Do you ladies of a certain age get both hot and cold flashes?

For about 5 years, I got hot flashes. This started around when I was 48, I’m 53 now. I was warmish most of the time, and then I would get hot flashes periodically through the day and night. Then about 6 months ago, the hot flashes kind of stopped. Then about 2 months ago, they started up again, but now, I get hot and cold flashes. It’s mostly at night, whereas when I just had the hot flashes, it was at any time of the day or night. So now, when I’m trying to sleep, I will wake up about 2 hours after I’ve gone to bed and then have hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold all night long until my alarm goes off and I get up.

I had insomnia for about 10 years, then about a year ago I started taking Melatonin, and that helped a little bit, in that it would make me sleepy enough to actually go to sleep, but then several hours later I would wake up about every hour on the hour, with a little bit of sleep in between. Now, it seems like I only get about 2 hours of sleep in the beginning and then this hot/cold business starts up and never lets up, so I can’t sleep.

I have a ceiling fan, and in the days when I was just hot all the time, I literally kept that thing running all night long. Now, I’m up and down turning the fan on and off all night long. Pulling the covers up, kicking the covers off. What’s a girl to do?

Do any of you ladies have this problem? If so, what do you do to solve it? I am not a good candidate for HRT because of the stroke risk.