Excessive Sweating
Sweating that disrupts work, handshakes or sleep is worth assessing, and the pattern matters more than the amount.
Everyone sweats. The question that matters is whether yours follows the ordinary rules. Ordinary sweating answers heat, effort and stress, it is spread across the body, and it eases when you cool down and stop. Sweating that collects in one place, appears on both sides evenly, arrives without a trigger, or continues through the night is following a different pattern, and that pattern is the first thing a clinician reads. The amount you produce is much less useful than when and where it happens.
Sweating that is not ordinary divides into two broad groups. Focal sweating affects particular sites, most often the palms, the soles, the underarms and the face, usually begins early in life, and has no underlying disease driving it. Generalised sweating that is new, or that comes with weight loss, fever, palpitations or night sweats, is a different situation, because it can be a sign of something else that needs to be found. The assessment exists to sort one from the other before anything is treated. The hyperhidrosis page sets out how that assessment runs and how secondary causes are excluded.
This topic has one site rather than a group of them, and there is a reason. The assessment is a single path, and what changes between one person and the next is where the sweating happens, not what the underlying problem is. The treatment choices then follow that site, because what works well on an underarm is not the same as what is used on a palm, and the side effects differ in the same way. The trade-offs deserve reading before the options do, particularly the ones that cannot be reversed.
Background and service lines
The medical system behind the cluster.
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
How much sweating counts as excessive?
The amount is less useful than the disruption. Sweating that soaks through clothing, damages paperwork or electronics, makes handshakes awkward, or wakes you at night is worth assessing regardless of how much you produce. Doctors also ask when it started and whether it is symmetrical, because a pattern that began in childhood and affects both palms equally reads differently from sweating that appeared last year across the whole body.
What is the difference between a deodorant and an antiperspirant?
A deodorant addresses smell, and an antiperspirant addresses the sweat itself by blocking the duct at the surface of the skin. That distinction matters when you describe what you have already tried, because most people who say nothing works have used a deodorant. Antiperspirants commonly cause stinging, redness and dryness, and occasionally an allergic rash that means stopping the product rather than persisting with it.
Why does the doctor ask whether I sweat at night?
Because night sweating changes the question. Sweating that stops during sleep fits the focal pattern, where the problem is the sweat glands themselves. Sweating that continues or starts at night suggests something general, and the assessment then looks for causes such as infection, thyroid problems or blood sugar issues before any treatment for sweating is discussed. It is a short question with a large effect on the plan.
Why does sweating sometimes appear somewhere new after treatment?
Compensatory sweating happens when sweating is reduced in one area and the body increases it elsewhere. It can follow any treatment that stops sweating in one place, including antiperspirants, botulinum toxin and surgery. After nerve surgery it is common and often long lasting. It is the main reason the surgical option is discussed carefully rather than treated as a stronger version of the others.
Can excessive sweating be a sign of another condition?
Sometimes, which is why the assessment comes first. Focal sweating of the palms, soles, underarms or face usually has no underlying disease. Generalised sweating, or sweating that is new in an adult, can accompany thyroid disease, infection, some medications and other conditions. Finding or excluding those is not a formality, and it decides whether treatment targets the sweating or the cause behind it.
Does treatment stop working over time?
Several of the options are temporary by nature and need repeating to keep working, and response varies between people. Nothing on the list is curative for everyone, and no one can predict your response with certainty beforehand. That is worth knowing before you start, because it changes what counts as a fair trial and how long you give a treatment before judging it.
Find the site that answers your question
This page carries no articles of its own. Pick the site closest to your question and read it there.