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| HyperHidrosis | Excessive Sweating |
In medical terms, Hyperhidrosis is defined as that condition
in which a person experiences more sweating (excessive sweating) than usual in
different parts of the body. The parts which are most likely to be affected by
Hyperhidrosis includes armpits, hand-palms, soles of your feet, groin areas.
It’s not necessary that only these body parts can be affected, Hyperhidrosis
can affect your whole body also.
Excessive sweating is not a life-threatening or any harmful for your health but
it can have a huge impact on your daily lifestyle. Some people feel embarrassed
and distressed because of
excessive sweating or Hyperhidrosis. It may also lead to depression and
anxiety.
There is basically no perfect medical definition which may
define the ‘normal’ sweating but there are certain ways to know whether you are
suffering from Hyperhidrosis or not.
The very first indicator is the interference of sweating in your daily life.
For example – Some students who suffer from Hyperhidrosis face too much
sweating in their hands that they find it difficult to write notes without
making the notepad wet. So if you also have such problems because of Hyperhidrosis
then it is highly recommended to see a doctor.
Few more situations when it is very much possible that you are
suffering from Hyperhidrosis:
- If you are not able to do any type of physical contact
(like – shaking hands or greeting hugs) due to the excessive sweating on your
palms or armpit.
- If you can’t participate or perform tasks which
include physical work (such as- exercising, dancing, etc) because you start
sweating more and it causes more discomfort.
- It is becoming difficult for you to do things as
everything slips from your palms due to excessive sweating.
- There are many other situations where it becomes very
difficult to cope up with the things when your hands are sweaty. Due to
Hyperhidrosis people feel embarrassed while going out with their friends &
family because it can also lead to bad odor.
Most people suffering from Hyperhidrosis don’t even know that
they are suffering!!
There are numerous methods to deal with excessive sweating or Hyperhidrosis.
Before moving towards the method the first step is to know the root cause of
Hyperhidrosis and second one is to know the right time to pay your doctor a
visit.
Hyperhidrosis is categorized into two types- Primary
Hyperhidrosis and Secondary Hyperhidrosis.
Primary Hyperhidrosis is basically
caused due to some problems in controlling part of the nervous system which controls
sweating and the reason is unknown.
Hyperhidrosis which has an identifiable cause is termed as Secondary Hyperhidrosis.
They are basically triggered due to pregnancy, menopause, anxiety, infections,
low blood sugar level (hypoglycemia) or an overactive thyroid gland
(hyperthyroidism).
Primary hyperhidrosis
Hyperhidrosis having no obvious cause is generally known as primary
hyperhidrosis.
Since it’s not very much clear to doctors that's why primary hyperhidrosis happens to people, it's believed that this can be the result of a problem related to the nervous system which is known as Sympathetic Nervous System. It’s also possible that the genes inherited by the person might play some role in this.
Sympathetic Nervous System
The Sympathetic Nervous System is responsible for controlling
most of the body’s functions which do not require the involvement of the conscious
mind, for example, movement of food through the food pipe into the stomach and
the urine out of the kidneys into the gallbladder.
What is the role of the Sympathetic Nervous System in Hyperhidrosis?? This nervous
system in the human body acts like a thermostat which sends signals from the brain
to the thousands of sweat glands in the human body to produce sweat whenever
the human body tends to get more heat and the temperature starts increasing. In
this way the human body regulates its temperature by producing sweat and then
the sweat cools on the skin to reduce the temperature of the body.
The body parts such as armpits, hands, feet, and face are most
likely to get affected by hyperhidrosis because we have Eccrine glands present
in these parts. These are the specific type of sweat glands which are thought
to be responsible for hyperhidrosis.
In the primary hyperhidrosis, the human brain sends signals to these Eccrine
glands without any cause i.e. there is no need of cooling down the human body
temperature.
Genes
In some cases the person suffering from hyperhidrosis has his parents and grandparents suffering from the same. In short, we can say that hyperhidrosis is thought to be inherited from the parents to the child.
Secondary hyperhidrosis
When a cause of hyperhidrosis is identified, it is known as
secondary hyperhidrosis.There are a number of causes which triggers the Secondary
Hyperhidrosis. Following are the few of them (most common):
1. Pregnancy
2. Testosterone deficiency
3. Anxiety
4. Hypogonadism
5. Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)
6. Hyperthyroidism
7. Obesity
8. Medications (Antidepressants, Pilocarpine and Bethanechol)
9. Drinking or drugs
10. Parkinson’s disease
11. Disorders of the blood cells or bone marrow
Secondary hyperhidrosis tends to affect the whole human body and these tend
to get triggered more often as compared to primary hyperhidrosis. Hyperhidrosis,
this is a devastating condition that patients present with basically they have
tremendous abnormal sweating and it's not sweating from exercise or because
they're hot it's sweating that's related to anxiety to nervousness.
They'll
have hands that just drip with water underarms, feet. These are the most
common but there are patients that have what's called cranial facial
hyperhidrosis where their entire scalp and face just pours water. Some of these
patients can't even drive because they get in situations where they're stressed
out in the cars and it'll drain so much that they're not able to see and for these patients there are medical options there are
medications that have been tried.
There are Botox injections where they inject
multiple sites of the hands and there are drawings you can see that point out
some of the sites most of these measures are temporary and for patients that
are extremely severe. It's really not enough and so for those patients, they go to
see doctor in the clinic and they perform a surgery there called sympathectomy
it is a minimally invasive procedure and it does require anesthesia.
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