http://www.excessivesweating.org/what.html
Hyperhidrosis, also known as excessive sweating, is a medical condition. There is no single cause of it. Because it is not a disease, it can be a symptom of another medical condition such as a disorder of the nerves. For some people, there may be no explainable cause for their excessive sweating, and they may be considered to have a medical condition known as essential (idiopathic or primary) hyperhidrosis. This may be due to over activity of the nerves that send signals to the sweat glands in the skin, the sympathetic nervous system. Sometimes this idiopathic form of hyperhidrosis can be genetically transmitted, and it often runs in families; this form may first show up in early childhood. Other people may have sweating as a symptom of known medical conditions, such as an overactive thyroid gland (hyperthyroidism), from nerve damage due to diabetes (autonomic dysfunction) or spinal cord injuries, with psychiatric disorders such as panic attacks or anxiety disorders, or even due to the hot flashes associated with menopause. Many people who have hyperhidrosis may also have reddening of the skin, which is most noticeable in the face as blushing, due to the same nerve over-activity. Some medications may by themselves cause excessive sweating, such as the medications often used for
prostate cancer, AIDS, or pyridostigmine (Mestinon™) used for the condition myasthenia gravis.
Sweating is a normal bodily function that serves to cool off the skin and lubricate the skin (especially in areas that may rub against other areas of skin, such as under the arms, under the breasts, and between the legs). Special microscopic glands (sweat glands) in the deep layer of the skin, the dermis, make sweat by filtering fluid and salts out of the blood, and secreting this fluid up through small tubes in the skin, the sweat ducts, that empty out into small pores at the top layer of the skin, the stratum corneum (Wenzel FG & Horn TD, Nonneoplastic disorder of the eccrine glands, J. Am Acad Dermatol. 1998 38:1-17). Some areas of the skin have many sweat glands, while other areas have relatively few; they are present in the highest concentration in the palms and soles. In addition to sweat glands, skin also has oil glands that surround almost every hair root, the sebaceous glands. Finally in some areas, such as the underarm and the groin, are found a special, unusual sweat gland called an apocrine gland, which secretes a very thick type of sweat that has a large amount of fatty chemicals in it. These chemicals can be broken down by bacteria on the surface of the skin to create the smelly chemicals that are mostly responsible for body odor. These glands can occasionally get diseased or infected, and may lead to a condition known as hidradenitis suppurativa, which is a serious medical condition that may require antibiotics or surgery to cure the disorder.
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