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Hot flashes are the most frequent symptoms of menopause and perimenopause. Hot flashes occur in more than two-thirds of North American women during perimenopause and almost all women with induced menopause or premature menopause, according to the Web Site Webmd.com.

A hot flash, generally accompanied with redness in the face and neck is a momentary sensation of heat which typically lasts from two to thirty minutes for each occurrence. A person also experiences sweating and rapid heartbeat or even chills sometimes, at the time of an occurrence.

A new study suggests that regular and every day practice of calm or paced breathing may ease hot flashes.

For the study by Mayo Clinic, researchers studied 92 women who listened to an instructional CD and practiced paced breathing or rhythmic breathing at a normal rate.

Paced breathing is breathing slow and deep and this technique like other meditative techniques calms down the body's autonomic nervous system. (The autonomic nervous system, which controls functions such as sweating and heart rate, plays a role in hot flashes), Medical Xpress reported.

The participants, for the study, were divided into three groups. While one group took slow breaths (6 per minute) for 15 minutes twice a day, another took slow breaths for 15 minutes once a day, and the third took breaths at what is considered a normal pace (14 per minute) for 10 minutes a day.

While the women continued their breath practice, they also maintained a diary of their hot flashes for 9 weeks.  

It was found that all the participants in the three groups reportedly had decreased number and severity of hot flashes and it seems that the group that found the breathing most effective in the reduction of the hot flashes was the one which practiced paced breathing twice a day.

The study was published online in Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society.