How To Deal With Excessive Sweating

Sweating is an important way for the body to lose heat by evaporation and to control temperature. Our skin in covered with sweat glands—there may be 50,000 in the armpits alone. The other areas where we have the highest concentrations of sweat glands are the palms, soles and forehead.

About 3% of people have excessive sweating, described by Dermatologists as hyperhidrosis, and for these people hot summer weather can be particularly embarrassing, causing marking of clothing and sweat beads to form that may be visible to other people or causing wetness of the palms that can make handshaking or physical contact distressing.

Strong antiperspirants containing 20% aluminium hexahydrate can be obtained from pharmacists. These should be applied at night to clean, dry skin. Iontophoresis treatments, use a low level electrical current to bathe the skin in a small hand bath and can be used to switch off hand and foot sweating. Botox injections are very effective for armpit and forehead sweating and can also be used to the hands. Finally, for people who have sweating affecting the whole body, tablet treatments may help. Lots of help is available and Dermatologists can guide you through treatment.