Is there such a thing as pure palmoplantar HH...

[Jezza]

...Or is it just the first symptom of generalised HH?

I started to wonder about this lately, as I read more and more reports from people saying they had palmoplantar HH first/originally but now also have HH on the rest/other parts of the body...

This is important for at least two reasons, one is that there's a difference between two types of sweatglands on the body and only one is really receptive to emotional stimuli, and two is that for medics, purely focal HH can (and will) be dismissed as being emotional sweating/bad luck/genetics, whereas generalised HH is more cause to think about underlying factors...which is what we really need, because cause and effect says there is one, and I don't see all these symptom fighting treatments really working, not to mention that the sweating itself might be just the most visible physical consequence of a cause that has many other consequences as well (for instance, the free radicals study I posted about 2 days ago, which again seems to suggest it's not just the sweating).

So....

here's my experience and my theory. It would be good to get some more perspectives on this so maybe you could share your HH experience over the years and say if you have purely palmoplantar HH, or also HH in other body areas. Kind of like the blood type post of Klamm. I also made a poll if you'd like to save some time and don't want to read yet another HH story... :lol:

Anyway...

My HH started out as purely palmoplantar when I was about 13 y/o. I would notice in class my paws were moist and would leave prints on the table and my papers if I'd have them on there. At first it was only when it was hot or when I was feeling stressed (I wouldn't say now it was anxiety induced, especially also seeing the reaction to heat, but it still could be, in fact at that point I thought it was because I knew of no other reason for people to sweat in feet and hands).

When I would go outside, there was maybe a mild clammyness. It still bothered me a lot, but it was purely hands and feet and I was convinced it would go away at some point as I grew older. Moreover, even apart from gym class, in high school we often played football or basketball outside, especially in summer, and my clothes would remain perfectly dry (no sweatpatches on trousers or arm pits at all).

This lasted till I was about 17y/o, when quite suddenly, the sweating became much worse and spread to my back, my back end, my legs/knees and sometimes also arm pits, from then on it's been getting worse and worse. Obviously, what changed here is that I formed apocrine sweat glands, which develop in puberty (which was late for me, I grew about 30 cm (12 inch) in 2/3 years from 15 till 17, losing some of my eye sight in the process, which is quite normal for fast growth). I suspect so because officially eccrine sweatglands are mainly present in palms, feet and axills (axillary sweatglands=mixed apocrine/endocrine), and all other places have predominantly apocrine sweatglands, and now I sweat in those other places as well.

Now interestingly, emotional sweating is said to only affect endocrine sweatglands :twisted: , so you'd expect if it was purely anxiety/emotionally induced, only feet, palms and axills would sweat...however this is not the case .

So...I think pamoplantar and generalized HH are the same thing, the only reason that (young) people have purely palmoplantar HH is because their sweatglands haven't fully developed yet in other areas of their body, hence, they can not possibly sweat profusely in those areas. It is a very simple explanation, but it might just be overlooked by medics...

Voting's open...

 

[Jezza]

Hmm...

Interesting, yeah in my case it really developed over time and quite strongly from about 17y/o...I'm 22 now and I wish I could go back to that state of sweating I still hated back when I was 14/15...Maybe ionto would have been enough then.
I'm really annoyed I didn't find out about HH earlier, but well, that's the way it goes I guess with this 'disease' or whatever you want to call it. I'm still hoping there will be some breakthrough before I reach a certain age, so I can salvage some of my youth (so, basically that would be the coming 3 years). I really feel for the ones of us that have had to live with this for decades already, but I also fear I might be one of them some day if nothing changes...

Anyway, the poll is going well till now, so thanks to the ones who answered it, till now it shows quite a pattern, but hopefully there will be some more answers as well.

 

[hels]

Well i had mild facial HH as a child then developed generalised HH when i went through puberty, except on my hands! my hands have always been completly dry until a few months ago when i turned 28. Over the past few years my generalised HH has gotten worse, corresponding to taking SSRIs and recovering from an eating disorder. But all of a sudden ive started having clammy (not sweaty yet) hands. Strange yes?!

 

[cachoeira]

I've never really had any problems with my feet or my hands. I started out with the armpits at about 20 and then spread to the chest, back and head starting at around 22/23. I've got a picture of myself in Spain when I was about 19 in the blazing sun wearing a tight fitting t-shirt in a colour I wouldn't dare to use these days and without a single hint of a sweat mark. Seems like a totally different person to who I am today and really not all that long ago when compared to some people's stories on here.
I suppose my hands and feet sweat more than most people's, but not so much as to concern me. However, if past experience is anything to go by, any day now the floodgates will open and they will join the rest of my body.

 

[hydroman123]

My hyperhidrosis started with my hands and feet when I was around 12 years old. The severity gradually increased till I was around 16-17. My axillary hyperhidrosis started at about this time too. The severity hasn't changed a great deal since then (Im 23 now). The other parts of my body have normal sweating patterns- when I sweat from these areas I find my palms,feet and axillae to be completely dry.
My mother has HH. Her sweating pattern up to my age has been very similar to mine- her palmoplantar HH reduced significantly later on while the axillary areas are still quite severe. Has anyone noticed such similarities with their relatives?

 

[Jezza]

It's weird how HH can just seem to develop all of a sudden and nobody knows what happens to make it develop...

Personally I have no relatives that have HH, or at least none that I know of...Some reports say there is a "HH gene" that is autosomal dominant, meaning that if you have the gene, you have the affliction, meaning if one of your parents have HH, you have at least 50% chance of getting it too.

However, that would have to mean one of your grandparents has it too, and you would expect about 50% of your cousins/nephews that share that grandparent with you (so, either those on your mother's side or those on you're father's side) to have HH...Yet I have 6 on my father's side and 12 on my mother's side, but I'm not aware nor suspect of any of them having HH...

And even if it is hereditary, it doesn't really matter...it's not the genes that give you the impulses to sweat, it's something in the nervous system or endocrine glands. That what might be wrong with those may or may not be hereditary (personally I don't think so) doesn't really matter, what matters is that they find what's responsible for the overload of impulses that reaches our sweatglands...I have to wear glasses/contacts for my eyes too and I may or may not have inherited that from my father, but really I don't care that much about that...what I care about is that they know why I don't see well and they can correct that by making glasses, contacts or even perform laser surgery so that I'm not troubled by it...

To be honest the hereditary surveys annoy me a little bit sometimes, first because they don't focus on the cause like mentioned above and it still qualifies as a survey into HH, but also, consider this...

They ask people that have HH, do you have any other relatives with HH?

They are inclined to say yes, because first of all they're focused on it so if any of their relatives even has a hint of excessive sweating they'll say, yeah I have this cousin...2nd, parents often tell them, yeah when I was younger I had that too, or, yeah your grandfather had that too...

More importantly...Whey they ask people without HH the same question...

Those are inclined to say no. Probably they have never before even heard of HH before they are asked this question, so your first response is no. You don't want you're family to be inclined to have bad genes anyway so you'll want to say no. Also, sometimes even siblings don't know that one of them has HH, let alone cousins, aunts etc...

Both of these are biased IMHO...and then come the results, something like these numbers--> a child of someone with HH has a 14% chance of having HH as well. A child with HH has a 28% chance of having a relative with HH. And then the conclusions...HH is an autosomal dominant gene.

Rubbish...