It began with my underarms sweating excessively, and I soon noticed my face being affected the same way. I visited a doctor, asking her if the my facial sweating was connected to the sweating in my underarms and she informed me that it was in fact related. She described the condition as ‘Hyperhidrosis’, which is a disorder of one’s sweat glands or sympathetic nervous system.

She went on to explain that excessive facial sweating may show up at anytime and some of the factors responsible for it include stress, anxiety or fear. She also informed me that three types of facial sweating existed namely, palmar excessive sweating, axillary excessive sweating and plantar excessive sweating. The different names simply relate to excessive sweating in different parts of the body. Axillary sweating is related to the armpits, and palmer sweating is related to the excessive sweating of the palms.

As a result of my excessive facial sweating, I began to become extremely self-conscious and tried my best to avoid entering situations that caused me to sweat. Boys in school would be avoided, and so would class presentations. I never managed to wear make-up, because my face was almost always be much too wet and even if it wasn’t, my sweating would completely ruin it. And so my sweating began to affect me worse and worse, causing me loads of embarrassment and humiliation.

Treatment for Facial Sweating

I discovered many treatments, but sadly didn’t consider all of them because of my age. Surgery was an option with a hight success rate, and it involved the burning or cutting of nerve ganglia and sympathetic nerves around the chest region. A less drastic measure is to use a prescription antiperspirants which are much stronger compared to the more common off-the-counter antiperspirants. This works for some people, but not for many people suffering hyperhidrosis.

The procedure I tried, however, was called iontophoresis. More useful for people suffering from sweating in their limbs, the process used a conductor and water to create a small current to pass through you. The water had minerals in it which would then plug up the sweat glands stopping them from producing sweat.

Doctors may also prescribe you oral medication – anticholinergic drugs – which have been found effective in the treatment of facial sweating. However, these drugs may produce side effects and are unsuitable for women who are pregnant or nursing, thus it is important to consult your doctor before you take them.

I know for a fact that excess facial sweating can ruin one’s life, but it is important not to give up hope and to remember that there are a large number of treatments which are available that can help you cope with this condition.

Sweating is a form of excretion from the body, just as urination is, but sweating can occur anywhere on the entire skin of the body. The skin has sweat pores (medically, sebaceous glands) that are connected to sweat ducts which collect the sweaty excretion and discharge it from the body. Since the sweat ducts are present everywhere on the skin, sweating can happen anywhere.

It is fallacious to think that there are more sweat pores in certain areas of the body, because different people have been known to sweat more from different parts of the body. Most people will sweat profusely from their armpits, but there are so many who sweat excessively from their palms, their soles, necks, chests, backs, foreheads and almost every place that you can think of.

All these things are quite perplexing to the medical fraternity who has found it very difficult to come up with an effective and lasting cure for this problem so far. They believe that the method to prevent underarm sweating can be devised by reducing the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which seems to be responsible for hyperhidrosis in the first place, but then the sympathetic nervous system is governed by a particular region of the brain, which cannot be effectively pinpointed. Certainly the problem is much larger than it seems.

Methods such as Botox injections are painful and sympathectomies (surgical destruction of the sympathetic nerves) are quite risky. Though people enter these kinds of therapies, they and their treatment providers know that these methods are not going to be permanent, whatever inconvenience they may cause and howsoever much expensive they may be.

The reason why most stop underarm odor methods are inadequate is because the medical world is yet ignorant of what causes excessive sweating. They are not sure which part of the body (or brain) makes it happen, because sweating can occur from all over the skin.

On the contrary, simple methods like drinking lots of water and avoiding stressful conditions are proving to be just as effective in stopping sweating as these medical methods are. It is a very confusing situation both for the doctors as well as for the people who are seeking treatments for their sweaty problems.