Hyperhidrosis? No sweat!

You know the feeling when you are about to go into the most scary exam of your life? You're sweating all over and frantically wiping your hands on your shirt. Double it. Now imagine that you are suddenly placed in a jet of cold air. The sweat starts to go all cold and trickles down your hands, falling in little drops on to the floor below. Sounds unpleasant? This is life with chronic hyperhidrosis.

I was first diagnosed with hyperhidrosis around the age of 14. I think that I might have been diagnosed earlier if my parents had not thought that my excess sweating was a trivial matter. Eventually, I went to my GP and was prescribed an aluminium chloride solution which you apply to the affected part at night and leave on. A practical solution? Try falling asleep while still remembering not to scratch your face or rub your eyes. Then tell me it is still practical.

After this failed to work, we moved on to iontophoresis, where dermatologists persuade you to place the affected part (usually a hand or foot) on a towel covered in sodium chloride solution and another part, usually the corresponding body part, on …