capturing physiological signals around the clock, patterns can be identified that self report alone cannot reveal. When symptoms like hot flushes, night sweats, and sleep disruption are viewed together, they provide context, not just isolated events.
Understanding your vasomotor symptoms is not about labelling them as good or bad. It is about recognizing them as information. Signals that help you understand how your body is adapting during a pivotal stage of life.
Perimenopause is a meaningful window for long term health. Paying attention now can make a difference later.
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