My experience using the Hidrex PSP 1000 so far...
Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2012 12:59 pm
Hi there,
I recently purchased the Hidrex PSP 1000 and so far after 3 treatments I've had less than encouraging results, so I wanted to ask a few questions and any advice would be appreciated!!
Firstly, I'm a 23 year old male from the UK and have suffered from what I consider to be mild localised palmar/plantar hyperhidrosis all my life, although I get extremely excessive general sweating and facial blushing when taking part in intense exericise. I don't have any horror stories about sweat literally dripping off my hands/feet, but during the day my hands and feet are freezing cold with a constant sheen of moisture. The sweating of my hands increases markedly on contact with any kind of surface - this is enough to create significant apprehension towards physical contact in social situations.
I've previously tried strong antiperspirants on my hands and feet which produced unsurprisingly poor results.
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I'm on day 5 of my iontophoresis treatment plan.
My first impression of the Hidrex PSP 1000 was surprise at the lack of included information on treatment protocol, such as the suggested treatment parameters (mA/voltage) and the effects of the various pulse widths of the pulsed current feature. Most of the instructions seemed to be a poor translation from German to English.
So far I've treated my hands on Day 1, 2 and 4 as suggested by iontophoresis.info. I've used a pulse width of 70% at 35 Volts, which I believe maxed out the current limitation feature of the device because when I tried to experiment and up the voltage to 40, the machine would not increase any further than 35. When switching the display to mA instead of Volts, the treatment seems to max out at 11-12mA (with pulse width of 70).
It is not clear from the ambiguous instruction manual how the ammeter in the device measures the current - I'm guessing it must take some kind of moving average of the current in the circuit, because otherwise it would fluctuate during the pulses. So does a current of 11-12mA with a pulse width of 70 actually correspond to a higher maximum current - say around 15mA?
The above settings produced a pretty strong tingling feeling, close to the point of irritation. My hands are now sweating more than when the treatment began. I don't know if people will be able to identify with the following, but it feels similar to when I go out in the cold with my hands exposed the skin on my palms feels "chapped" and quite "rough", and when my hands return to room temperature they would begin to sweat more than usual to try and "cleanse" the chapped feeling - then my hands in general feel dirty and clammy.
I live in a mid/hard water area by the way and I've alternated the anode and cathode for each treatment so far - I know some places advocate keeping the same polarity for initial treatments, but I don't see the logic of this given that if the true mechanism of the treatment is to drive ions to block the sweat glands, then surely it would only work on the hand in which the ions are being driven into the skin, not out of the skin.
Do some people actually experience a FULL cessation of their symptoms, or is often those with extreme symptoms feeling a huge relative improvement - going from soaking wet to very slightly moist?
I'm obviously going to persevere with the treatment, I've only done 3 treatments over 4 days after all.
Is there something I am doing wrong or something that anyone would advise that I do differently e.g. current/voltage and pulse width, treatment times etc...
Cheers!
I recently purchased the Hidrex PSP 1000 and so far after 3 treatments I've had less than encouraging results, so I wanted to ask a few questions and any advice would be appreciated!!
Firstly, I'm a 23 year old male from the UK and have suffered from what I consider to be mild localised palmar/plantar hyperhidrosis all my life, although I get extremely excessive general sweating and facial blushing when taking part in intense exericise. I don't have any horror stories about sweat literally dripping off my hands/feet, but during the day my hands and feet are freezing cold with a constant sheen of moisture. The sweating of my hands increases markedly on contact with any kind of surface - this is enough to create significant apprehension towards physical contact in social situations.
I've previously tried strong antiperspirants on my hands and feet which produced unsurprisingly poor results.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm on day 5 of my iontophoresis treatment plan.
My first impression of the Hidrex PSP 1000 was surprise at the lack of included information on treatment protocol, such as the suggested treatment parameters (mA/voltage) and the effects of the various pulse widths of the pulsed current feature. Most of the instructions seemed to be a poor translation from German to English.
So far I've treated my hands on Day 1, 2 and 4 as suggested by iontophoresis.info. I've used a pulse width of 70% at 35 Volts, which I believe maxed out the current limitation feature of the device because when I tried to experiment and up the voltage to 40, the machine would not increase any further than 35. When switching the display to mA instead of Volts, the treatment seems to max out at 11-12mA (with pulse width of 70).
It is not clear from the ambiguous instruction manual how the ammeter in the device measures the current - I'm guessing it must take some kind of moving average of the current in the circuit, because otherwise it would fluctuate during the pulses. So does a current of 11-12mA with a pulse width of 70 actually correspond to a higher maximum current - say around 15mA?
The above settings produced a pretty strong tingling feeling, close to the point of irritation. My hands are now sweating more than when the treatment began. I don't know if people will be able to identify with the following, but it feels similar to when I go out in the cold with my hands exposed the skin on my palms feels "chapped" and quite "rough", and when my hands return to room temperature they would begin to sweat more than usual to try and "cleanse" the chapped feeling - then my hands in general feel dirty and clammy.
I live in a mid/hard water area by the way and I've alternated the anode and cathode for each treatment so far - I know some places advocate keeping the same polarity for initial treatments, but I don't see the logic of this given that if the true mechanism of the treatment is to drive ions to block the sweat glands, then surely it would only work on the hand in which the ions are being driven into the skin, not out of the skin.
Do some people actually experience a FULL cessation of their symptoms, or is often those with extreme symptoms feeling a huge relative improvement - going from soaking wet to very slightly moist?
I'm obviously going to persevere with the treatment, I've only done 3 treatments over 4 days after all.
Is there something I am doing wrong or something that anyone would advise that I do differently e.g. current/voltage and pulse width, treatment times etc...
Cheers!