What Causes Night Sweats?

Night sweats is a condition where you experience excessive sweating at night. Surprisingly, a lot of people complain having night sweats. But in reality, they actually do not have the condition. They usually mistake night sweats to normal perspirations at night. When you sleep with overlapping blankets, thick sleepwear or your room is strangely hot, it is just natural to perspire. This distinguishing factor of night sweats, as said earlier, have something to do with excessive sweating, which means severe hot flushes that could possibly make your pajamas and bed sheet soak with perspiration. It does not concern the hot surroundings. There are several reasons why one experience night sweats. To determine the primary medical condition of it, the doctor must carefully diagnose the patient by asking for his or her medical history and through a series of tests.

1. Night sweats could be a sign that you have infection. The usual sickness related to this symptom is tuberculosis. Although other bacterial infections could also cause night sweats, such as HIV, osteomvelitis (bone inflammation), endocarditis (heart valves inflammation), and abscesses in the appendix, tonsils, etc.
2. Women going through menopause also experience hot flushes and perspirations at night.
3. One of the initial signs of some cancers, like lymphoma, is night sweats. It can also be accompanied by other symptoms such as fever and weight loss.
4. Various medications can cause sweats at night. Drugs that pose night sweats as a side effect are antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs, acetaminophen, aspirin, prednisone, cortisone, and many more. There are also a number of medicines that causes redness particularly on the neck and cheeks which are often mistaken as night sweats. Some of them are tamoxifen, nitroglycerine, Viagra, niacin, and hydralazine.
5. Carcinoid syndrome, hyperthyroidism, and pheochromocytoma are some hormone disorders that could possibly cause hot flushes or severe sweating at night.
6. Another reason of night sweats is idiopathic hyperhidrosis. In this condition, the body secretes excessive sweats even without medical sickness.
7. Neurological illnesses can possibly play a role in having night sweats, although this happens rarely. Some of these conditions are stroke, post-traumatic syringomvelia, autonomic neuropathy, and autonomic dysreflexia.
8. Low levels of glucose in the blood, also known as hypoglycemia, pose night sweats as one of its symptoms. Hypoglycemia usually occurs to those who are diabetic since taking insulin or other medications for diabetes causes glucose level in the blood to fall.