Most don’t realize that there are other ways to cure excess sweating or hyperhidrosis than stopping heavy activity. Unfortunately for some people, it doesn’t take excessive activity for there to be excessive sweating. You can’t quite expect to never play sports again or to never enter into a stressful situation to avoid sweating problem. In the busy modern world, where “never let them see you sweat” is a mantra, it is important to cure excess sweating rather than avoid nerve-wracking or difficult situations.

Certainly there are some obvious things you can do to cut down on excessive sweating problem. First, it should go without saying that you should wear clothes that breathe and are not too confining to control excessive sweating. Cotton is always better than polyester because it is porous. Trouble arises when people wear minimal clothing to stay cool, which often leads to visible sweat stains under the arms. It’s a bit of a Catch-22 when you try to cure hyperhidrosis through clothing choices.

Overweight people tend to suffer from excessive sweating problem more. Breathing well, and even posture, can aid to cure excess sweating. In some cases, the sweating problem can spiral out of control. You get nervous about excessive sweating, which only makes you sweat even more. Simple breathing exercises—both before and during a meeting—can go a long way in curbing excessive sweating. This won’t outright cure excess sweating, but it’s a start.

You won’t have to go through any of these precautions to cure hyperhidrosis if you cure excess sweating at the source. Most are unaware that excessive sweating problem can be controlled—not by controlling your environment but within the body itself. Whether you have excessive sweating of the feet, underarms, hands, or face, the ways to cure excess sweating are often the same—via the autonomous nervous system. The autonomous nervous system determines body feature over which we have no control like heart rate, blood pressure and anxiety, which are important factors to cure hyperhidrosis.

Taking off a warm sweater won’t necessarily cure excess sweating problem, so you have to surgically alter the nerves connected to the autonomous nervous system. A sympathectomy is way to cure excess sweating through surgery. The endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy (ETS), in the past, would take a long time for recovery and the procedure itself could be imprecise. With the advent of fiber-optic technology, the surgery is more effective way to cure hyperhidrosis with a shorter recovery time.

ETS cuts the chain in the sympathetic system to cure excess sweating within the autonomous nervous system. The surgeon removes a nerve in the sympathetic chain. This will be done via clamping, electrocauterization, ultrasound, or other method. Additionally, surgeons differ on which part of the chain is removed in order to cure excess sweating.