Hyperhidrosis and Scammers: How to Save Yourself the Trouble

Hyperhidrosis is unfortunately one of those conditions which are socially painful enough for patients to really want to cure it, yet embarrassing enough to prevent patients from sharing their condition with others, thus drawing a barrier to a credible guidance.

Thus, a perfect playground for internet-quacks offering miracle (7, 30, 50 day) cures to your excessive sweat forever. I have a few problem with these people, and I want to use whatever voice I have through this network to educate fellow Hyperhidrosis patients on how to avoid this trap.

Why do I have problem with Hyperhidrosis Quacks?

• First, I think its downright unethical to claim that you have a solution to something when you don't have any. Hyperhidrosis does not have any real solution (all the legitimate treatments focus on suppressing the symptoms)
• Secondly, I don't like the idea of exploiting excessive sweat patients social anxiety to gain unreasonable monetary gains. Again, i dont have problem with people making money when they provide real help – just with people who are providing a badly written, ill-researched e-book for tens/hundred of $s
• Not only the hypehidrosis patients lose their hard earned money to such scams, but more importantly it leaves a physiological scar making them further anxious (“My hyperhidrosis is not treatable”). And make the patients wary to try even the legitimate treatments from thereon.

How to identify Hyperhidrosis Quacks

There, I said it – I have a strong opinion on all sorts of people offering their miracle potions/guides to stop your excessive sweat overnight. It might be painting a lot of people with the same brush, but after doing a lot of research over last few years, and burning a non-trivial amount of money trying almost everything offered by these internet scammers, I think I have a well researched point of view on these.

Here are some obvious signs that the resource you are considering for treating your hyperhidrosis is a scam:

• Website – Often, the website is a very good clue. Hit the back button as soon as you see the following:
  • The website address is a combination of “sweat” and a strong verb like “stop”, “cure”, “free yourself”. I don't want to get too explicit here, but I think you will get a very good idea of a source's legitimacy once you look at the domain name.
  • The website has very few pages (<20), and the pages are more or less crammed with the keyword designed to attract search engines (be wary if you see more than 4 mentions of Hyperhidrosis or Excessive Sweat on one page)
  • There are pics of smiling customers providing testimonials on how the treatment changed their lives – most of such websites do that in order to increase their non-existant credibility. Don't fall for it – unless the testimonials have the email/phone number of the customers (I guarantee you, very few of them will be able to produce any evidence that the customers are real)

• Product – next comes the product
  • Product is an e-book – anybody nowadays can produce a good looking ebook for under $50. This is not to say that ebooks are not good, but for something like hyperhidrosis treatment, I wont trust one unless it comes as recommendation from someone I know personally
  • The e-book has a never before offer which is about to expire soon – most of the internet products will come with a highly attractive “temporary” discount basically designed to make you that impulse purchase then and there. Don't fall for it – the discount will be there tomorrow and a year later
  • There are additional freebies like CD thrown in – all of that is (usually) junk designed to make your purchase look worth it

So, what do to?

The problem with internet is – its easy to walk unsuspecting into the doors of thousands of such quacks. However, the same internet also puts a tremendous amount of power in your hands. Trust the legitimate sites such as Wikipedia, SweatHelp.org etc for getting any information. A large number of online forums also exist where hyperhidrosis patients get together to share their experiences (this website has a very active forum for example). Such forums are excellent source of first hand information on treatment options.

Another option which is always open is of-course to see a medical practitioner – if you have access to, and can afford treatment, going to a professional practitioner is your best bet.