Bikram yoga is the ONLY thing getting me through the menopause: From hot flushes to weight gain, why exercising in 40-degree heat is the only way to tackle 'the change'

• Melissa Kite's hot flushes and insomnia are better since starting the class
• After a month Melissa say she feels better than she has in years
• Bikram yoga has 29 positions and is practices in a 40-degree room

By Melissa Kite for Daily Mail

Published: 18:49 EST, 9 September 2015 | Updated: 20:05 EST, 9 September 2015

Melissa Kite has found that Bikram yoga is relieving the symptoms of her menopause, like hot flushes

Bent double with my forehead to my knees, I blinked away the sweat pouring into my eyes.

As I pushed myself deeper into the yoga posture, I felt panic-stricken. My head swam, my stomach churned and my hands and feet were tingling. When my ears started ringing, I decided enough was enough.

Running out of the room, I collapsed onto a bench in the reception area. 'It's all in your mind!' the receptionist reassured me, as she dashed over to help.

'It's not, I'm fainting,' I explained weakly, as the dark curtains started to fall over my eyes.

'She's having a hypo!' she shouted, and someone came running with a fizzy glucose energy drink. After a few sips, I started to come round.

It was an alarming experience - but just two days later I couldn't wait to return to class for another session of Hot Bikram Yoga. To spend an hour sweating, gasping and wilting in 40-degree heat with 40 per cent humidity, to the point where I was ready to pass out.

Why? Because I've found this extreme exercise to be the best antidote yet to the hot flushes and other unpleasant symptoms of the menopause.

Much has been written about Bikram since it gained popularity in the Seventies in Los Angeles. Founder Bikram Choudhury devised the heated rooms to imitate conditions in which yoga was practised in his native India.

It's favoured by Hollywood celebrities from Gwyneth Paltrow to Jennifer Aniston, and thousands of certified instructors now train people all over the world in the series of 26 postures from one of the more popular branches of yoga, called hatha.

Critics call it a fad, even a cult, while proponents say it helps to detoxify the body, raises the heart rate and helps you lose weight, de-stress and become more flexible. These were the reasons I signed up- but I had no idea I would unearth an unexpected benefit.

I started going through 'the change' a few years ago at the age of 40, suffering hot flushes and crippling insomnia. Despite eating frugally and doing copious amounts of dog-walking and horse-riding, I felt more out of shape than ever. In a desperate bid to get fitter and lose some weight, I looked up a local exercise class.

The only one at a convenient time was Bikram, and the first class was so brutal I thought I'd better keep looking for a gentler form of exercise. Still, as I walked home, I was struck by how perfectly relaxed and happy I felt.

Then, later that evening, I realised it had been hours since I last experienced a hot flush - that horrid, creeping, inner-furnace feeling. I remembered how I'd sweated in the studio, the water literally pouring off me. Surely there had to be a connection.

Proponents of Bikram yoga say it helps to detoxify the body, raises the heart rate and helps you lose weight, de-stress and become more flexible. Melissa didn't expect the added benefit of it helping with her insomnia

That night, I slept like a baby for the first time in years. It could have been a coincidence. But it was enough to persuade me to sign up to a month-long course, for an introductory cost of £35, and to turn up every other day.

I soon felt the effects. During only the second class, I managed to do moves like standing head to knee - balanced on one leg, the other leg stretched out, foot in hand - and eagle pose, in which you balance on one leg and wrap one leg around the other.

Having not practised yoga for years, I was delighted to be able to go deep into the poses so soon, perhaps helped by the heat. By the end of the first week, I was growing in confidence. But the more I did, the more the heat got to me.

During the sixth class, I felt I was going to pass out unless I kept drinking constantly. But I was instructed not to drink except between postures, and, as I swabbed my head with a towel, the teacher told me off. Letting the sweat flow would cool me, she said.

That was all very well, but so much of it was dripping into my eyes my contact lenses were blurred. She kept saying: 'Think positive thoughts! Smile!'

I could have screamed. But I got through it. And that night I slept soundly again. It was during the seventh class that I had to leave the room. But by then I was hooked - and my menopausal symptoms had all but disappeared.

Coincidence or a medical miracle? Although I'm convinced of the latter, it's almost impossible to prove it.

While the possible side-effects of Bikram are widely reported - if not done properly, it can cause heat stroke or injuries from overstretching - no one has ever lauded it as a menopause reliever.

Determined to find out more, and spread the word, I asked the experts - who were sceptical at best. 'I really cannot offer an explanation why exercise in the heat would alleviate hot flushes or insomnia,' says Professor Marie Murphy, of Ulster University, a leading physiologist with a particular interest in exercise and women.

The exercise craze is carried out in rooms heated to 40-degrees with high levels of humidity and has 26 poses

'I think it is more likely that the effect you are experiencing is due to the exercise. Both yoga and aerobic exercise have been shown to reduce vasomotor symptoms (the medical term for hot flushes).'

A review of exercise and the menopause in 2009, published by the University of Birmingham, referred to trials showing that hot flushes in menopausal women were significantly reduced with ordinary yoga, although the authors remained unsure why and called for more research.

Yet I'd tried ordinary yoga and ordinary exercise, like walking and horse-riding until I was physically exhausted. Nothing silenced the awful 2am alarm clock that left me literally weeping with fatigue.

But my research led me to another possible explanation for why I got such relief from Hot Bikram Yoga. In addition to falling oestrogen and progesterone levels, during menopause cortisol levels rise among some women.

Released by the adrenal glands, cortisol is a powerful 'fight or flight response' chemical that acts like adrenaline. An imbalance can wreak havoc on the nervous system, interrupting sleep, causing panic attacks and also making the body store more fat around the middle, in a sort of emergency response. Research by the U.S. government in the Eighties linked cortisol to hot flushes.

Fans of Hot Bikram Yoga point out that several of its postures work on the adrenal glands and can help alleviate the release of cortisol. Carolyn Jikiemi-Roberts, owner of the studio in Balham, South London, where I go, is convinced Hot Bikram helped her avoid the worst of the menopause.

A former personal trainer who has practised every day for 12 years, she says: 'I'm 54 and I am not getting the hot sweats my friends are all getting. I started having menopause symptoms at 50, but they never got that bad. This system works from the inside out. You are squeezing a specific area of the body tightly, then when you release, the blood rushes back into that area and revitalises it.

Both yoga and aerobic exercise have been shown to reduce vasomotor symptoms, known as hot flushes

'With the backward bends, you are squeezing the adrenal glands on top of the kidneys. This kind of yoga is a combination of the massaging of the internal organs plus the stimulation of the endocrine system [the collection of glands that produce hormones].'

It's a plausible-sounding explanation, though not one with scientific backing because research in this area is so sketchy.

As for me, after four weeks of classes, I can complete all the 26 Bikram postures.

The roll of fat around my middle seems to have shrunk, even though a study two years ago by the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse found hot yoga burns no more calories than normal yoga.

Melissa says she feels more toned after a month and has noticed muscle definition in her abs and biceps

I'm also certain I'm more toned. Muscle definition is returning to my abs and biceps. I feel less sluggish and depressed. I am getting only mild hot flushes and have consistent deep sleep.

I have pondered all sorts of possible explanations, including that the heat somehow shocked my inner thermostat into re-setting itself back to normal, but it is pure conjecture.

Until more research is done, all I know with any certainty is that I have practised hot yoga for a month and I feel better than I have done in years.

For that reason, I am going to continue attending classes.

Why it is making me feel so good will remain a topic for debate as heated as the Bikram studio.

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