CBD and hot flushes: no trial published to date

The menopause comes between 45 and 55, at 51 on average in France. Inserm, the French national health research institute, reports that hot flushes affect between a third and a half of women. They ease with time, though a quarter of women still have them ten years on.

Their mechanism is clearer now. A 2023 review describes how hypothalamic neurons called KNDy send their signals to the temperature-regulating centre. As oestrogen falls, these neurons grow more active, and their messenger, neurokinin B, sets off the episodes of heat. That discovery led to a new medicine, covered further down.

Nothing has been published in women. The international trials registry lists a Czech placebo-controlled trial in 50 women, who used 100 mg CBD vaginal suppositories for 30 days; it ended in February 2024 with no published results. An American trial in 104 women, completed in October 2025, mostly measured mood and anxiety, and its results have not been published either.

The one study aimed at this symptom was carried out in rats. Published in April 2026, it gave 10 mg of CBD per kilo per day to female rats whose ovaries had been removed, a model of oestrogen deficiency. In these animals, CBD prevented the rise in tail temperature seen in untreated rats. A result in animals cannot be carried over to women, either for the dose or for the effect.

Another lead often appears online: the TRPV1 receptor, involved in sensing heat. In 2014, an Italian team showed that CBD activates and then desensitises this receptor in cultured cells. That study concerned epilepsy and did not measure body temperature, so it tells us nothing about the menopause.

Two surveys asked perimenopausal or postmenopausal women about their use. In the United States, 258 women answered a Harvard team in 2022; in Canada, 1,485 women in Alberta in 2023 took part, 499 of whom were using cannabis at the time. Both surveys covered cannabis in every form, with or without THC, and did not look at CBD alone.

Sleep is cited first, by 67.4% and 65% of users, followed by mood and anxiety. Hot flushes come later, at 13.0% in the American survey and 4.8% in the Canadian one. In Canada, 74% of users found cannabis helpful, but a self-reported impression with no comparison group cannot measure an effect. The Canadian authors themselves conclude that safety and efficacy have yet to be assessed.

In 2023, the North American Menopause Society reviewed the non-hormonal options for hot flushes. For lack of sufficient evidence, it placed cannabinoids among the "not recommended" options, along with yoga, acupuncture and soy extracts.

In France, the HAS, the national health authority, considers menopausal hormone therapy useful when symptoms impair quality of life. It is then given at the lowest dose and for the shortest time, with a review at least once a year. A non-hormonal medicine, fezolinetant, has held an EU authorisation since 7 December 2023; it blocks the action of neurokinin B. Since late 2024, the European Medicines Agency has required liver checks before and during this treatment. These choices are made together with a doctor.

If you are considering CBD at this stage, two limits apply. The first is about medicines: CBD passes through the same liver enzymes as many treatments, and the article on the grapefruit effect details the interactions. The second is about the dose. In February 2026, EFSA published a provisional level of about 2 mg of CBD a day for an adult of 70 kg, a level that does not cover people on medication.

Talk to your doctor or pharmacist if you take hormone therapy, an antidepressant or an anticoagulant. Our article on the daily CBD dose explains how EFSA calculated its level, and the one on CBD in older people covers the precautions linked to age.

Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 prohibits any unauthorised health claim on a food. Under French law, presenting a product as acting on a disease or its symptoms also turns it into a medicine by presentation. Whatever its form, a seller therefore cannot present a CBD product as a way to reduce hot flushes or menopausal complaints.

A website that does so should be read as a warning sign about the seller. Our review of clinical studies on CBD shows what has been demonstrated, and at which doses.