CAN THE OOLER HELP NIGHT SWEATS IN PERIMENOPAUSE?

One of peri’s many insidious annoyances is the onset of dysregulated body heat. As you approach 40, you start to feel like your internal thermostat is malfunctioning.

Initially, you might feel like you're just a little bit warmer than everyone else, or sometimes you have this weirdly imbalanced body temp like simultaneously freezing feet and a warm face. And then there are The Dreaded Night Sweats.

Cold feet are annoying, but you can put on socks. NBD. A slightly raised body temperature? Just open a window or adjust the AC. Night sweats? A Big Fucking Deal.

Hormones can cause extreme temperature fluctuations throughout the night, causing you to wake up sometimes multiple times a night, completely drenched in sweat. Not only has your blissful slumber been interrupted, but you must then get out of bed, change the bedding, change your nightwear, and then try to get back to sleep, which is no easy feat at the best of times. Livid.

Vasomotor symptoms, as they are known in the biz, aren’t just kind of annoying to you — the warm one — they’re annoying to everyone else as well. You may want to keep the AC on all night, but a bed partner may not. You may need the living room window open in the depths of winter; your roommate may not. You get the picture.

We were aware of heated blankets and the like before, but we had never even heard of a cooling option until a friend started singing the praises of the ChiliSleep Ooler. A cooling pad for your bed, it goes on top of the mattress, under the fitted sheet, and can keep you cool all night long. The Ooler is heaven sent for night sweats in perimenopause. The pad is filled with tiny tubes and connected to a unit that circulates cold water throughout, so unlike a heated blanket, you’re not sleeping on electric wires. The power box connected to the pad is low profile and the LED light dims after use, so if you’re trying to cut back on blue light, it won’t disturb you.

The Ooler is extra-perfect for hormonal body temp fluctuations since it can go as low as 55°F and can be programmed to change temperature throughout the night. You might want to be cozy and warm when you get into bed to read a book, but then cool down when you’re asleep. You can set it to cool throughout the night, so you won’t be awoken by hideous night sweats or a spike in body temp. You can even program it to warm up in the morning, as a kind of natural alarm clock.

What’s even cooler (pun intended) about it is that it has half-bed and entire bed options and if you do choose a pad that covers the whole bed, you can program both sides separately. What a dream! Second pun intended!

If for some bonkers reason, this doesn’t sound like absolute bliss to you, the company also sells a weighted blanket that cools you. And if, like us, you love the cool side of the pillow, there’s a memory foam ChiliPillow. It doesn’t connect to anything; it just has ventilation so the cool air can pass through. We’d just love to know why they didn’t call it the Chillow.

The prices start at around $800, so it’s not the cheapest thing in the world, but sleep is one of the pillars of health and if you’re not getting good sleep, everything else in life suffers. Worth every cent, if you can swing it.

The Chilipad, cooling weighted blankets, and ChiliPillow are available here.