Sweaty Heads - Night Sweats - Hot Flashes

My Son had These Problems and Some Simple Diet Changes Helped Him Get Back to Normal

We have one son who has had a lot of trouble on and off throughout the years with getting overheated. He especially had problems with night sweats for a period of time. For a while one spring, he would get a sweaty head every evening right before bedtime, at about 9:00 p.m. He would get bad headaches during these times, too, accompanied by an acid stomach. Often he was so hot and uncomfortable he was unable to even get to sleep, and then he couldn't go to school the next morning because he wasn't getting to sleep until 2:00 or 3:00 am.

There are many causes of night sweats including some diseases, so it is important to see a doctor for a proper diagnosis. However in my son's case he seemed otherwise healthy and the doctors didn't know what was causing him to be so hot, especially at night. We took our son to many different allopathic and alternative doctors in search of a cure, yet found few answers.

It took us awhile to figure out how to control it. Our pediatrician printed out some information on natural treatments for hot flashes in women to see if any of that data would help us. Searching around on the Internet led us to read up on our own about "heating" and "cooling" foods in Ayurvedic (traditional Indian) medicine. At our doctor's suggestion, we also very religiously kept a food diary for our son. After all of our reading and interpreting the results of his food diary, over time we have been able to keep him cool just by making minor tweaks to his diet. We never found a lot of information on male night sweats, but interestingly I've noticed that many people search for information on this condition, so it must be fairly common.

After months of sweating, heat related problems, chronic headaches, and many doctor visits and medical tests with no diagnosis for his condition, let alone treatment plans, we put our son on a low acid, Ayurvedic based "cooling foods" diet, and within a few days he was fine. The results were nothing short of amazing. He only had to be on the special diet for a few days, and then he was able to go back to his normal diet. He still gets hot now and then, but we just put him on the Ayurvedic cooling diet for a few days and then he seems to recover pretty quickly.

According to Ayurvedic medicine, the following conditions tend to occur together in people with a "Pitta dosha". Many of the conditions listed certainly described my son's health issues. We found it interesting that Western medicine didn't even have name for his condition, and yet traditional Indian Ayurvedic medicine not only had a name for what was wrong with him, but also many helpful dietary suggestions that led to his eventual improvement.

Conditions frequently linked to Pitta dosha / hot flashes in women / night sweats / sweaty heads / being hot in traditional Indian medicine:

• Hyperthyroidism / speeded up metabolism
• Over-acid stomach
• Getting hotter at night than during day - especially in the head
• Being underweight
• Ulcers

Based on our food experiments with our son, I also found that foods that thin the blood seemed to speed up his metabolism and make his night sweats worse.

Based on our research and a very rigorous food dairy, we found that when that when my son is feeling hot, the foods listed below seem to cool him off, and interestingly in many cases the foods we found that helped him also agree with the "cooling foods" diets from Ayurvedic medicine.

When he was hot and had an acid pH balance, these foods seemed to help the most:

• Whole milk
• Pears
• Bananas
• Potato salad made with mayonnaise
• Soda crackers
• Broccoli (especially raw broccoli)
• White rice
• Yogurt made with cream and whole milk
• Kidney beans
• Higher fat foods, (our pediatrician said these tend to slow down a person's metabolism)
• Ice cream
• Butter
• Tofu
• Raw vegetables, especially vegetables high in vitamin K

One of my friends had problems with hot flashes during menopause and found great relief from consuming foods made with coconut oil, which has a high amount of saturated fat, which tends to coagulate the blood. High amounts of saturated fat are not recommended for most people, but I think for people with thin blood they may help bring about a more normal clotting balance. During menopause estrogen levels drop and normally estrogen promotes vitamin K, so a diet that clots the blood normally in pre-menopausal women may need need more vitamin K for normal clotting (and hot flash prevention) as estrogen levels drop.

My son also had an episode of night sweats at a later time period, only at this later point his body was too alkaline after taking antibiotics. When he was hot due and had an alkaline pH, then the following foods foods and supplements seemed to help:

• Probiotic supplements - the bacteria synthesize vitamin K, which helped to clot the blood
• Yogurt with cream on top and active cultures
• Pickles - the acidity helped to balance out the alkalinity

Basically, the more normal his pH became, neither too alkaline nor too acid, the less problems he seemed to have with the night sweats. For more information on this topic, see my section on alkaline balance.

In hindsight, I think most of my son's night sweat episodes came whenever he had to take antibiotics or ate foods with antibiotic properties. Antibiotics can kill off the good bacteria that help synthesize vitamin K. Vitamin K clots the blood, which in turn slows down the metabolism. I suspect that a lack of vitamin K speeds up the metabolism by thinning out the blood.

My son had been having some stomach problems prior to the onset of the sweating issues. For his stomach problems he had been drinking ginger ale. It turns out that ginger is a heating spice in Ayurvedic medicine, and is known for speeding up the metabolism. It also thins the blood. My son also used to take sandwiches to school with mustard, another heating spice. So in the end there were logical reasons why he was hot all of the time, it just took some digging to figure out.

I don't know if what helped my son would help other people with night sweats, but I thought if I put it out on the Internet it might give others some points to ponder. We were really flummoxed over my son's condition initially, though in the end the solution for him was fairly simple and had probably been around for thousands of years. We just had to do a lot of digging to find it.

Related Pages -

Alkaline - Acid Balance

Alternative Treatments for Insomnia

Overlooked Causes of Nose bleeds

Heart Palpitations

One of the features of rickets happens to be a sweaty head. For more information on sweaty heads in association with pectus excavatum (sunken chest), pectus carinatum (barrel chest), scoliosis (curved spine), bowed limbs, frequent fractures and other conditions linked to soft bones, you may find my section on pectus excavatum and rickets of interest.

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