Sweat. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
Don’t sweat it. Bad advice if taken literally. Sweat plays an important role in preventing hyperthermia, when the body overheats. Hyperthermia can be fatal as internal organs over heat and eventually fail. The beads of salty water we call sweat evaporate from the skin surface and cool it down – for comfort in mild heat and to prevent hyperthermia in extreme heat. We have 2 to 4 million sweat glands distributed around our bodies and they are capable of secreting up to 14 quarts of sweat each day.
This system, like all bodily functions, can go awry and the result is a disease called hyperhidrosis. Sufferers produce an excess of sweat; more when it’s hot but even in normal temperatures. The most typical locations, alone or in combination, are the palms and the axilla (armpit), but occasionally the face and soles of the feet. This condition can be just a nuisance or severe enough to require multiple clothing changes a day and interfere with handling tools, electronic equipment, and musical instruments. In addition there can be an emotional impact for younger patients whose hands are always literally dripping wet.
Treatment includes antiperspirants, repetitive Botox injections and something called iontophoresis which is to pass a mild electric current through water in which the patient has submerged the affected bodily part. When these are insufficient or the patient prefers, the surgical treatment is to use minimally invasive surgical techniques to remove or ablate the sympathetic nerves that connect the brain to the sweat glands, depriving them of the excess stimulation that causes them to go into overdrive. There are surgical challenges, particularly how much of the nerves to treat, and some patients develop the complication of excess sweating in other parts of the body. This is called compensatory sweating. But most patients are greatly improved and happier with their postoperative situation.
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