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• Posted February 3, 2026

Insulin Levels Linked To Hot Flashes, Night Sweats In Menopause

Middle-aged women with elevated insulin levels might be in for a tougher menopause experience, a new study says.

Women with higher insulin levels at age 47 are more likely to develop menopause symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats at a younger age, researchers recently reported in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

These symptoms also tend to last longer among women with higher insulin levels, researchers said.

“These findings help us to fill some of the gaps in our understanding of menopause symptoms and why their severity varies for different women,” lead researcher Faria Athar said in a news release. She did the study as a doctoral student at the University of Victoria in Canada.

About 75% of women in menopause have hot flashes, night sweats and cold sweats, which are collectively known as vasomotor symptoms, researchers said in background notes.

These symptoms can appear two years before a woman’s final menstrual period and last for as long as 10 years beyond it, researchers said.

However, these symptoms don’t affect all women equally, and researchers wondered if a woman’s insulin levels might be a factor.

For example, women with higher body fat percentages tend to have worse vasomotor symptoms, researchers said, as do women with insulin resistance.

In addition, worse vasomotor symptoms have been linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers said.

“There’s been a growing awareness of the interplay between metabolic health and reproductive health,” said senior researcher Nicole Templeman, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Victoria.

“Given that insulin may be elevated in the early stages of metabolic disorders, we decided to investigate whether insulin levels prior to menopause might inform the incidence and severity of menopause symptoms,” she said in a news release.

For the new study, researchers followed more than 700 women participating in a U.S. study of women’s health. The women entered the study when they were between 42 and 52 years of age, and were followed for 10 years.

Both insulin levels and body mass index (BMI)  — an estimate of body fat based on height and weight — at age 47 predicted how young a woman would develop menopause symptoms and how long those symptoms would last.

This means women might be able to forestall or reduce their menopause symptoms by lowering their insulin levels through diet and exercise, researchers said.

“Insulin levels may be more sensitive than body weight to lifestyle interventions like exercise and a healthy diet,” researchers wrote. “Aerobic and resistance exercise can lower insulin levels and improve insulin sensitivity independent of body composition and weight loss.”

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on menopause.

SOURCES: University of Victoria, news release, Jan. 26, 2026; The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Jan. 3, 2026