Ingrid suffers from excessive sweating
Soaking wet after the slightest effort: Ingrid Bakker (42) suffers from excessive sweating, in her case one of the symptoms of the Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Thanks to medication, things are going a bit better.
“I have not always suffered from excessive sweating. I’ve got it Ehlers-Danlos syndrome – a chronic connective tissue disease with a progressive course – which causes various functions in my body to be disrupted. One of them is excessive sweating and regulating my body temperature. That really became a problem about five years ago.
As soon as I get out of the shower, it feels like it’s 35 degrees in the house, when it’s really only 20 degrees. When you see my face, you would think that I spent at least three hours in the tanning bed. It goes away if I keep calm, but sometimes the sweating just comes out of nowhere. With the slightest effort I can already suffer from it. I am so soaked that it looks like I just got out of the pool or shower.
I was born with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, only I didn’t know that. The syndrome causes overload in my body. This causes irreparable damage. My body has to work harder and harder to keep functioning. That means if I’m just sitting in a chair, my body is actually already working. My body sees this as exertion, so that even when I sit for a long time, I already get sweaty attacks.
At some point I was really done with it. I remember walking through a clothing store and leaving a trail of sweat drops. When I got back home I thought: I will never shop like this again. Then I went to the doctor. He gave me heavy medication for that sweating, which I now also use. Otherwise I’ll be soaking wet all day long. Even with medication I still suffer from it, but fortunately much less. I sweat the most on my head, she and – strangely enough – my buttocks. The latter is probably because I sit a lot, I am also in a wheelchair. The good thing is that my sweat doesn’t smell, it’s pure water. I am very happy with that again.
Now that I know what it is and the medicines are doing their job, I find it less difficult. If you know where it comes from, you can put it into perspective better. But I always feel that people are watching. Luckily I never felt bullied, but watching is bad enough. That often does a lot. I apologize for the sweating, but that makes no sense.”
This article originally appeared in +Gezond June 2022. Want to subscribe to the magazine? You can do that in an instant!
Sources):
- Plus Healthy
