History of Excessive sweating and night sweats

Hyperhidrosis is sweating beyond the normal physiological amount. A 2026 review in the Deutsches Ärzteblatt (https://doi.org/10.3238/arztebl.m2025.0229) by Schreiner and colleagues puts the prevalence of the primary form, which has no underlying cause, at 2 to 5%; it can affect one region, such as the armpits, palms or soles, or the whole body. A secondary form comes with specific illnesses and medicines. The studies below also cover night sweats during the menopause, after breast cancer treatment, in advanced cancer and in tuberculosis. No Cochrane review, and no systematic review confined to sweating, covers acupuncture for primary hyperhidrosis; the studies in that condition are case reports and one comparison that does not report randomisation. Night sweats appear mostly as a secondary outcome in trials of hot flushes, which Hot flushes (/wiki/evidence/hot-flushes) covers. The Cochrane review Cochrane has not reviewed acupuncture, acupressure or electroacupuncture for hyperhidrosis or for night sweats; a search of PubMed and Europe PMC in October 2026 found no such review or protocol. Its 2013 review of acupuncture for menopausal hot flushes, by Dodin and colleagues, is the nearest, and the hot flushes page reports it. Reviews A 2026 narrative review (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2026.103337) by Lu and colleagues, mostly at hospitals affiliated to Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, is the only review found that takes acupuncture for sweating as its subject. It drew on English-language studies indexed in PubMed; its abstract gives no count of the studies on sweating and no certainty grading. It found the evidence for primary hyperhidrosis, emotional sweating and the paraneoplastic sweating that some cancers cause limited to small, often uncontrolled studies with significant methodological shortcomings. For menopausal and breast cancer-related hot flushes, it described several randomised trials and meta-analyses with more than 1,000 participants, showing short-term improvement that generally diminished after three months following treatment. A 2015 systematic review (https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2014.0274) by Ma and Sivamani, at the University of California, Davis, gathered 24 studies of acupuncture for skin conditions: 16 randomised trials, 6 observational studies and 2 case reports. It excluded electroacupuncture and moxibustion and listed hyperhidrosis among the conditions in which acupuncture improved outcome measures, but its abstract does not say which study or studies covered hyperhidrosis. A 2019 overview (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctcp.2019.07.007) by Guo and colleagues, in Changchun, China, assessed 29 systematic reviews of complementary therapies for vasomotor symptoms, the hot flushes and sweats of the menopause and of cancer treatment. It listed acupuncture among the therapies reported to reduce them and judged the evidence levels not high. Primary hyperhidrosis A 2013 case series (https://doi.org/10.1136/acupmed-2013-010391) by Cayir and Engin, at Atatürk University in Erzurum, Turkey, treated three people with primary hyperhidrosis, sweating heavily by day and night, at the same set of points; all three reported less sweating. A 2025 case report (https://doi.org/10.1177/09645284251365645) by Georgiadis and Tzigkounakis, in Athens, describes one person whose primary hyperhidrosis remitted after ear acupuncture. Ear acupuncture (/wiki/techniques/ear-acupuncture) describes the method. A 2008 study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19226894/) by Wang and Zhao, in Tianjin, compared needling at the Huatuojiaji points in 30 people with spontaneous excessive sweating against an unnamed Western medicine in 26. The total effective rate, a share of patients the authors classed as improved, was 96.7% with acupuncture and 57.7% with the drug. The abstract does not say that the groups were randomised, and the study had no sham arm. Two laboratory studies in healthy volunteers measured sweating directly. Ogata and colleagues (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autneu.2004.11.008) , in Aichi, Japan, in 2005, set 25 young adults mental arithmetic and measured the sweat it provoked on the palm or sole while stimulating ST36 (/points/st36) (Zusanli) on the leg or LI04 (/points/li04) (Hegu) on the hand at 5 Hz or 100 Hz. Stimulating ST36 at either frequency reduced palm sweating; stimulating LI04 at 5 Hz reduced sole sweating, and at 100 Hz did not. Young and McCarthy (https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.1998.4.1-29) , in 1998, needled the ear in 38 men at the point called sympathetic or at a control point while recording the skin’s electrical response to stimuli designed to rouse the sympathetic nervous system; the control point increased the response and the sympathetic point left it unchanged. Neither study enrolled people with hyperhidrosis. Mechanism studies in people (/wiki/research/mechanism-studies-in-people) covers this kind of research. Night sweats after breast cancer Women taking tamoxifen and other hormone treatments after breast cancer have hot flushes and night sweats, as the studies below describe. A trial published in 2012 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-010-1283-3) by Liljegren and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm randomised 84 women taking tamoxifen to acupuncture or a control procedure, non-penetrating stimulation at non-acupuncture points, twice a week for 5 weeks. Both groups reported fewer and milder hot flushes and sweats, with no statistically significant difference between them; a subanalysis of the severity of sweating at night found a significant difference in the acupuncture group (P = 0.03). The authors concluded that convincing data that true acupuncture outperforms the control were still lacking. Sham acupuncture (/wiki/research/sham-acupuncture) describes such control procedures. Two studies from NHS cancer centres in England had no control group. In a 2010 study (https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2009.0472) by de Valois and colleagues, 50 women taking tamoxifen had eight weekly sessions of individualised traditional acupuncture, and the frequency of hot flushes and night sweats, counted together, fell by 49.8% by the end of treatment. A 2022 evaluation (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-022-06898-7) of 15 years of an ear acupuncture service at Mount Vernon Cancer Centre, by the same lead author, analysed 300 women given eight weekly sessions of the NADA protocol, a standardised ear acupuncture treatment from the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association, given in groups. Their median daily count of hot flushes and night sweats fell from 9.6 to 5.7 by the end of treatment and stood at 6.3 18 weeks later, and two non-serious adverse events were recorded. Night sweats in the menopause The ACOM trial (https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-023637) , published in 2019 by Lund and colleagues, randomised 70 Danish women with moderate to severe menopausal symptoms, in nine general practices, to five weekly sessions of acupuncture at CV03 (/points/cv03) (Zhongji), CV04 (/points/cv04) (Guanyuan), LV08 (/points/lv08) (Ququan), SP06 (/points/sp06) (Sanyinjiao) and SP09 (/points/sp09) (Yinlingquan), or to a wait of six weeks before treatment. Hot flushes were the primary outcome. On the day-and-night sweats scale of the questionnaire it used, scores fell by 1.2 points more with acupuncture than with waiting (95% CI 0.4 to 2.0), and on the general sweating scale by 0.9 points more. The trial had no sham arm; the control group waited for treatment. Sweating in advanced cancer and in tuberculosis Two single-patient reports come from hospices in the English Midlands. A 2003 report (https://doi.org/10.1136/aim.21.4.155) by Hallam and Whale describes a 60-year-old woman with inoperable lung cancer whose unexplained sweating had not responded to other measures and eased with a course of acupuncture. A 2018 report (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jams.2018.03.001) by Ramasamy describes a 56-year-old man with advanced pancreatic cancer whose night sweats, rated 9 out of 10 on a visual scale, were rated 1 after 10 weeks of acupuncture. In tuberculosis, a 2009 trial (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19186714/) by Zhao and colleagues, published in Chinese, randomised 53 people being treated again for tuberculosis to standard drug treatment alone or with garlic moxibustion at points including BL13 (/points/bl13) (Feishu), BL43 (/points/bl43) (Gaohuangshu) and GV12 (/points/gv12) (Shenzhu). The moxibustion group improved more in night sweats, weakness and cough as well as in X-ray and sputum results. The trial had no sham. Moxibustion (/wiki/techniques/moxibustion) describes the method. What guidelines say The Ärzteblatt review states that there are no uniform international guidelines for hyperhidrosis. Its stepwise scheme follows the German-language guideline on primary hyperhidrosis issued through the AWMF, the Association of Scientific Medical Societies in Germany, whose 2023 version it cites; the scheme runs from aluminium chloride and anticholinergic drugs to botulinum toxin, tap water iontophoresis, radiofrequency, focused ultrasound, microwave treatment and surgery, and the review does not mention acupuncture as a treatment. The AWMF register refused automated access, so AcuiQ could not open the 2023 guideline itself. The 2018 English summary (https://doi.org/10.1111/ddg.13579) of the previous version lists the same kinds of treatment and, in its abstract, not acupuncture. The Canadian Hyperhidrosis Advisory Committee’s 2007 recommendations (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1524-4725.2007.33192.x) grade treatment by severity, from topical aluminium chloride to botulinum toxin, iontophoresis, oral drugs and, last, surgery; their abstract does not mention acupuncture. The Chinese expert consensus of 2021 (https://doi.org/10.1097/cm9.0000000000002198) on surgery for sweating palms lists antiperspirants, oral anticholinergics, iontophoresis and injections as the non-surgical options, and does not mention acupuncture. For menopausal night sweats, the hot flushes page reports the NICE, North American Menopause Society and Society for Integrative Oncology positions, and Clinical guidelines (/wiki/evidence/clinical-guidelines) compares them with other bodies’. What the reviews could not settle For primary hyperhidrosis, no study on this page reported a sham or randomisation, so the reports leave open whether needling, the passage of time or the attention of treatment accounts for the change. For night sweats, the one sham-controlled trial on this page, Liljegren’s, found no difference between groups on its main outcomes; the larger reductions come from studies with no control group or with a waiting list. The two de Valois studies counted night sweats together with hot flushes, the trials reported night sweats only as a secondary scale or a subanalysis, and the Lu review found that improvement in hot flushes generally diminished after three months. Reading an acupuncture trial (/wiki/research/reading-an-acupuncture-trial) explains how the choice of control shapes such results. AcuiQ’s sweating (/symptoms/sweating) , hyperhidrosis (/symptoms/hyperhidrosis) and night sweats (/symptoms/night-sweats) pages list the protocols individual studies prescribed, each with its citation.