People are always looking for methods to prevent body odor but the main reason why the perfect method to do so has remained elusive till date is that no one actually knows why some people sweat more than the others. The medical world is at a loss to understand this condition and there are several theories floating around. They have honored the condition with a name though, hyperhidrosis, but are still investigating what causes it.

Sweating is a form of excretion from the body, just as urination is, but sweating can occur anywhere on the entire skin of the body. The skin has sweat pores (medically, sebaceous glands) that are connected to sweat ducts which collect the sweaty excretion and discharge it from the body. Since the sweat ducts are present everywhere on the skin, sweating can happen anywhere.

It is fallacious to think that there are more sweat pores in certain areas of the body, because different people have been known to sweat more from different parts of the body. Most people will sweat profusely from their armpits, but there are so many who sweat excessively from their palms, their soles, necks, chests, backs, foreheads and almost every place that you can think of.

All these things are quite perplexing to the medical fraternity who has found it very difficult to come up with an effective and lasting cure for this problem so far. They believe that the method to prevent underarm sweating can be devised by reducing the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which seems to be responsible for hyperhidrosis in the first place, but then the sympathetic nervous system is governed by a particular region of the brain, which cannot be effectively pinpointed. Certainly the problem is much larger than it seems.

Methods such as Botox injections are painful and sympathectomies (surgical destruction of the sympathetic nerves) are quite risky. Though people enter these kinds of therapies, they and their treatment providers know that these methods are not going to be permanent, whatever inconvenience they may cause and howsoever much expensive they may be.

The reason why most stop underarm odor methods are inadequate is because the medical world is yet ignorant of what causes excessive sweating. They are not sure which part of the body (or brain) makes it happen, because sweating can occur from all over the skin.

On the contrary, simple methods like drinking lots of water and avoiding stressful conditions are proving to be just as effective in stopping sweating as these medical methods are. It is a very confusing situation both for the doctors as well as for the people who are seeking treatments for their sweaty problems.