For the 75% of perimenopausal women who experience the distress and discomfort of hot flushes and night sweats the Chillow, sold at embracethechange.com, provides an answer.
Women who talk about their experience of menopause don’t usually confess to having enjoyed it. More likely, they are only too ready to share the untold indignities it visits on the female body. Weight gain, fatigue, fuzzy memory, depression, sleeplessness and – worst of all – night sweats and hot flushes.
Persistent waves of flushing and profuse perspiration tend to make life a total misery. Just ask any woman who is going through her menopause years. Don’t, however, say ‘It’s your age, dear’ or you are likely to be on the receiving end of a swiftly applied punch in the eye. Irritability and mood swings are another feature of The Change.
No respecter of the need to work or sleep, hot flushes strike at any time of the day or night. Some very unlucky women get them as often as once an hour; others, a mere couple of times a week. The flush lasts between a few seconds and 10 minutes (the average is around four minutes) and can continue for up to five years.
Real relief from the symptoms is very hard to find. Hormone replacement therapy usually stops them, but once HRT ceases, menopause symptoms start again where they left off. Many women do not wish to embark on HRT and for them herbal remedies may be helpful in alleviating the worst of the flushing and sweating, including black cohosh, sage and dong quai.
But when you are lying in bed, dripping with perspiration, wrestling with damp night clothes and sheets, disturbing your partner every time you throw off the duvet to find some relief, herbal remedies are far from your mind. What you want is something that will immediately cool your burning face, take away the fierce heat that is consuming your body and bring your temperature back to normal.
This is where the Chillow excels.
Chillow is exactly what is sounds like – a chilled pillow. It is a thin, cushioned pad that lies on top of a normal pillow or inside the pillowcase. It is designed to take heat away from the body and keep you cool throughout the night.
Inside the medical grade, hypoallergenic, non-toxic covering is a highly absorbent pad which is moistened with exactly four pints of ordinary tap water and sealed. The Chillow works very simply on the principle that water conducts heat away from the body 25 times faster than air. (Just think of how cold you feel as soon as you climb into a swimming pool.) The water cools the pad to between 10 and 20°C below body temperature. When you lay your head on the pad, heat conducts away from the body into the Chillow and then back out into the air, similar to the way a radiator works in a car.
Chillow needs no pre-cooling – it returns to room temperature during the day. It is always ready to use, dry, soft and cool.
By helping your body lose heat, the Chillow induces sleep naturally – no pills or potions, just a non-invasive pad that works in harmony with your body’s natural rhythms. Chillow is soothing, soft and tactile – an environmentally sound ‘alternative’ sleep therapy that brings instant relief, just when you need it most.