Sweating Exessively

Sweating Excessively

Some days it seems like your sweat glands produce enough perspiration to fill the Hoover Dam.

The average person has about three million sweat glands that release fluids to help keep the body cool. Almost all sweating is triggered by activity, heat, humidity, stress or anxiety. It is a side effect of puberty, menopause and other times of hormonal upheaval. Spicy foods, alcohol and smoking can also stimulate your body to sweat more.

In most cases, people who sweat excessively have genetic predispositions to it. But profuse sweating could also be a sign of infection, heart disease, an overactive thyroid or tuberculosis. The natural remedies in this chapter, used with your doctor’s approval, may help you control excess sweating, according to some health professionals.

See Your Medical Doctor When...
  • Your sweat continually soaks and soils your clothes and shoes or trickles down your skin even when the room is cold.
  • Your sweating adversely affects your career or personal life.
  • You also experience persistent or recurrent fever, dizziness or rapid heartbeat.
  • Your sweat has a color, crystallizes on the skin or causes skin irritation.

Homeopathy

Excessive sweating can be controlled by taking one of the following 6C remedies four times a day for up to two weeks, writes Andrew Lockie, M.D., in his book The Family Guide to Homeopathy. Dr. Lockie recommends Acidum hydrofluoricum if your sweat is sour smelling and worse on your head and if cold weather and walking relieve it. For a thin person who tends to have sweaty, unpleasant-smelling feet, he suggests Silicea. And he says that Calcarea is a good remedy for an overweight person who is cold and clammy and has sour-smelling sweat that pours off his head at night.

All of these remedies are available in many health food stores. To purchase the remedies by mail, refer to the resource list on page 637.

Imagery

Picture yourself standing at the base of a mountain. There is a cool wind blowing off of it. Imagine that it’s the perfect atmosphere in which to have your skin cool and dry, and if you are sweaty, the breeze will dry you off, says Dennis Gersten, M.D., a San Diego psychiatrist and publisher of Atlantis, a bi-monthly imagery newsletter. He recommends that you use this imagery for 10 to 20 minutes twice a day, depending on the severity of your problem.

See also Foot Odor

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