4 Foods and Drinks That Might Make Your Hot Flashes Worse

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If you’re a person going through menopause, it is basically a law of thermodynamics that throwing back a large, piping hot cup of coffee or tucking into a plate of chili crisp-fried eggs will definitely cause a hot flash, right? Well, it might surprise you to learn that “there is no high-level conclusive evidence to confirm an association between different types of dietary intake and the intensity of menopausal symptoms,” Laurie Jeffers, NP, DNP, co-director of the Center for Midlife Health and Menopause at NYU Langone Health, tells SELF.¹

That said, says Dr. Jeffers, “If you talk to women, as I do all day long, every single day, most of them—if not all of them—will note that there are certain things that increase their hot flashes.” While vasomotor symptoms (hot flashes and night sweats) affect up to 80% of women during menopause, the foods that prompt or exacerbate them can vary from person to person; SELF spoke with experts about what some people report are common dietary triggers, and why it might be worth monitoring your reaction to them.²

Hot coffee

“Anything that sort of makes you flush anyway,” Melanie Marin, MD, director of the menopause program in the Raquel and Jaime Gilinski Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai tells SELF, “can trigger hot flashes and night sweats.” Caffeine is a vasodilator, which means it can cause blood vessels to expand (dilate)³. This may lead to increased blood flow, which can potentially trigger a hot flash.⁴ Vasodilation is also how the body responds to excess heat in general, making hot coffee a potential hot flash double whammy.⁵ And if that weren’t enough, caffeine may also lead to an increase in heart rate—another thing that could potentially trigger a hot flash.^6,7

“That doesn’t mean you can’t have your morning cup of coffee,” Stephanie S. Faubion, MD, the director of the office of women’s health at the Mayo Clinic and the medical director at the North American Menopause Society, tells SELF. “You just might have a couple of hot flashes afterward.” Yes, like with many things in life, your choice to consume coffee might just have to be about weighing its pros and cons. Other tips: Avoid having a cup later in the day, because caffeine can negatively impact your sleep—which can make night sweats harder to deal with. And maybe switch to iced, since that means one less potential trigger in your cup.^6,5

Spicy foods

It isn’t hard to understand why spicy foods might increase the intensity of your hot flashes. They’re, like, hot, and they make you feel hot when you eat them. But this is particularly true if they contain capsaicin, a chemical compound found in chili peppers that triggers heat receptors in the body and leads to vasodilation.^8–11

During perimenopause—the transition phase to menopause, which lasts for 3-4 years on average, but could go on even longer—estrogen and progesterone levels are in flux as they go into the sharp decline that marks menopause. “When you are going through these hormonal fluctuations, what happens is your heat tolerance gets narrower,” Dr. Marin says. “Once you’re over that threshold, the whole pathway of vasodilation and neurologic changes that can cause palpitations all go in a cascade. So when you eat chili peppers, normally your cheeks flush and your nose runs, but [during menopause] your cheeks flush, your nose runs—and the whole hot flash sequence begins.”

Alcohol

You may find that the glass of wine that used to help you unwind at the end of the day now seems to trigger a chain of hot flashes, which is not particularly relaxing. Dr. Jeffers says that although there is no proven connection between alcohol and vasomotor symptoms yet—“we just don't see the link in the literature”—many of her patients report that alcohol, and red wine in particular, seems to set them off.¹

This may be because, like caffeine, alcohol can be a vasodilator.¹² It may also be because alcohol can affect hormone levels in people going through menopause.¹³ If you do find that alcohol seems to trigger your hot flashes, you might consider cutting back, or being more careful about timing—if you have that cocktail or glass of wine too close to bedtime, it could trigger a more intense bout of night sweats and interfere with your sleep. And “getting enough sleep really helps” with menopause symptoms, says Dr. Marin.

Chocolate

By now you might be thinking, Well, this is just a list of all of my favorite foods. We know—and you don’t have to give them up! But like coffee, chocolate contains caffeine, and if you’ve noticed that caffeine triggers your hot flashes, you might want to remember that before you dig into that chocolate bar.¹⁴

The good news is that in terms of caffeine, not all chocolate is created equal. According to the USDA, 70–85% dark chocolate contains 22.7 milligrams of caffeine per ounce; milk chocolate contains 8.8 milligrams per 1.55 ounce, and white chocolate contains no caffeine at all.

The bottom line: As Dr. Jeffers notes, there’s a lack of direct scientific evidence connecting what you eat to menopause symptoms. When considering what to increase and decrease in your diet in terms of managing menopausal symptoms, it’s most important to pay attention to what works—and doesn’t—for you.

And if nothing is helping, it’s probably time to schedule an appointment with your doctor. “For compelling, disruptive, night sweats and hot flashes, lifestyle measures are not going to be helpful,” Dr. Jeffers says. “Avoid triggers? It’s like, yeah, if that were working, I wouldn’t be sitting in front of you right now with my hot flashes, reporting for a menopause consult.”

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