The current hot weather feels great, but for many of us this might aggravate embarrassing problems of excessive sweating and body odour. There is a solution for this though!
We have two types of sweat glands in our skin, so-called ‘eccrine glands’ and ‘apocrine glands’. Eccrine sweat glands are located all over our body and they produce a clear, odorless substance. Apocrine sweat glands are only situated in certain areas of the body such as the armpits and genito-anal area. Apocrine sweat glands can be the cause of bad body odour, once the sweat has come in contact with bacteria on the skin surface. Apocrine sweat glands are inactive until around puberty and apocrine sweat is thought to function as pheromone, i.e. attracting potential mates. Apocrine sweat is stimulated by adrenaline, a stress hormone, which might be the reason why you notice your body odour more, when you are nervous or stressed.
Botox is a highly effective solution to stop sweating and sweat-related odour. It works on both the eccrine and apocrine glands. The treatment is administered by injecting very small amount of the Botox solution into the skin, where the sweat glands are located. The procedure is essentially painless after application of a numbing cream and works particularly well under the arms.
We are often asked whether this treatment will lead to noticeably more sweating in other body areas and the answer is in the majority of cases no. Your body will compensate without you noticing, so no worries that the sweat somehow ‘builds up’ inside you.
The effect lasts for about nine months, at which point the injections would simply be repeated to keep up the beneficial effect. Most patients tend to come once or sometimes twice per year for a top-up treatment to keep the problem at bay.
