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Causes
By Mayo Clinic staff
The cause of hyperhidrosis stems from your body's temperature regulation system, specifically your sweat glands.
Your skin has two types of sweat glands: eccrine glands and apocrine glands. Eccrine glands occur over most of your body and open directly onto the surface of the skin. Apocrine glands develop in areas abundant in hair follicles, such as on your scalp, armpits and groin.
When your body temperature rises, your autonomic nervous system stimulates these glands to secrete fluid onto the surface of your skin, where it cools your body as it evaporates. This fluid (perspiration) is composed mainly of water and salt (sodium chloride) and contains trace amounts of other electrolytes — substances that help regulate the balance of fluids in your body — as well as substances such as urea.
The cause of hyperhidrosis depends on the type:
- Focal hyperhidrosis. This most commonly involves excessive daytime sweating of your palms and soles, and sometimes the underarms for no apparent reason. It occurs equally on both sides — for example, both palms. The sweating typically stops when sleeping. Focal hyperhidrosis usually begins before age 20 and isn't associated with an underlying condition. The exact cause of focal hyperhidrosis is unknown, but it may have a genetic component as it often runs in families.
- Generalized hyperhidrosis. This type of hyperhidrosis affects large areas of the body. If it begins suddenly, it typically has an underlying cause, such as being a side effect of a drug or a sign of a disease or condition, such as menopause hot flashes, low blood sugar, overactive thyroid, leukemia, lymphoma, heart attack or possibly an infectious disease. Adjusting your medications or treating an underlying disease often solves this problem.
