Underarm hyperhidrosis or excessive sweating

Underarm hyperhidrosis or excessive sweating is the excessive production of sweat by the sweat glands.

Most localised hyperhidrosis is found in the underarms, but excess sweating can also occur on the hands and feet without any identifiable cause.

Symptoms

These conditions often affect several members of the same family and usually start at puberty.

This complaint is more common in men.

The factors that can aggravate symptoms are primarily stress and feeling anxious about sweating.

The sufferer often enters into a vicious circle because their sweating becomes embarrassing and a source of stress, which then exacerbates it.

Consequences

The repercussions of this complaint are huge and can become crippling if left untreated.

The underarms of sufferers’ clothes become worn out more quickly and become discoloured.

On the feet, excessive sweating causes the feet to steep in moisture, which promotes the spread of athlete’s foot and other bacterial infections.

On the hands, this complaint quickly leads to social discomfort because the sufferer is afraid (and therefore feels stressed) about shaking hands with people or touching anything.

Treatment

The treatment offered by aesthetic medicine involves carrying out multiple injections into the area concerned.

The underarms are the easiest area to treat because they are a lot less sensitive than the palms of the hands or soles of the feet.

It is a quick, straightforward and safe procedure (though relatively costly because it requires high quantities of product and the injections need repeating every year, on average).

First of all, we determine the area that sweats the most using an iodine test (application of an iodine solution to the armpit, then starch, then note the blue colour in the areas that sweat).

Then, the practitioner marks out small squares into which they inject small quantities of product (on average 10 to 20ml per armpit).

This technique is not very painful because it is carried out using extremely fine needles which are inserted very superficially under the skin.

To make it more comfortable, an anaesthetic cream (Emla) may be applied an hour before treatment.

The maximum effect is usually achieved after a month and lasts 6 months on average.

Because this treatment only temporarily stops the sweating, it must be repeated fairly regularly.

For information purposes, the fee charged for this type of treatment starts at 650 euros.

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