Hot flashes - those miserable feelings you get when you go through menopause. That sudden, intense hot feeling on your face and upper body. That feeling of suffocation.

We've tried to battle the awful feelings with just about everything, including black cohosh. But the popular dietary supplement flops at helping us relieve hot flashes, a new study suggests.

"Whether or not the black cohosh findings are bad news for women depends on how you look at it," said Katherine Newton, assocate research director at Seattle's Group Health Center for Health Studies, who led a study into the supplement's effectiveness. "It's disappointing that we didn't find black cohosh to be an effective remedy.

Widely used herb remedy

Black cohosh, a perennial herb member of the buttercup family, is the most widely used herbal remedy for hot flashes.

National Foods Merchandiser reported that black cohosh sales rose 26 percent from 2002-2003 to $15.7 million after a study showed hormone therapy raised women's risk for heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer, blood clots and other conditions. Remifemin remains the top single-ingredient black cohosh product.

Eighty percent of women experience hot flashes around the time of menopause, which typically happens when they're between 45 and 55. The average age of menopause is 51.

To test cohosh's effectiveness, Newton and her team in the federally funded project followed 351 women 45 to 55 for a year. The participates suffered episodes of hot flashes or night sweats at least two times a day, but averaged about six.

Women were given one of the following therapies:

•  160 milligrams a day of black cohosh;

•  200 milligrams of black cohosh with alfalfa, licorice, oats, pomegranate, Siberian ginseng and other alternative ingredients;

•  The same supplement plus increased soy consumption;

•  Hormone therapy with estrogen or without progesterone.

Other tips for relieving hot flashes 

According to the results, women taking only black cohosh or with the other alternative ingredients cut their hot flashes only a half an episode per day, compared to four episodes a day for women taking hormone therapy.

Newton said one possibility for the fact that cohosh failed is the symptoms would subside over time with or without treatment.

According to Newton, you also can bring about relief from hot flashes by:

•  dressing in layers;

•  drinking ice water if they are getting warm;

•  avoiding alcohol and other triggers;

•  carrying a fan;

•  sleeping in a cool room.

For more information

•  Q&As About Black Cohosh and the Symptoms of Menopause

•  National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine

•  U.S. National Library of Medicine

Source: Medical News Today
Reference: Annals of Internal Medicine

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