On an overnight flight from Chicago to London, somewhere after the meal service, the crew turned the cabin heat up. To help everyone sleep, I assume. It worked on them. Within the hour the whole cabin had gone quiet.
I was wide awake and burning, with nowhere to go and four hours left to fly.
There was a small fan in my seat pocket and it is the only reason those four hours were survivable.
Before we landed, the woman next to me leaned over and asked where I got it.
Nobody hands you the manual
I was forty-three.
Nobody around me talked about perimenopause and I had never read a word about it, so for a while I had no idea what was happening to me. It arrived early and it arrived fast, and I’ll be honest with you, it frightened me.
What I remember most about that stretch isn’t the symptoms though. It’s the feeling that a manual had gone out to every other woman and mine never showed up.
Then I got the medical side figured out and walked straight into a second problem nobody had warned me about either.
Travel had turned into something I suddenly had to think about.
What changes
A hot flash will find you in the passport line, or at hour six with the seatbelt sign on, or at 2am under a hotel duvet you have no way of making any lighter.
Brain fog shows up on the day you’ve got three connections to make. And if your cycle has stopped being predictable, it picks its own moment too, which at home is an annoyance and on a tour bus with no easy stop is a completely different thing.
Most of it is manageable, and when it comes to traveling with menopause, every little bit helps.
I gave away a cardigan I loved
I had a thick merino cardigan I’d traveled with everywhere for years. Perfect weight, looked good, went with everything.
I finally donated it, because I couldn’t wear it for twenty minutes without overheating.
If something you love has become unwearable, that isn’t in your head. The rules changed on you and you have to adjust.
Why the plane is the worst of it
The flight used to be the part I never gave a second thought to. Overnight, long haul, a short hop with a connection, it was all fine.
Then, when perimenopause started I noticed what a cabin actually is.
The air is dry and recirculated, somebody else decides the temperature, and you’re in a seat you can’t get out of without climbing over two people. When menopause symptoms strike on a plane, you’re handling it with whatever you happened to bring on board.
That sounds like bad news. But it’s actually useful, because it means there are things about the flight you can control.
Here are the three that made the biggest difference for me the fastest.
Book the aisle
Window seats feel cozy right up until a hot flash arrives and you’re wedged between two sleeping strangers and the aisle with no easy way out.
I switched to aisle seats years ago and I’ve never gone back. You can stand up when you need to, go stand in the galley for a minute, run cold water over your wrists in the bathroom, and be back in your seat without disturbing anybody.
Two minutes at booking. Do this one first.
Carry a fan where you can reach it in five seconds
Not the overhead bin. The bag under the seat in front of you, or the seat pocket.
I carry two. A handheld folding fan that flips open the second I need it, and a small USB fan that runs on its own once I’ve set it up. Which one I go for depends on how bad it is and whether I’m trying to sleep.
Here’s the thing I took far too long to figure out: moving air helps. Warm air that’s moving beats still air every time. At two in the morning that difference is my whole night.
I keep both of mine in the same bag as the rest of my flight things. If you want to see what else is in there, it’s all on my flight comfort kit page, including the ones I reach for when a plane is too cold rather than too warm.
Ask the galley for ice
Cold on the inside of your wrists and the back of your neck is the best thing you’ve got at 35,000 feet.
Flight attendants will hand you ice, or a cup of cold water, and they won’t ask you why you want it. They do this all night, every night. It isn’t a strange thing to ask for.
The one I can’t fix in an article
The single biggest change I made while learning to travel during menopause was the bedroom.
I found that out in Paris, in a hotel that upgraded me to something beautiful and then cost me a night I still think about. What I did the next morning, and the questions I’ve asked before booking anywhere since, take a lot longer to explain than a fan does.
They’re also not really tips.
It’s research you do weeks ahead, before you’ve paid for anything, and that turns out to be true of most of what actually works for this. The three things above cost you two minutes and a couple items in your bag. Almost everything else gets decided at your kitchen table, long before you go anywhere near an airport.
So I’m writing the rest of it down.
Frequently asked questions
Do hot flashes really get worse on a plane? The cabin doesn’t cause them. What it does is take away almost everything you’d normally reach for. You can’t open a window, you can’t turn anything down, and you can’t step outside for two minutes. That’s why one that would barely register at home can be genuinely miserable at hour seven.
What’s the single most useful thing to pack? A fan you can reach in five seconds. It sounds too simple to be the answer and it’s the thing I reach for most.
Which seat should I book if I run hot? An aisle, every time. Not for the legroom, for the exit. Being able to get up and walk to the galley without climbing over two sleeping people is worth more than anything else on the seat map when you’re in the middle of one.
Is there anything I can do once one has already started? Fan out, cold water on the inside of your wrists and the back of your neck, and take a layer off without making a production of it. Then stop fighting it. Most of them peak and pass in a few minutes, which is a much longer few minutes in a seat than it is on paper.
What if my period turns up mid-flight? Keep supplies in the bag that goes under the seat in front of you. Every flight, whether you’re expecting it or not. A few airlines stock the bathrooms and most don’t, some terminals have a machine and plenty don’t, so bringing your own is the only version of this you can count on. It takes up almost no room.
Is any of this a reason to fly less? No. It’s a reason to set the flight up differently, which takes two minutes at booking and one small thing in your bag. And if jet lag is the part that wipes you out, that’s a separate problem with separate answers, and I’ve written those up in my free guide How We Avoid Jet Lag.
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