Why doesn't Iontophoresis work?!?!

[oolceeoo]

Hey everyone. Severe hand and feet HH here. I've tried the Fischer MD-1a so many times now, following their instructions on the booklet that was sent with it, and I have not noticed any improvement other than my skin is peeling on my hands.

I did 10 minutes one polarity, 10 minutes on the other polarity at 15mA every other day 8 or 9 times. So 10min/10min (9 treatments) and I noticed no difference whatsover in sweating!

I tried my own schedule, cranking it up as high as it would go, sometimes as high as 25-30mA for as long as I could take it, and it seemed to actually make my hands sweat MORE!

What am I doing wrong? It seems like it has absolutely no effect on my hands, yet I'm reading on here that people seem to have success with it?

Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated!

 

[Deadfish]

Sorry to hear that it hasn't worked for you ... yet (how's that for optimisim?).

You say you tried your own schedule - what was that schedule? Did it still involve treatments every other day? have you tried multiple treatments per day? Say two or three seesions a day? or did you just lengthen a few of the treatments, but still every other day?

You've got a total treatment time of 3 hours in so far spread over every other day. Personally I don't know if the "every other day" routine would work for me. My experience has been that I need a full-on barrage of treatments concentrated into just a few days, and then I can spread them out with good results.

And, 3 hours isn't a lot of total time. I used to put in a total of 13 hours sometimes with my Drioninc!

Also, before I reach the dry staet my sweating ALWAYS gets worse while using ionto. Consider that to be a good sign.

Don't give up. Try 20 minutes per polarity. Try 20 minutes at the same polarity (don't switch back & forth). Do it 3 times in one day. Try 40 minutes per hand.

What I'm trying to get at is that there doesn't seem to be a "prescribed" amount of time/treatment that works for everyone across the board. Hell, there doesn't seem to be a standard anything when it comes to HH.

Keep at it. Put in the time. It'll be worth it.

 

[oolceeoo]

I honestly don't remember how long I did it for when I was doing my own schedule but I seem to remember doing it atleast 30 minutes to 40 minutes every day, so I'd say maybe about 6 hours total time.

The reason I stopped this was because when my hands started to sweat MUCH worse, I stopped because people on other forums were saying that if you start to sweat worse, then you've done it too much and should back off.

So you are saying that the increase in sweating is a good sign? So if I had this weekend off, and tomorrow I just put a couple hours or however long I could at 25mA, then on sunday do the same thing, that this would be a better option? Just cramming as much hours in at the highest possible voltage would cause better results?

 

[KngofMn]

oolceeoo,
I am in the exact same boat as you are. I also bought the Fischer Md-1a and have been doing it a ton the last couple of weeks and have started to do it every day. I really haven't seen any difference except sometimes the sides of my hands are dry and the middle of my palm is dry but then for some reason later they will sweat along with the rest of my hand. I'm starting to get less optimistic everyday and am wondering if I went with the wrong choice in machines. It seems like there are is a lot more success with machines like the idrostar and the other well known european machine. I have been using baking soda and am wondering if this has any effect so I am going to try and get "harder" water and see if that works better. I am also going to start doing 40 minute sessions instead of 20 minutes. I tried doing two treatments yesterday but I couldn't bare the second one and had to stop. Trust me I want to get this done as bad as you because I start college again this fall and have about a month and want to fix this before I go. I am getting very anxious and worried. Let me know you status becuase we might be able to find something that works.

 

[**removed**]

Hey oolceeoo, its really difficult to say what the problem is because no one really knows how iontophoresis works and the best way to do treatments which sucks. It's funny when you say you turned it up to 25mA and it made it worse, the exact same thing happened to me when I did that on my feet, I have never seen so much sweat before. I think you should try going in the other direction and using a slightly lower current. I used to always use it on around 8mA last year and it worked a treat, lately though in the past few months my sweating has been bad so maybe the higher current im using disrupts the balance. These days I have to use the machine more often as well than I used to.. it confuses the heck out of me.

 

[gummybear00]

I don't have the Fisher device but I've used the Drionic. With that machine, it took 8 hours total for my hands to dry. During that time I also used CertainDri, a topical anti-sweat liquid that has aluminum chloride on my right hand (to make it dry faster). After 8 days the left hand is not completely dry, but the right hand is a lot better.

Well, what I'm saying is that you may have better and faster results by combining iontophoresis with the use of aluminum chloride at the same time. Also you need to keep doing it everyday until you stop the sweating. You've only done it for about 3 hrs total. It's a small price to pay to stop the sweating so just keep doing it.

 

[KngofMn]

Just a thought, make sure that you have the switch clicked over to the 10-50 side because if you have it at 0-10 then you might think you are doing 25-30 MA but are really only doing like 7-10 MA. I think you might be doing this because 25-30 MA would be unbearable, I can bearly do 20 MA and I think I have a strong tolerance for pain. I accidentelly switched it over to 0-10 switch the other day and forgot and had it cranked up to 30 MA and couldn't figure out why it didn't hurt but it was because it was really only at 7-8 MA. Just a thought.

 

[oolceeoo]

Ok. So now I am determined to make my hands stop sweating, I have launched a full on assault on them. I am doing 30 minutes on each polarity at 25mA. So atleast 1 hour total treatment time per day. I have about 3 hours total time on this so far. Yes it hurts like hell, but I can put up with the pain.

Now my hands are sweating much worse, they are dripping as I type this, and they are dripping constantly, and this just makes me want to do more treatments.

Is this MAJOR increase in sweating mean that they might acheive dryness soon?

 

[canuck]

Hi...My daughter has recently started using the Fischer MD-1a iontophoresis unit. She had treatments every day (well, maybe missed one day here or there) for 20 minutes, 10 minutes with each polarity and after about 7-8 treatments, the sweating stopped....she may still get hands that are a little clammy in a situation where she is pretty anxious - which is probably the norm for most people who don't have this problem, but other than that they are dry. Right now, it seems she needs to repeat the treatment about every 6 days. She can only bear between 12-15 mA, but this seems to work fine. 25 mA seems really high....in fact, I didn't think our machine even went that high, but I guess I'm missing something there (if we crank it up, it goes to about 20 mA). Anyway, I would think the consistency of the treatment is likely more important than how high the voltage is. Be careful and good luck!

 

[oolceeoo]

Ok I don't know if this is worth it. My hands are sweating worse, and now I have burn holes on my right hand. Are you supposed to get burn holes when you do this?

 

[KngofMn]

Not sure why your hands would be sweating worse. How many times have you done it at 30 minutes per polarity at 25 MA? It took me atleast 10-12 sessions at 30 minutes per polarity at 20-25 MA for me to get completely dry. I started to see results when I stopped doing both hands everyday and started to do one hand and a foot per day, this way it gives each pair of limbs a day of rest and I think that the day break for each hand gives the Ionto a chance to "sink in" or work for whatever crazy reason. I also got weird burn marks on my finger tips but they go away.