What causes sweaty fingers?

If you normally feel your fingers sweating or your hands sweating easily, normal sweating is caused by changes in temperature, but some types of sweating are caused by hyperhidrosis. Hyperhidrosis is divided into two types: primary sweating and idiopathic sweating. Primary sweating is caused by hypersecretion of sweat glands, which leads to accelerated sweating. Sudden sweating is caused by systemic diseases, such as diabetes or hypoglycemia, or by drug-induced diseases. In severe cases, it may be related to respiratory failure and vascular diseases.

Simply put, hyperhidrosis of the hands is a symptom of excessive sweating of the hands, accounting for 0.6% to 1% of the total population.

Sweating is a normal heat dissipation response of the human body and is controlled by the sympathetic nerves in the autonomic nervous system. When the ambient temperature or body temperature exceeds the body's own temperature set point, in order to prevent the body temperature from rising further, the sympathetic nerves become active, controlling the secretion of the body's sweat glands, removing heat through sweat evaporation to reduce temperature.

Sweating varies from person to person. At the same ambient temperature, some people sweat more and some people sweat less. However, when the ambient temperature is not high and there is no need to sweat to dissipate heat and cool down under normal circumstances, but you still sweat profusely, it is called "hyperhidrosis".

Hyperhidrosis is divided into two categories: primary hyperhidrosis and secondary hyperhidrosis.

Primary hyperhidrosis refers to a state of hypersecretion of sweat glands without obvious cause. It is actually an autonomic nervous system functional disorder caused by excessive secretion of sweat glands. Secondary hyperhidrosis is caused by the symptoms of hyperhidrosis caused by diseases of the neuroendocrine and other systems (such as hyperthyroidism, diabetes, hypoglycemia, poisoning, side effects of drugs, cardiovascular disease, respiratory failure, carcinoid syndrome, Hodgkin's disease).

According to the location of sweating, hyperhidrosis can be divided into systemic hyperhidrosis and local hyperhidrosis. Systemic hyperhidrosis is mostly secondary hyperhidrosis, while local hyperhidrosis is mostly primary hyperhidrosis.

Hyperhidrosis of the hands is actually a primary local hyperhidrosis, and its known cause is the excessive activity of the thoracic sympathetic nerves that control the secretion function of the sweat glands in the hands.

Through family surveys of people with hyperhidrosis of the hands, it was found that the symptom is familial and has an autosomal dominant inheritance characteristic, which means it can be passed on to offspring.