Hyperhidrosis
For years I had it. Schweaty you name its - Everything always sweaty. I have always run hot and a/c is my best friend as well as any cold body of water. Roommates have called me a polar bear since I freeze 'em out due to my always being hot. The heater doesn't go on until late December and goes off in February. My last three cars had the heaters disconnected and I never noticed. The Saab has a heater but I don't know how to use it. One girl I went to San Diego with froze over the large mountain pass when I had the top down. She kept begging for the top to go up and I refused. Its a convertible, why does the top need to go up?
From about age thirteen to age twenty-six I suffered from the condition. I've learned how to make sure I do not go sockless and my feet never smell. Haven't ever, actually. Never really been smelly but the "wet" look was always "in" for me. And now I'm in Phoenix. During summer tendency is to wear wick shirts. Winter is anything, really. I just figure, dry heat, it will dry. Humidity - good luck.
I can wear jackets and it is covered up. As far as sweaty pits.......
Party Like a (Catholic-girl) Rockstar
Tell you what. I had sweaty pits. Sometimes it would be so embarassing that I would change shirts two to three times per day. A semi-cover-up would be to wear darker colored shirts. Didn't really work, though. I knew they were there and if someone were checking things out, they knew they were there. Also, the sweat would just be there. Didn't matter if I was sitting around or running around. If I were nervous, calm, comfortable, stressed, relaxed - didn't matter.
When I worked in restaurants by the end of a shift sometimes there was extreme chafing and I would be all red and sore under the arms. If I walked the Vegas strip for hours, same thing. I was lucky that it wasn't smelly B.O. but, still, it was terrible. No complexes or anything, just dislike for the situation. Shoot, it could have been something way worse, you know?
I tried every anti-perspirant out there. Mitchum a-p worked best and I stuck with that. Mitchum stinks, by the way, like your grandpa's aftershave which is old school spicy something or other. They may have come out with some cool scents by now, I don't know. I tried these other things which shocked the crap out of you. They are these pad things where you moisten some conductors and stick them over these battery operated deals which you place in your pits. You turn them on and the feeling is so.....invigorating. I think they are made to scare you straight into having dry come right out of you. I think you can use them on your feet and hands as well. I only had the sweaty pits. The shockers sort of worked, but were a real pain to use daily. They were a bit expensive also.
Those are about the only things I ever attempted - switching around on anti-perspirants and the "shockers". A lot of little kids have trouble with sweaty feet. If their shoes stink and you can't seem to figure out why, its probably sweaty feet. The goofa-scientific term for it is "hyperhidrosis". I say goofa because hyperhidrosis means nothing except increased moisture in any good old area. Its just a diagnosis like arthritis which is completely non-specific. It identifies no source and offers any good-old-boy solution to a problem. Throw the paint around and see what sticks kind of word.
Well. So I walked around with this hyperhidrosis thing through my adolescence and into my graduate studies career. Probably close to fifteen years of carrying this burden around. I finally got fed up with it. One day I ended up with a bunch of free time after running clinicals in 1996, maybe 1997. I got to thinking about this hyperhidrosis on a particularly humid day in Kansas City and decided to give some meds a try. There had to be something the MDs had right?
I stopped in a local office which accepted me as a walk-in and got this fiftiesh little snot of a lady who told me to just choose different shirts so the sweat would not show as much. I told her that wasn't good enough. She begrudgingly left the clinical room and came back with a book ten minutes later. Obviously she had not encountered this prior. She read to me out of the book and told me I had what's called...........hyperhidrosis - - NO KIDDING (WOW, genius)! But....she did offer solution. Cool, what I want finally. The med prescribed was this roll-on bottle called Drysol. Roll it on underarm and it stings like a little needle poking you all over the place for a while and it only costs about $7 per bottle. Great price and small sacrifice for no more....sweaty pits. Party like a rockstar!
I was stoked. It completely eradicated problem within four days and then I maintained it about once every four to five days. But my problem was still there. Hmmmm. The drug either clogged me and stopped the sweat or had to be doing something like putting heavy metals in or something. So this got me to thinking. I checked the ingredients of Drysol and there were massive amounts of aluminum - can't be good, right? I checked anti-perspirants and there are certain metals in those as well. If I remember, the a-p's have mostly forms of zinc. I think. Anti-perspirants are all I had used for years. So I kind of thought, that, what if I took out the products with the metals and simply went with regular ol' deodorant? Can't hurt. If they fail, I already have the heavy metal Drysol on my side (or underarm, I guess).
I went to only deodorant. Wanna know what happened? No more sweaty pits. No more Drysol needed. The word "anti-perspirant" was a lie. I was intoxicating my system and it had been fighting back what is supposed to be a natural release valve in the system for heat release. I was and am now able to wear any color shirt I want.
You want to know something else? Its kind of difficult sometimes to find simply deodorant. 80 to 90% of any underarm shelf is anti-perspirant. You really have to search for deodorant-only product. This must mean that 80 to 90% of the population is applying toxic metal product to their pits. And they probably do not even realize it. Think about it. Many people are going to great lengths to get mercury out of their teeth because of old fillings, but then are applying all sorts of similar stuff to the porous underside of their arms. Think this metal may go systemic? You bet it does. I've never looked too closely into chelation therapy, but I wonder if they give any advise on underarm deodorant? I don't know. If I run into a naturopath who does chelation therapy, I might ask. Did you know that we are all running around with cancer cells? We are all one chromosomal mutation away from expression of oncogenes. Its fact. Oncogene expression is probably mostly regulated by hormonal action and this is why you find preponderance of cancers with sex organs - prostate, ovarian, breast. I think the chromosome is #69 or somewhere thereabouts.
The more polluted any given system is, I surmise the greater the risk of a cancer expression to occur. Let's say we are tipping a boat. There is good and bad in the boat. Okay, we eat the occasional vegetable and fruit. But here we go: Let's see, I have years of smoking in me, years of metals in the form of teflon coating, tooth fillings, anti-perspirants, diet sodas (how does something taste good and have zero calories- chemicals), pollutants in the environment, birth control pills, hormone replacement therapy, and I live under a bunch of power plant wires coming out from the base next to my house. Occasionally I exercise but sit in front of two monitors ten hours per day before watching three hours of television in front of the LCD while my food is microwaving and I am talking on the phone while playing with my IPOD after the trip to Wal-Mart with a bunch of LCDs screaming at me about the latest anti-perspirant and I even got to pump gas while watching the screen in front of me telling about the latest Diet Coke I can purchase in the convenience store. Lunch time was fabulous at my favorite, McDonald's and I'm looking forward to Jack tomorrow. And Friday is pizza day - but its healthy pizza with spinach on it. So that's okay. I tell you what, do you suppose that with all this stuff that we may just be pushing a certain envelope which has the words mutation of oncogene all over it? It only takes one little lead ball to tip that boat. I can't say if that one little ball is anti-perspirant, but, if one can do without, then that part of the matter is taken care of.
Just a thought, anyway. I do know that I conquered hyperhidrosis and it was kind of by mistake - mistake with some thought put into it. Well, anyway, this is just one more goofy thing that I've gone through and its off my to-do list.
Thank you. Take care and God bless.
Dr Moller
KURT and his wife, Alex...and the Spyder
