Excessive Sweating (Hyperhidrosis)


Many peo­ple have a very com­mon med­ical con­di­tion called hyper­hidro­sis, or exces­sive sweat­ing. Severe under­arm sweat­ing involves over­ac­tive sweat glands that nor­mal­ly reg­u­late body tem­per­a­ture. In pri­ma­ry axil­lary hyper­hidro­sis, the sweat­ing exceeds what the body needs for cooling.

For those affect­ed with this con­di­tion, it can have dev­as­tat­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al effects as the indi­vid­ual tries to mod­i­fy their lifestyle to cope. Clothes are changed fre­quent­ly, cer­tain fab­rics and fab­ric col­ors are avoid­ed, and new cloth­ing must be pur­chased more often. Wardrobe choic­es are lim­it­ed as some fab­rics and col­ors reveal the con­di­tion as opposed to hid­ing it. It can be dis­abling in one’s pro­fes­sion­al and social life, and may lead to con­stant embarrassment. 

Pre­scrip­tion antiper­spi­rants such as Drysol are some­times effec­tive; how­ev­er, they may also cause severe skin irri­ta­tion. Drysol is applied to the affect­ed area at night and left on for 6 hours while the patient sleeps. It is then washed off in the morn­ing. Ini­tial suc­cess rates are usu­al­ly good but less sat­is­fac­to­ry in the long-term.

Botox is a med­ica­tion that works well for hyper­hidro­sis. It tem­porar­i­ly blocks the sig­nal that stim­u­lates sweat pro­duc­tion. A decrease in sweat­ing is not­ed after the injec­tions. The injec­tions may typ­i­cal­ly need to be repeat­ed approx­i­mate­ly every 6 months. 

For a more per­ma­nent solu­tion, there is a pro­ce­dure called miraDry® which uses clin­i­cal­ly proven tech­nol­o­gy to non-inva­sive­ly elim­i­nate sweat glands in the under­arm. Since the glands don’t regen­er­ate, results are imme­di­ate and last­ing. Learn more about miraDry®.

Don’t hide or become depen­dent on cer­tain fab­rics and col­ors to con­ceal your exces­sive sweat­ing. Talk to a der­ma­tol­o­gist today, and take back control >