Excessive sweating! help me?

Will antihistamines help reduce excessive sweating and is this use safe?

• Hi. I have excessive facial sweating that makes me really self concious. It's likely from the mix of meds I take- zoloft and adderall. It's extreme and makes me not want to be in social situations because it's embarassing. Someone told me that antihistamines dry out your secretions in general and that they should help do the same for sweating. So, is this true and if so, which antihistamine- Benadryl, Claritin, etc? And is it safe to use an antihistamine for this purpose? I'd prefer to use claritin because is causes less drowsiness but I saw on the side effect profile that it could CAUSE sweating...I'm confused! Also, would using an anti-cholinergic drug for this purpose be effective but aren't the cognitive side effects of them serious? Thanks for any help!

• Answer:

  See, antihistaminics cannot reduce ur sweating. It's true they can control inflammation to a certain degree, and reduce secretion like that of mucos or the acid in stomach, but not sweating. Anticholinergics (actually, antimuscarinics) can reduce sweating--atropine, hyoscine, but these r known for the psychosis that they can induce. These drugs r used sparingly only for emergencies like organophosphate (insecticides) poisoning, or in case of uncontrolled diarrhea. Otherwise they're used only topically like in eye testing (that too atropine's duration of action is so long--upto a week, that other compounds with shorter half lives r used). Moreover, think about it, sweating is a natural phenomenon--if u r actually sweating a lot, it could be some other abnormality that u r suffering from--hyperthyroidism, anxiety disorder, etc. Do get urself checked for that. Additionally, sweating is the natural mechanism for dissipatng heat from the body. One of the dreaded complications of any drug that prevents sweating is hyperthermia (simply put, very high body temperature in absence of any infection), which could rather land u up in an emergency. Don't take any such drug without doctor's prescription--at least not atropine (anticholinergic/antimuscarinic). Hope this helps u. Bye. TC. BTW, I'd be able to help u better if u let me know the chemical composition of the drugs that u mentioned.