How many times have you woken up at night and you feel in the middle of a puddle of sweatyour clothes are wet just like your sheets.
This phenomenon is known as night sweats and it is often difficult to get to the bottom of what causes them.
According to Kathleen Rowland, a Rush family medicine specialist, night sweats may affect two in five middle-aged adultsalthough this statistic may be higher.
Rowland said night sweats are rarely a cause for concern, but sometimes it’s usually a sign that you have the flu or have been infected with Covid-19 or another virus.
“Almost any type of infection can cause night sweats,” she says. This includes kidney infections and much rarer infections like tuberculosis,” said Rush’s specialist.
Other causes may be thyroid disease or liver, as well as a sleep disorder known as obstructive sleep apnea.
Night sweats too may be a symptom of a serious health problem such as lymphomaa type of cancer that affects the lymph nodes, bone marrow, and other parts of the lymphatic system.
“While night sweats are a common symptom for people with lymphoma, very few people who have night sweats have cancer,” Rowland explains.
Women typically have night sweats for 6 to 10 years or longer during the transition to menopause.
“Hot flashes” and night sweats, what doctors call the vasomotor symptoms of menopause, are often more treatable than other types of night sweats, she says.
“If you’ve had night sweats for a long time, they’re not changing much, and you can still wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, it’s okay not to feel worried,” says Rowland.
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“But if night sweats are new to you, get worse, or interrupt your feeling of rest, you may want to talk to a doctor,” she says.
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