I suffer from a condition called hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating) in the armpits and feet.
Does electrolysis of armpit hair destroy some sweat glands too? If not, can an electrologist find a way to kill some of the sweat glands there?
No takers?
Electrolysis is not an effective treatment for hyperhydrosis. You have too many sweat glands and all are not even associated with a growing hair. If every follicle that had a hair growing in it was overtreated, perhaps some sweat glands would be wiped out, but there are plenty more in waiting ready to do their thing.
The most effective way to control excessive sweating is to have an outpatient procedure that takes about 30-45 minutes, where an incision is made under the armpit. A nerve that stimulates the sweat glands is cut and results are immediate. There are other non-surgical remedies like Botox, for instance. Botox paralyzes the nerve, but it has to be repeated every 6 months unfortunately.
Iāve READ that electrolysis helps, but have no first hand knowledge that it does.
The Fischer company has a device that helps hands and feet. See at http://rafischer.com/
Hi, I have had under my arms done with electrolysis for over 30 years now, I donāt sweat at all under my arm. I seem to recall that I used too.
I, too, have had my underarm hair completely removed for 20 years now with electrolysis and I THINK I have less sweating? but I still sweat, I donāt know why you donāt Lindy, but thatās is great for you. Underarm odor is reduced because there is no hair to trap bacteria and degrade the sweat, which is a real plus. Not every sweat gland on the underarm can be effected with electrolysis by overtreating the follicle in the hope of destroying the sweat gland. We donāt like to overtreat any hair follicle anyway. There is nothing you can do about the sweaty soles of your feet or the palms of your hands, in regard to electrolysis, because there are no hair follicles in these places to treat.
To explain futher, allow me to conduct a mini anatomy lesson. Donāt fall asleep now. :sleep:
We all have SUDORIFEROUS GLANDS. Under this title, there are two glands that make sweat:
1. The [b]eccrine[/b] gland
2. The [b]apocrine[/b] gland
Eccrine glands are found in vast quantities all over the body and they exist alone, meaning, they have no connection to the hair follicle. A watery, odorless substance comes from these glands.
Apocrine glands are found only in certain areas of the body like the underarms, anal and genital areas. They secrete their sweat into the hair follicle and do not stand alone like the eccrine glands. They are connected to the hair follicle.
The reason I gave that information is because electrolysis CAN BE HELPFUL for a condition called APOCRINE BROMHIDROSIS or āstinking sweatā or ābody odorā. No matter how clean these individuals are with Apocrine Bromhidrosis, they stink all the time, which is kind of hard on their social and work life. The underarms have the most active apocrine glands. Once these glands secrete and the liquid comes to the surface, it is odorless, but within an hour or so as it mixes the natural bacteria that is present on the skin, one starts to stink really bad. Electrolysis is helpful for this kind of sweat because the apocrine glands empty right into the hair follicle to get liquid to the skin surface. The eccrine glands(billions and billions everywhere) do not empty into the hair follicle, they stand alone outside the hair follicle. As for the apocrine glands, once the hair follicle is destroyed, their secretions have nowhere to go, so the body just reabsorbs the secretions and the smelly problem goes away. Perfect!
So, dear tembo, if apocrine bromhydrosis is your problem, electrolysis will help (maybe laser, too). If you are secreting lots of watery sweat everywhere, but especially on your underarms, electrolysis is not the supreme treatment of choice and it is doubtful that it works for this problem at most. I still sweat, but I never was a big sweater anyway. Snipping that sympathetic nerve under the axilla (armpit) is most helpful after you have tried all non-surgical options. Your physician should be consulted if you are having a serious problem with this. By your original post, I was assuming that you donāt have an odor problem (apocrine glands), but rather an excessive sweating problem (eccrine glands).
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Not to hijack the thread, but this just reminded me of something that has been happening with my armpit and electrolysis. Is it possible to start sweating MORE when you get electrolysis in your armpit?
I have never been an armpit sweaterā¦ never had āpit stainsā to complain about, and very rarely did my armpits smell. I even stopped using deodorant and antiperspirant because I didnāt need it at all. They arenāt super hairy, either. Iād say they are less than what is considered an āaverageā amount of hair, really.
When I started electrolysis in both armpits, I noticed after a few treatments that I was starting to feel moisture in my armpits, and eventually started getting pit stains! For monetary reasons, I had to reduce the time I spent with my electrologist, and so we only had time for one armpit instead of both (by my request, she didnāt want to make my armpits uneven but I really didnāt care about that). Now Iām only having the sweating situation in the one armpit sheās been working on. The other armpit that has not had treatment in some time barely sweats, if at all. The smell is extremely mild, and sometimes non-existant.
Anyone know anything about why that might happen?
You have less hair to trap the moisture that secrete from the eccrine glands in one of your arm pits. The other pit with more hair, is holding the moisture. Remember, there are countless billions of eccrine glands in your armpits and all over your body. Just goes to show that even with partial hair removal, you still have fully functioning eccrine glands and my observation remains that you will still sweat after all the hair is treated.
Best way to get rid of sweaty pits is botox injections, which will need top ups every few months.I had this done and it worked wonders.
Certain Dri is a great anti-sweating product. Iāve used it for years.
That getās pretty expensive because it has to be repeated every six months or so. Surgical correction rates better.
Most hyperhydrosis suffers need to reduce, or eliminate the toxicity that the body is trying desperately to push out via āexcessiveā sweating. It should really be called excessive toxicity response. Other than high stress, the causes of excessive sweating are all about what you are, or are not putting in and on your body. Not enough water in, the body canāt eliminate wastes through the bladder, not enough fiber in the diet? Then nothing can transport the water you drink effectively thoughout the body. Are you still using aluminum based products on your underarms? it is time to make peace with mixing your own milk of magnesia, baking soda(or powder) and an essential oil if you wish a fragrance. Lavendar is a good one, as it also has anti-bacterial properties, in addition to a light pleasant scent.
Get more chlorophyll in your life. that means more green veggies. Wheat Grass is a wonderful thing if you donāt want to commit to many servings a day.
For the first week, you will spend more time in the rest room, but in the end, you will be much better off.
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Actually, hyperhidrosis is most often a problem when you have excessive hand sweating. Sweaty palms have absolutely nothing to do with diet or toxicity or stress or heat. This is what I mean by hyperhidrosis palmaris:
The ETS surgery that cuts the sympathetic nervous system and stops hand sweating can causes too many side effects. I hope Dee is not referring to ETS surgery but something else for armpits. Most ethical surgeons no longer offer ETS for armpit sweating by itself.
A better alternative for hand sweating is iontophoresis machines such as Drionic. Some intophoresis machines also offer pads to put into your armpits for armpit sweating.
Do a search for ETS surgery and ETS surgery side effects to learn more.
Tembo,
This was your original question. You were asking about armpits, not hands. I donāt get my information from YouTube doctors promoting their business. I search PubMed, Mayo clinic and National Medical Library for articles (thatās not the whole list, by the way). In all, there are various topical, systemic, surgical and non-surgical options that can be tried. All have their proās and conās. You, along with a physician, need to start with the most conservative options first and work your way up to the right solution for your problem. Many of these measures for hyperhidrosis are temporary and expensive. Surgical intervention brings 100% results IF it is performed expertly. There are centers through the Mayo Clinic where this is done and it is not unethical, but the patient has got understand the risks associated with an invasive procedure, which is usually the last resort after other things have been tried. For the guy I saw with dripping hands on YouTube, surgical intervention may be his best choice. There are risks associated with anything you have done that is of a surgical nature, whether it be an appendectomy or a sympathectomy. Botox can cause some terrible damage, too. To get real again and answer your original question, electrolysis is not the treatment of choice for hyperhidrosis for all the reasons I mentioned above.
Yes I know what my question was, but I was replying to Jamesā post about toxicity etcā¦ causing hyperhidrosis. Most people mean excess hand/palm sweating when they say hyperhidrosis. ETS is mostly done to stop hand sweating/hyperhidrosis these days.
ETS surgery is a horrible choice to stop armpit sweating and you did not specify if you meant ETS surgery or other surgeries (there are many types of surgeries for stopping armpit sweating).
If someone reads your posts and gets ETS surgery to stop armpit sweating, that would be very very bad. Luckily, most surgeons have stopped offering ETS for armpit sweating, but you can always find one that still offers it.
Hand and feet hyperhidrosis have nothing to do with diet or toxicity or waste. Excess weight can cause body sweating to worsen, but the kind of hand sweating you see in that video is a symptom of sympathetic nervous system malfunction and nothing else.
Yes, I could see that in the video that lasted four seconds. You specifically asked about your armpits and feet. ETS can be done by making a small incision in the armpit if that is what the physician working with you advises after exhausting all non-surgical options. She/he may not want to go there, but it is an option. Your problem is beyond what we need to discuss here on hairtell. Just know that electrolysis is not a cure or a control for your diagnosis. Would be very, very nice if it were. 
I have personal evidence that electrolysis can effectively reduce sweating (temporarily)!
I did half of my back and shoulders (think of a line down your spine) with electrolysis. I am an avid runner and when Iād look at myself in the mirror on the treadmill, I could see the sweat forming much faster on the non-electrolysis side. Sometimes half my shirt would be sweaty and the other half would not. It looked really funny.
I believe that the sweat glands eventually healed, because now I sweat fairly evenly again, and to the same degree I did before the electrolysis. My practitioner used quite high settings (so that may be necessary to see the effect I had).
Dee rereading your older post, I noticed the following that you said:
āI donāt get my information from YouTube doctors promoting their business.ā
That youtube video I posted was to show what hyperhidrosis means for most people who get ETS. I hope you didnāt think I was promoting whoever is selling something from that video. I donāt even have sound on my computer so I didnāt hear what was being sold and donāt want you to assume I am promoting some business.
To those who have been reaading these posts ā
For feet sweating, ETS is impossible, as the feet nerves arise from the lower part of your upper body (lumbar chain) and not the upper (thoracic) portion. For feet sweating, you have to get a lumbar sympathectomy and not a thoracic sympathectomy under the chest like ETS or whatever Dee was mentioning (I think it was ETS that she was talking about). Lumbar sympathectomies were not done before due to crazy side effects like reverse ejaculation, but one doctor now does them in the US and says he is not finding such side effects. Nevertheless, lumbar sympathectomy is dangerous and that is why I have not done it and am using an iontophoresis machine instead for my feet sweating.
For hand sweating like in the video link I posted, ETS can be a great solution and this is the kind of hyperhidrosis for which ETS is largely done these days. For some people who have both hand and feet sweating, ETS that cures hand sweating can lead to an improvement in feet sweating and noone knows why. However, ETS is not offered to stop feet sweating. Some people even see an increase in feet sweating after ETS.
For armpit sweating, most surgeons no longer offer ETS. The most common side effect of ETS is that you can sweat a lot more elsewhere after surgery (something called compensatory sweating). So you might stop armpit sweating, but you will sweat a lot more in your groin, butt, back, chest etcā¦
For hand sweating patients, it can still be a decent tradeoff. For armpit sweaters, compensatory sweating is not a decent tradeoff. Around 50-60 percent of ETS patients seem to get compensatory sweating.
[b]So in summary, do NOT ever try ETS (endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy) for armpit sweating.
Do NOT try lumbar sympathectomy for feet sweating.
Only try ETS for hand sweating if everything else fails.[/b]
And once again, none of this is due to any kind of toxicity or diet problems. It is due to a problem with your sympathetic nervous system.
Finally, ETS has been banned in some countries, and there are three surgeons who have done hundreds of reversal nerve rebuilding operations for patients who had too many side effects from ETS. These reversal operations are still experimental, and cost $20,000.
Bryce, your back experiment was the best weāve seen here. All you said about sweating stands to reason. We have billions of eccrine glands. You received heavy duty electrolysis on those big back hairs, and some? many? of those glands could have possibly been affected. However, the number of glands all over your back are much more numerous than the amount of active hair follicles the electrologist destroyed on the left side of your back, thus you continue to sweat, thankfully so .
Wikipedia under mechanism:
Sweating allows the body to regulate its temperature. Sweating is controlled from a center in the preoptic and anterior regions of the brainās hypothalamus, where thermosensitive neurons are located. The heat-regulatory function of the hypothalamus is also affected by inputs from temperature receptors in the skin. High skin temperature reduces the hypothalamic set point for sweating and increases the gain of the hypothalamic feedback system in response to variations in core temperature. Overall, however, the sweating response to a rise in hypothalamic (ācoreā) temperature is much larger than the response to the same increase in average skin temperature. The process of sweating decreases core temperature, whereas the process of evaporation decreases surface temperature.
There are two situations in which our nerves will stimulate sweat glands, making us sweat: during physical heat and emotional stress. In general, emotionally induced sweating is restricted to palms, soles, armpits, and sometimes the forehead, while physical heat-induced sweating occurs throughout the body.[10]
Sweat is not pure water; it always contains a small amount (0.2ā1%) of solute. When a person moves from a cold climate to a hot climate, adaptive changes occur in the sweating mechanisms of the person. This process is referred to as acclimatisation: the maximum rate of sweating increases and its solute composition decreases. The volume of water lost in sweat daily is highly variable, ranging from 100 to 8,000 mL/day. The solute loss can be as much as 350 mmol/day (or 90 mmol/day acclimatised) of sodium under the most extreme conditions. In a cool climate and in the absence of exercise, sodium loss can be very low (less than 5 mmols/day). Sodium concentration in sweat is 30-65 mmol/l, depending on the degree of acclimatisation.
Many preservatives, artificial colors, flavorings, and so on, are antagonistic to the hypothalamus. Continued exposure causes a build up of these things in the body.
Oh, forget it, Tembo my friend. No need to look at this from an orthomolecular point of view. Lets just look for something to cut out.