Excessive sweating: how to treat
Excessive sweating causes many inconveniences: an unpleasant smell and wet clothes not only spoil your mood, but can also indicate serious health problems.
Did you know that there are about 2 million sweat glands in humans? At the same time, there are about 430 of them on one square centimeter of the palm or sole, and from 64 to 200 in other areas. It is estimated that the maximum loss of sweat is 3,5-4 liters per hour and can reach 14 liters per day (!).
If sweating occurs only in extreme heat and during sports, then this is a natural reaction of the body. But profuse sweating, regardless of the time of year and physical activity, already indicates that a person suffers from hyperhidrosis – an increased function of the sweat glands. In addition to thermoregulation, experts distinguish psychogenic and food sweating. The first occurs due to emotional stress (palms, fingers, soles sweat a lot); the second is associated with the intake of liquid or spicy food (forehead and upper lip sweat).
Primary hyperhidrosis occurs paroxysmal. In most cases, it affects young men aged 15-30 years. Sometimes it goes away spontaneously, but sometimes it develops into a chronic disease, which is much more difficult to cure. With primary hyperhidrosis, there are accompanying symptoms, for example, sleep disturbance, anxiety, and decreased libido.
The more pronounced hyperhidrosis, the more it causes inconvenience. Sometimes a person is so worried about this that he begins to isolate himself from society, worrying that it may be unpleasant for colleagues to shake his hand and that others around him feel a specific smell.
“Excessive sweating of hands and feet, which is common to many, – acrohidrosis – is one of the symptoms of neurotic disorders, alcoholism, polyneuropathy,” says Irina Presnyakova, endocrinologist at Ophelia Clinic. – Sweating is normal if the blood vessels, skin, endocrine glands are healthy. So if you haven’t been examined for a long time and you are tormented by this problem, do not delay your visit to the doctor. “
Overweight people suffer from hyperhidrosis, with infectious diseases (tuberculosis and even AIDS), patients with diabetes mellitus, thrombophlebitis (sweat appears along the veins), with impaired renal function, Cassirer’s syndrome (cyanosis and numbness of the fingers in cold weather). The cardiovascular system cannot be ignored, as some diseases also cause hyperhidrosis. Facial sweating occurs with red granulosis of the nose. Nocturnal hyperhidrosis can be a sign of a blue spongy nevus.
In addition, a number of hereditary diseases are known, including those leading to increased sweating. For example, Lucy Frey syndrome. Sweat appears on the temples and behind the ears when a person chews on hard or sour food. The disease develops after suffering from mumps or injury.
How to deal with sweating
First of all, treat the underlying disease as the cause of an unpleasant situation. If all is well with your health, ask your doctor to prescribe sedatives for you – take the course and observe yourself.
Review your diet. It is better to exclude fatty, salty and too spicy, as well as hot foods. Onions and garlic should also be discarded: they add an unpleasant odor to sweat. Fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, neutralize the problem.
Change underwear daily, bedding twice a week. Shower as often as possible and use aluminum chloride antiperspirants rather than regular deodorants or talcum powder. But do not overdo it in the heat, otherwise swelling may form.
Give preference to clothes and underwear made from natural fabrics, put antibacterial insoles in your shoes.
In the fight against sweating, a decoction of oak bark, soda, alum, iodine solution (2, 5 or 10%) – topically will also help.
If these methods do not help, then you may have to resort to surgical intervention. One of the solutions is curettage. This is a subcutaneous scraping of the sweat glands, it is carried out under local anesthesia, but the effect after such a procedure is short-lived – after a couple of months, when the glands germinate again, sweating may return.
Sympathectomy, on the other hand, will allow you to stay dry for life, since during this operation the nerve that is responsible for sweating is completely removed.
Liposuction will also help – if you remove the subcutaneous fat, and with it destroy the nerve endings, then sweating will not return soon. The plus is that such an effect is performed using ultrasound, and not surgery.
Another method is botulinum toxin, which blocks the nerve impulse and prevents the glands from secreting sweat. The effect of such a procedure will last for six months.
Yana Lyubaeva, Ekaterina Rizhskaya