Dr Joseph Kamugisha Excessive sweating is scientifically termed as hyperhidrosis. A few years ago I had a friend who moved around with the sweat that literally dripped off her hands. He told me that even his father and grandfather had problems with excessive sweat under armpits and palms. He thought it was a genetic problem, and that her hands sweated almost all of the time. I have also seen some senior people around who consult for this challenge. Some executives who suffer excessive sweats can change dressings or clothes many times a day, wash-up hands, wipe their hands and dodge circumstances where they might be engaged to shake hands with guests or colleagues. Excessive sweat becomes a social concern, for example, if you dodge to shake hands with a friend or relative, you might lose him or sometimes can be forced to look for jobs that does not call or require to meet and shake hands with people. We all know that social limitations create anxiety and can be so bad that it can lead to depression. Such anxietydisorders dramatically decrease quality of life. The human body contains many sweat glands estimated at two or four million sweat glands located in the skin surface. The most highly concentrated areas of sweat glands are found in the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, your armpits, your groin, and your face. Sweating is usually a normal physiological mechanism that helps you to cool off the body. When the body temperature rises, sweat comes out of the body pores, which allows heat to escape from the body to evaporate into the air. Without the ability to sweat, the body can easily suffer from serious health challenges from not being able to regulate the body temperature. Sweating is one of the best ways to eliminate metabolic toxins and this is why sports exercise induces sweats through improved body activity. Excessive sweating in the absence of a high body temperature can certainly be caused by stress or emotional anxiety. It can also be caused by imbalances in your hormonal and nervous systems. But conventional medical view on hyperhidrosis holds that there is no known cause or cure. Some health experts recommend you go for some medications like anti-perspirant such as drysol, which is an alcohol solution that contains aluminum. The problem with this medication is the strong link between aluminum exposure and Alzheimer’s disease. In some advanced health settings, health experts can perform surgery to cut the nerves that supply your body sweat glands. This aims to cut off the signal to sweat from the brain system and then you will have not sweats. The problem with this approach is that the nerves that control your sweat glands also control a variety of other mechanisms in your body, the most important of which is your ability to control the size of your blood vessels. Your hands and armpits might stop sweating after this procedure, but the negative side effects are too numerous and serious to quantify. Apart from emotional anxiety and stress, the biggest cause of hyperhidrosis is over activity of your nervous system. Specifically, over activity of a specific component of your nervous system known as the sympathetic nervous system. Your sympathetic nervous system is in place to give you the capacity to deal with high-stress situations. This is also the reason why when faced with a fearful situation, you tend to sweat faster. When the sympathetic nervous system is highly active, it sends most of your blood to your heart, lungs, and large muscles so that you can have the strength and endurance to fight or run. It increases the size of your pupils so that you can take more light in through your eyes, an essential advantage if you are trying to run away from a grizzly bear. It also senses the increase in body temperature that comes with fight and flight situations, and sends a signal to your sweat glands to produce sweat to cool you down. With hyperhidrosis, your sympathetic nervous system can be over active even when you are physically at rest. A significant and overlooked cause for this over activity is eating foods that your body cannot tolerate. For example, if your body cannot tolerate dairy products, whenever you eat some, your immune system must work hard to protect your tissues from the harmful effects of whichever components of dairy your body does not tolerate. If your immune system is constantly at work to deal with such food intolerances, your sympathetic nervous system detects this as stress, and activates the mechanisms in place to help you during stressful situations through the production of sweat. Dr Joseph Kamugisha is a resident oncologist at Jerusalem Hospital, Israel
