Sweating is a useful and completely normal body process, but very annoying for everyone. Now, in the heat of the heat wave, we can sweat even at night or when we just got up. Stains on clothes, bad smell… there are many discomforts it generates.

For some people who suffer from excessive sweating, it becomes a real problem in their daily lives. On the one hand, affects aesthetics and it can cause insecurity problems, even more so in women, where the stigma of sweat is greater.

It can also produce skin irritations or even the appearance of fungus, due to the continuous humidity of the area. In most cases, there is no specific reason or reason why you suffer from sweating, but for these people there is a solution: treatment with botulinum toxin.

Better known as Botox, it can be inject into sweat glands to reduce sweat production. “Botulinum toxin is a medicine and, as such, has a pharmacological action,” explains the Dr. Ernesto Pérezaesthetic doctor at the FEMM Clinic.

“What this action does is block certain chemical processes. Therefore, when it is injected into a muscle it stops working or moves with less force. When applied to glands, in this case sweat glands, they stop producing sweat and responding to the stimuli”.

Diagnose hyperhidrosis

This treatment is applied by aesthetic doctors and is aimed at people with significant sweat problems, such as hyperhidrosis. As the doctor explains, diagnosing this pathology is complicated, although it can be done with the Minor’s test.

“It is applied to the area that worries the patient. First, something like Betadine, an orange-colored povidone-iodine, is applied. Then some starch powder is applied, as if it were cornstarch, and then a heat source. Thus, the sweat passes through the layer of Betadine and dyes the starch purple, orange.

The doctor states that “for practical purposes the Minor test is not usually done” because “in the end that sweat that may be normal to one person, seems very annoying to another. What happens in aesthetics, after all , is that it is the patient himself who is diagnosed. “It’s something subjective.”.

Treatment

However, those people who consider that they suffer from a sweating problem can go to a specialist and consider the possibility of injecting Botox. The effect of the treatment begins to be noticed a few days after applying it and usually lasts between 6 and 9 months.

There is no problem in doing repetitions for years and, as Dr. Pérez explains, most patients come once a year. “What they usually do is come when the hot season arrives, which is when you sweat the most. In April, May or June, they inject themselves to block the sweat. The effect wears off more or less in January or February and neither does “Nothing happens because they go a couple of months without it.”

The most common areas in which Botox is applied are the armpits, hands and feet. “The armpit is an area that, even if you inject it, hardly hurts at all. Furthermore, to give a quantitative example, if you inject 100 units, the effect can last more than half a year.”

“However, in the hands and feet it hurts more, so we use an anesthetic cream before giving the injection. In addition, for the hands we would need 150 units and the result is shorter. For the feet we use 200 units and it lasts little too.”

Extreme cases

In addition to these three, botulinum toxin can be injected into any part of the body with sweat glands. However, it is not the most advisable.

“It is a treatment that is not without side effects. For example, we have studied the issue of sweat on the scalp. There are people who sweat a lot through their hair and find it unpleasant. What is the problem? That on the scalp “There are so many glands that you have to inject a lot, 300 units, for it to work. That would relax so much muscle that, as a side effect, perhaps the position of your eyebrows would fall a little, you would have a strange expression,” declares Dr. Pérez. .

In more severe cases of sweating, remove sweat glandsa procedure that in Spain does cover Social Security, but that is for very extreme cases.

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