VerySweatyBetty.com

VSB has been through many transitions since Anne started it up back in 2007. We started out life as a small group on Google and have gone from strength to strength. If you don’t know the background events, Kris, our long-suffering webmaster got in touch with Anne around the same time I did, just as Anne was starting the group. We all got our heads together and something just clicked. From our little Google group we migrated to a standalone forum. We outgrew that at the beginning of 2010 and since then, we’ve worked hard to bring you the site as it now stands.

Our latest change is going to help many people all over the world – which is exactly what we wanted to do. One thing we have heard time and time again is that there are millions of sufferers in certain parts of the world who don’t have access to products to help control their sweating.

One of our objectives was to help people in these regions. We started off by sending whatever products we had in our bathroom cupboards and soon realised that this wasn’t sustainable – we ran out of products and money for postage. As none of us get paid for what we do, clearly we had to thing of some other way to help.

We next considered buying products and listing them on Ebay – although, no room for storage and no money for products. We researched companies all over the world – but postage to the more remote places cost more than the product costs to buy. That was not on either, money can be hard to come by at the best of times – paying £40 for a deodorant and postage isn’t within everyone’s reach.

Seeing as VSB is the largest independent, privately owned internet support group for Hyperhidrosis, we thought we could do better than that. We went back to the drawing board again and decided to push a few boundaries when it struck us – why just help some people when we could help absolutely everyone?

Once we’d made our objective even harder, oddly enough it became easier to solve. It was just a matter of getting all the information in the same place as our members and providing the facilities for their searches!

So here it is! Our very own eShop! You’ll be pleased to know there’s a link to it at the top of this page (beneath our newsletter sign-up) so you don’t have to scroll down to find this blog for the link again!

The categories added are:
Clothing by Category
Clothing for Men
Underwear for Men
Clothing for Women
Underwear for Women
Footwear & Accessories
Hyperhidrosis Books
Iontophoresis
Personal Hygiene
Specialist Antiperspirants
Sport & Hyperhidrosis

Please email me if you can think of anything else you’d like to see added to the browse and search facility email Betty.

There’s even more coming soon, I can’t say what it is yet (believe it or not, a couple of other websites have been copying all our best ideas, shame on them!) but it’s definitely a good leap forwards – and it won’t be long before we can all find the products we need and have them delivered to our door – no matter where we live – FREE P&P anyone?!

Come back soon for more information!

We have recently been recruiting on Very Sweaty Betty as we’ve been expanding the forum and website – just in case you haven’t already noticed!

Along with all VSB staff, the new members all suffer with Hyperhidrosis.

The Teen Forum: The lovely Amy Lou has kindly agreed to manage this for us.

ETS Forum: Songboy1234 is an authority on ETS and we are very lucky to have someone with his calibre of knowledge of ETS and what can go wrong on board.

Also on the ETS forum, we have DaveSheppard – he’s had ETS and is one of the few people it has actually worked for so far. It’s great to have knowledge from both sides of the same coin.

Future new staff: We are keeping our fingers crossed to have a Doctor on board soon. The idea behind this is so we can have an “Ask the Expert” section. As the Doctor we are hoping for has a family member with Primary Generalized Hyperhidrosis, is a highly qualified Dermatologist with his own practice and is also trained in Botox for Hyperhidrosis, we are hoping this all works out. Watch this space!

Something a little bit different… VSB recently exposed a few (possible) scams. We have recently been in talks with a professional Investigator/Researcher who has agreed to help us expose more scams, frauds, lies and every other ‘negative’ regarding Hyperhidrosis and the internet.

We want all our members to feel safe in the knowledge we are doing all we can to level the playing field, so to speak; life is hard enough for us already.  None of us wants to search the internet only to find nonsense information that comes with a premium price-tag and a sack-full of empty promises – or anything else that isn’t quite what it seems.

If you think you’ve found something suspicious, please contact:

secretsquirrel@verysweatybetty.com.

As Secret Squirrel is an actual person and wants his/her identity to remain private, we have decided to introduce and unveil him/her in a rather unorthadox (but very VSB!) way.

Meet Secret Squirrel!

I first blogged about Sweat Guard’s underarm pads almost a year ago and as we have so many new members who might not have seen it yet, we’re re-running the campaign.

There’s also some really good news!  Sweat Guard have told us today that their underarm pads are now at the lowest price in the UK – £14.99 for 80 pads!

These underarm pads made a big difference to my clothes and self-esteem, if you haven’t tried them yet, please do so, in my opinion you can’t go wrong.

Sweat Guard – underarm pads (link opens in new window)

I have recently been trying out some disposable underarm pads and I have to say I’m impressed. At first I was quite sceptical, I had quite a few preconceptions regarding this type of product but was excited to give it a go. I’ve been on product testing panels for a few years now so I’m always on the look out for something new or different, especially where Hypohidrosis is concerned.

To start off with, they don’t look like much. They’re exceptionally thin, I wondered if they’d be absorbent enough to cope with a hot, humid summer’s day in the middle of what can be a rather damp forest.

The aspect I was most concerned about was whether they’d rub or irritate my underarm skin where they fold to fit your clothes or make the area overly dry or itchy. Over the years I’ve tried all sorts of antiperspirant products and can’t use anything too strong. In fact I have to order my deodorants from the US because they just aren’t sold in the UK any more.

Fixing them in place was a bit trial-and-error. First off, I thought it would be easiest to attach them to my top before putting it on, but I found that although they were central to the underarm seam of my top, my armpits weren’t. After that, I found that they were far more effective to place once my top was in place.

Another concern was that the pad would unstick itself and end up working it’s way out of my top and leave me walking around with it stuck to my back. I know, it sounds irrational, but one rarely ever ‘wins’ where hyperhidrosis is concerned. My fear was completely alleviated very quickly. The underside of the pad has two sticky areas, not just the one. If you can imagine a large number 8, where the top and bottom circles are both sticky, and the fold is in the middle but has no sticky surface. The engineer in me can see how that probably came about, if the pad stuck to itself where the fold was, it would end up sticking to itself during the course of the day where you move around. As it is, the non-sticky section allows for whatever movement you want to throw at it.

The stickiness was amazingly just right. The edges of the pad don’t leave your clothing – I had visions of the edges rolling bit by bit and sticking to my skin so uncomfortable that I’d have to keep diving in and sorting it out. You can see they’re respectful towards your clothing when you remove it, it comes away like a dream. No stickiness left. Result!

Another worry was that people would hear the pads. The first time I wore them, I heard them – although that was more my fault than theirs. If I’d attached them whilst wearing my top then they’d have been sat in the right place. As they weren’t in the right place, they were lifting off my top whenever I moved in the wrong way. On subsequent wearings, once I’d figured out how to position them properly, I could barely detect a sound.

One thing that a Hyperhidrotic knows all about is embarrassment. No matter how many times I lifted my arms and contorted myself in front of my long mirror, there wasn’t a single sign to show that I was wearing the protection. I thought the material might be puckered up and stuck in place by the sticky areas or a slight sign of something amiss poking through – nothing.

So, they’re thin, comfortable, easy to use (after my initial hiccup), discreet, quiet, soft – how about absorbent? As I wanted to take a hit for my fellow suffers, it wouldn’t have been fair to skimp on the absorbency side of things – that’s what they’re there for, they’re whole purpose for being. We recently had the hottest weekend of the year, so far. Excellent for putting sweat pads through their paces.

As it happens, the same weekend I was due to sell my air-conditioned car. Not only that, but I am temporarily sharing my husband’s non-air-conditioned car. As you know, when selling anything, you want it clean and tidy so as to make the best impression. Into a rather sweat-inducing top went myself and my underarm pads, and off I drove to a local petrol station. As I’ve never been the tidiest car owner in the world, my car hasn’t seen a duster or can of polish in the last two years. Since I bought it, in fact. Add to that one medium-sized, mud-loving hairy dog who likes to carry the whole forest about with her, you can see I had my work cut out. I began by clearing out a bag full of rubbish. I lived in my car for pretty much the whole of 2009, I had a very sick mum and was back and forth to hospitals and often had to eat ‘on the go’. It wasn’t too disgusting, nothing festering, just bits of paper, the odd wrapper and bottles of water and Red Bull rolling about everywhere.

I was getting rather sweaty by now. Inspired by that, I fed the vacuum cleaner with three one pound coins. ‘Normal’ cars can get away with a pound. Half an hour later, I was dripping from my face, head and back, my glasses were steaming up, the works. All done, I drove the 500 yards to the car dealer who was buying my car, husband following in his sweatbox to take me home afterwards. I spent the next 25 minutes in an internal office and then got in hubby’s car – which had been locked up with the windows closed for the past half an hour. We kept the windows shut all the way home. I practically crawled up the stairs and removed my top – it was drenched all down my back area. I expected that. What I didn’t expect was the dryness of my armpits – ok they weren’t perfect, just slightly tacky to the touch. Not a single wet patch on my top though! What’s more, I didn’t do my usual thing of subconsciously clamping my arms to my sides. That was really good news because I suffer from a form of arthritis in both shoulders and clamping my arms to my sides actually hurts.

The best thing about the underarm pads? The confidence factor. They’re worth every penny for the protection and peace of mind they give you but priceless in terms of raising your self-esteem. For me personally, I’d want to use them in conjunction with a really good antiperspirant to feel at my most confident – mainly because of my paranoia surrounding odour. For that reason I would give them 8/10 and highly recommend them as regular part of your armour and layering strategy for tackling heavy armpit sweating (Axillary Hyperhidrosis). The (stick) deodorant I was using throughout the testing period was regular strength Secret.

Beverly Stacey

www.verysweatybetty.com

Special thanks to Sweat Guard who have kindly provided me with the Underarm Sweat Pads to try.

Sweat Guard – underarm pads

A golden opportunity has just landed in our laps!  It took me two minutes to complete this online form and I hope everyone who reads this can do the same – male or female, young or old, wherever you are.  The louder we shout the better – we desperately need to raise awareness of Hyperhidrosis and there’s no better medium than television.

http://www.thedoctorstv.com/main/tell_us_form/1159

We’ve just been sent this link by Denise (http://www.coolwrapps.com)

ask our doctors

* Women: Do You Suffer With A Sweaty Crotch?

Do you have a sweat problem?

Are you embarrassed by sweating in your groin area?

Does your crotch sweat?

If you or someone you know has a sweat problem in the groin area, we want to help. Tell us your story!

If we all do this then it will be more likely they’ll actually do something about bringing this into the open. Please mention you found the link through www.verysweatybetty.com, we really want them to know we exist as we’d really like the odd bit of expert advice from them to pass on to all of you.

I know it’s a US website but all of us who are not in the US should reply too, if we all shout at the same time they’re more likely to hear about what a huge problem this can be for us. Men too, please. This is a huge opportunity for us to be heard!