You know the feeling. You wake in the middle of the night to discover the sheets are soaked with your sweat and your pillow is damp and cold from all your tossing and turning. It's a pretty gross experience. Excessive sweating at night can be incredibly frustrating. If you're anything like me, you probably strip down to your underwear and blast your ceiling fan (if you have one) in order to avoid the infamous night sweats. Sometimes that strategy works but a lot of times it's just not enough to prevent the perspiration. If you have air conditioning, that's certainly an alternative but wouldn't it be nice to stay dry and comfortable without the high energy bill?

This article is going to show you the three methods your body uses to stop sweating at night. Understanding these natural defenses will better equip you to stop the sweating once and for all without turning your thermostat down to 68 degrees. Let's get right to it shall we?

First off, you should know that you're in good company. Sweating at night is way more common a problem than you may know. The condition becomes prevalent when your body is unable to cool itself using three conventional methods. When you perspire while sleeping, it's because your body is using sweat as a last ditch effort to cool you in your sleep to avoid overheating.

Prior to that, your body will use any of the three following mechanisms to control the body heat.

Radiation - your body will radiate the heat (kind of like an oven) in order to cool your internal temperature. Your bed absorbs that radiation. So basically, you're lying in bed, surrounded by material and that material is also absorbing your body heat.

Conduction - this is the heat that you feel when you touch the source of radiant heat. This plays two parts in your body's cooling function. Heat is passed from your body to surrounding material using conduction and additionally, cool materials transfer cool temperature to your body to lower the internal temperature. I'm should you're familiar with this whenever you flip your pillow so your head is lying on the cool side. By the way, isn't that the best? ?

Convection - this is where airflow carries the heat off your body and away, leaving you with a cooler temperature. You use this strategy to your advantage whenever you implement your ceiling fan or air conditioning. The biggest problem here is when you have the sheets covering your body. The air has nowhere to go so as your body radiates the heat, the space between the sheets heats up like a hot pocket. Hence, your sweating at night problem...no good!

A lot of people ask:

"Is something wrong with me? Aren't there serious underlying medical conditions that cause sweating at night?"

Don't get all worried here. Just because you're sweating at night, it doesn't necessarily mean there's a serious health risk at play. Most commonly Hyperhidrosis, a condition that causes excessive sweating and Menopause in women are general culprits.

There are other potential causes of night sweating like fever, medications, infection, illness, hormonal changes, neurological problems and even scary stuff like cancer or hypoglycemia. Try not to become a hypochondriac about it though. More than likely, your body is simply overheating.

Regardless of the cause, the following method will cool you down without a doubt, guaranteed. And when I say guaranteed, I mean it. If you implement this technique there is absolutely no way your sweating at night will continue. It's like hitting the "off" switch to your problem, allowing you to get the restful night's sleep you desperately need.

The secret to ending the night sweats once and for all lies in the third strategy, convection...

If you're like me, you either have a ceiling fan blasting down on you or you've got a standing fan blowing against you in the night. Unfortunately, this tactic will only work for so long. After a while, your body heat between the sheets will overwhelm the airflow and the sweat streams will be a-flowing before you know it.

What if you could channel the airflow of your fan between the sheets and create a cool tunnel of refreshing air throughout your bed while you rest in a breezy, blissful slumber?

Sound appealing? Of course it does!

This is your best option if you're looking to stay cool at night.