Excessive Sweating

What is Excessive Sweating?
Hyperhidrosis, or excessive sweating, is a serious medical condition that affects millions of people around the world - approximately three per cent of the population.

When your body heats up - from weather, exercise or stress- your brain sends the message that your system is overheating. The message travels to nerves that lead to the more than 2 million sweat glands that lie under your skin. And that's when they send moisture through the sweat ducts to your skin's surface.

In some people, the body's mechanism for cooling itself is overactive - so overactive that they may sweat four or five times more than is necessary, or normal. When sweating is this extreme it can be embarrassing, uncomfortable, anxiety-inducing, and disabling. It can ruin relationships, affect career choices and damage your self-esteem.

How do you treat Excessive Sweating?
Traditionally, people would apply perfume or products to disguise the problem but this is a superficial treatment that doesn't affect the production of sweat.

The surgical solution was to make an incision under the arm, lift the skin and then damage or destroy the glands. The problems with this procedure are that it obviously leaves a large scar and there is a long recovery time. Also this is a very sensitive area with a strong nerve supply so you can risk doing unnecessary damage. The sweat glands are so small that it is hard just to tackle them and not damage other important tissue or muscles.

Botox is a more well known treatment for hyperhidrosis. A starch test is performed to locate the sweat glands and then small amounts of Botox are injected into approximately 12 to 15 places under each arm. The poison blocks the action of the nerves in the sweat glands - sweat slowly returns as nerve endings grow back in six to 12 weeks and a new treatment is usually required after seven months. This is the main disadvantage of Botox; it is only a temporary solution so can be expensive if you're having regular top ups.

The focus then turned to various other non-surgical procedures to see if one of them was suitable for dealing with hyperhidrosis in a permanent way.

Solutions for Excessive Sweating
Radiofrequency was explored but this didn't work well for a very simple reason. Radiofrequency works by applying heat to the surface of the skin, so you risk damaging or scarring the surface of the skin before you even reach the glands. You're also working blind and have to go through vascular and fat tissue before reaching your target so you risk overheating this tissue on the way through.

This is where laser came into the spotlight. SmartLipo's main function is for body contouring because it damages the fat cells but what sets it aside from other treatments and why it is so good at removing superficial, vascular fat is that it also cauterises the blood vessels at the same time. And it is this function that we bring to use in the dealing with hyperhidrosis.

How SmartLipo works
The glands in the armpit that produce sweat are all dependent on a blood supply. The SmartLipo cuts the supply of blood to the glands and, like any tissue, it dies.

The procedure is very simple. We make a small 1mm incision, which you will not see after the procedure, and through this incision we insert the local anaesthetic. I use a small spinal needle which is very precise and delicate so the patient doesn't feel the injection. We use extremely diluted local anaesthetic as you don't want to numb the area too much, otherwise the patient will feel that numbness in their hands.

Then we insert the laser through the same incision under the skin and laser the sweat glands. The structure under the arms is skin, a layer of fat, the sweat glands, another layer of fat, then muscle. The only downside to this procedure is that you may laser some fat cells which is not a bad thing in itself. Then I use very gentle suction to suck out the local anaesthetic, the damaged gland and any little bit of fat.

The results
We have had great permanent results with this procedure. I have been offering it for over two years and patients see a significant improvement in their condition. Some of my earlier patients had a reoccurrence of the problem but at a much lesser level than before - this was because at the beginning I was more conservative as this was such a new procedure. Over time I have gained in experience and I know how much local anaesthetic and laser energy to apply.

So, if excessive sweating is ruining your life then there is a way to deal with the problem, permanently.
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